OK, one more page

Here is the fifth page of the 60 Minute Broadway comic for your perusal. This will be the last page uploaded. We have some interest and will hopefully have an announcement where you can purchase 60 Minute Broadway coming very soon!

Click on it to see the full image

Story Synopsis

I realized as Jeff was uploading some character sketches that, other than the first four pages of the comic readily available on the site, not many people reading this have much idea what the comic book is about or who the main players are.

The title 60 MINUTE BROADWAY comes from wrestling lingo for a 60 minute time limit draw. Back in the days of the traveling world champion, the local hero would take on the (usually) villain champion in a title match when he came to their town. Not wanting to have the money drawing champion lose but still wanting to make the hero look like he took that champ to the limit, the matches would often go to a broadway. To be able to go 60 minutes was a mark of distinction for the champion, as it meant you were talented enough in your craft to engage an audience for an hour and also make your opponent look good as well. Guys like Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Harley Race, Terry Funk among others were famous for these types of matches. It was once said that Flair could "have a good match with a broomstick", meaning that no matter who he was in the ring with, he could make them look convincing and like the proverbial million bucks.

One of the major points to get across is the tone of the story. I don't treat professional wrestling as a "legit competitive sport". We know it's not "real" in the sense of the winners are predetermined. Although it's a lot more real than most people think and especially for those who are in the business. This story is about one guy trying to rediscover his passion for his chosen life and remember why he wanted to get into this in the first place.

So with that in mind, I present the "official story synopsis". There are a few twists and turns and some other characters, but I want to leave something for the actual comic! What follows is the basic outline of the story. After a week or so, I'll move a version of this to the links on the sidebar for regular perusal.

THE STORY: Ace Hazzard spent his youth dreaming of becoming a professional wrestler. When finally achieving that goal, he finds out there's a tremendous gap between his dreams and his reality. Ace isn't a big name superstar with his face on t-shirts and lunch boxes, instead he is a member of a group of wrestlers known as "jobbers". No-name wrestlers whose sole job, while solid workers in the ring, is to lose to the big name wrestlers and make them look good. He is a preliminary guy, total opening match. And there he sits, jaded, bitter and burnt out for the majority of his career, never being given a chance to break out...until the day he's fired for not being "marketable" enough.

Now, in the twilight of his career, he is forced to work the purgatory of the independent circuit. Landing in Laredo, Texas working for Texas Championship Wrestling, Ace meets grizzled old veteran Jackie Dugan. Jackie is a hard drinkin', 55 year old veteran of the sport. He's seen it all and done even more and, despite damaged legs that would barely support a coffee table, he still leaves it all in the ring to entertain the people that spent their hard earned money to see him. This is a quality that Ace lacks and the two men butt heads and fists over this and form a rocky friendship. It's here that Ace also meets Dr. Marisol Ruiz who has her own secrets from the past that draw her and Ace together. Ace begins to find his passion again toiling away in high school gyms and armories, but as time is running out for him, he wonders whether he'll ever be able to live his dream...to main event Madison Square Garden.

Meet Jackie and Marisol

Note from John: In reading Jeff's post I realized that people reading this aren't that familiar with the characters. I'll try to do a rundown of the main characters and post them later. For the meantime, Jackie Dugan is a grizzled old veteran of the independent circuit. He doesn't like Ace at all, but can Ace earn his respect? That remains to be seen. Marisol Ruiz is the love interest of the story. A doctor of Mexican descent in Laredo, TX and none too happy with Ace putting his body on the line on a nightly basis. OK, now I leave you with the post:

Sorry for the long hiatus between postings. A lot of things have been going down lately, and unfortunately, 60 got placed on the back burner for a bit. As of this past weekend though, 60's back in a big way and John and I are cookin' up lots of cool stuff to get a draft of the first issue of 60 completed in the next few months. First, we need to get all the character sketches done and that's what this past weekend was all about.

