MattBrady
01-07-2003, 10:15 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis_Cover.jpg" width="175" height="270" align="right">A few months back, Newsarama spoke with J. Torres about his upcoming plans for 2002 and 2003, including the then-titled Pop Life, a planned graphic novel about a girl group in the early ‘60s. Pop Life has long since been scuttled as a title in favor of Days Like This, and the digest-sized OGN is slated to hit shelves in late March. Oni and Torres have provided Newsarama with a preview.
According to the publisher, Days Like This is set circa 1962, and revolves around Harmony Plaza, a buzzing factory for pop music. Hits for bands all across the world are written there, and teenage heartthrobs like Dana Darling and Robbie Mann got their start in those musical hallways. So did Anna Solomon, now ex-wife of music mogul Abe Solomon. Anna is taking her divorce settlement and starting her own music label. Her first signing comes when she discovers Christina James and her two friends singing at their high school talent show—and Tina and the Tiaras are born.
Illustrated by Scott Chantler, the project came to life (according to Oni EiC Jamie Rich, although see below for Torres version of events) after some freewheeling by Torres. “I remember it was a Friday night, and my e-mail dinged,” Rich said. “It was J. Torres. He had been toying around with some ideas and had written up some