John came over Saturday afternoon and we sat down with a mission to get the characters of Jackie and Marisol done. To the upper left you'll see our finished Jackie. I love how he came out. He has a weariness and pain about him, an almost vacant look in his eyes that shows just how much he's been through. This pencil sketch will be refined until I get the simplified look of the comic, but I think this is a great model to work off of.

Marisol's here, to the right. I think she needs a bit more work, but I like what we've got here so far. I need to get her a bit more mature, more Latina, more experienced. I want her more sexy than cute, and this is getting there, but it needs a bit more tweaking. John has the earlier drafts which I'm sure he'll post, and you can see her evolution.

A bit about the process, this weekend: For the most part, John had already given me many ideas of what he wanted for the characters, and I had drawn pages of rough outlines for them over the past several weeks, but just wasn't feeling completely comfortable with where I was going with them. Having John there while I was drawing helped speed up the process because the feedback was so immediate. Once I finished a sketch, I could hold it up to him (he was working on his laptop, tweaking the 60 script) and say, "Whaddaya think?" and he'd be like, "I like the eyes on this one, but the face on the other one," and I could make edits on the spot. I really liked this way of working and I'm very happy with how things came out. I'm thinking once we establish ourselves, we might need to open up an office or get a space where we can work together. That would be ideal.

We have a few more characters to develop, then it's onto more page layouts. Things are getting exciting again!

60 in San Diego '05

This post has been a long time coming - I actually can't believe it has almost been two weeks since the Con - but I finally got the time and energy together to post these words and pics about the experiences John and I had in San Diego. Click on the pictures to see big views. Some need to be seen full-size to be appreciated.

First off, the San Diego Comic Con is huge. Really huge. The biggest comic-book convention in the world, actually. There are so many panels and seminars and events going on throughout each day that there's no way to really see and do everything. The cons I attended in the '90s seem like intimate little gatherings compared to what we experienced a couple of weeks ago. We weren't here to see Peter Jackson's King Kong teaser, or Charlize Theron present some footage of the upcoming Aeon Flux movie (actually John, why didn't we catch that!?), we were here to show our pitch-book for 60 around, and get some honest-to-goodness, professional feedback. And get feedback we did.

The first guy we talked to was Ovi Nedelcu, an awesome guy who has an immediate place in our "Special Thanks" section when 60 gets published. His comic, Pigtale, is wonderfully illustrated and is a fun read. While talking to him about Pigtale, and getting him to sign the first three issues, John and I showed him our pages for 60, which he was very enthusiastic about. He thought our pitch-book was very professional "More than I had," were his exact words, and encouraged us to send it in to Image after we produced some more pages, even going so far as saying he would be willing to check it out again and possibly plug us on his website once we were done with said pages. This positive-feedback right off the bat really bolstered our confidence and we left Ovi and the Image booth giddy and eager to show 60 to others in the convention hall. We also used our meeting with him as a template on how to approach other creators. That is, talk to them about their books, perhaps buy a couple, then ask if they wouldn't mind checking out 60 and giving us feedback.

After talking to Ovi I didn't think things would get much better until we stopped at a booth John's commercial agent, Judy, was at. I was looking around at the original artwork and books around the booth, when I noticed some recent works by Jon J. Muth. Being a favorite comic book painter and illustrator of mine since childhood, I said something like, "Wow, I love Jon J. Muth!" Hearing me, Judy casually looked at me and said, "Really? He's right here. Wanna meet him?" and grabbed Jon, who was standing right next to her and introduced us. Turns out not only is he an amazing artist (check out Moonshadow, Sandman's The Wake or M), he's a really cool, rather Zen kinda guy. He checked out our pitch-book, and after going through the first three pages (the brightly-hued, Ace-in-his-youth flashback scenes), asked me if I had shown Scholastic the pages. That Jon J. Muth, a childhood hero of mine, thought I should show my artwork to a publisher, made my day. I'm still kinda riding high off that, actually. Anyway, gotta plug his children's books, The Three Questions, Stone Soup and Zen Shorts. Check 'em out.

After taking some time out to eat (John had a hot dog and I had a "gourmet" pizza, which I almost threw-up), we attended a panel on Webcomics since I'm thinking about starting one soon, and because one of my favorite webcomics creators, PVP's Scott Kurtz was on the panel. Turns out it was a really fun discussion and John and I both came away from it enlightened not only about webcomics, but the comics industry in general and how to promote your properties. Side note: James Kochalka is a funny, random dude.

It wasn't all business, though. John and I were in hysterics over the varied personalities attracted to the Comic Con, including (click on images for full effect):

1. Fat Speeder Biker. "Does this Imperial Armor make my ass look fat?"
2. Big Hairy Klingon + sidekick
3. Superfly Superman

I also got pictures with a mech from a new Robotech, the original being one of the favorite cartoons of my youth, and Pikachu, 'cuz I love all things Nintendo. And Pokemon rocks.








We finally left the convention at closing, Saturday night, with a mixture of exhaustion and excitement. I think I had been going 72 hours at this point with about four hours of sleep.

Totally worth it.

We were ready to hit the bars at this point.

Luckily, Kyle, a friend of John's from Boston, runs a local bar and restaurant called Dick's Last Resort so we went there. He totally gave us the treatment, getting past the waiting line to get in, and we had a blast drinking beers, eating crab and steak, and basically letting loose after the past few tumultuous days. I think John and I really just needed the break before our drive back. Later in the evening, Kyle brought out a banner-sized piece of butcher paper and I drew a mean, young Ace on it, promoting the 60 website. Kyle stuck it on the door to his office. Maybe we'll get some traffic to the website from it. The hype has already started!

Since there weren't any hotels available within a 100-mile radius, John and I took to the road after departing Dick's, to get back to L.A. Actually, that was an adventure in itself, but I think I'll let John take that one, if he wants to. I just remember being on the wrong side of the road at one point, with oncoming traffic directly in front of us, images of salmon swimming upstream running through my head. I also seem to remember being stranded in the middle of the road on a concrete island with John yelling, "Get out and push, bitch!". I could've dreamt all this, however, so we'll see what John's take on all this is.

Actually, I think we might have been abducted, too, as there are two hours on the road I can't account for. Good times.

Completed artwork - Story teaser

Here are the four pages we are using in the 60 Minute Broadway proposal. It's actually the opening of the story, but it also serves as a little teaser trailer in a way as well. Make sure to read them in order. Enjoy!

Click Here!

Some older sketches

It's the night before the San Diego Comic Con International and we're just getting our proposal ready and in it's final stages. Here are some earlier sketches of some of the characters in 60 Minute Broadway: Click Here...

Welcome to 60 Minute Broadway

This marks the opening of the site for our new comic book 60 MINUTE BROADWAY, created by myself and Jeff Schuetze.

This book is adapted from a screenplay I wrote a year or so ago and Jeff's pencils and coloring are amazing.

Did you ever watch Saturday morning wrestling? There was always the big name wrestler matched against a smaller, out of shape no name that never stood a chance. 60 MINUTE BROADWAY is that guy's story. It's been called "Bull Durham set in pro wrestling" and that's what I hoped to achieve with it in the first place.

We are heading to the San Diego Comic Con International this coming weekend to show some pages and try to get it published or at least, score some interest in it. It's a great story with characters I fell in love with when writing them. And you don't have to be a fan of pro wrestling to enjoy it. It's not about pro wrestling that just happens to be the setting. It's about the characters and one guy overcoming his limitations and rediscovering his passion to remember why he chose this life in the first place.

Jeff and I will be posting comments, technical details, artwork as well as reports from the San Diego Comic Con this coming weekend. We hope to keep an online journal of creating this project and hope you enjoy reading about it.

It should be quite a journey. Thanks for stopping by!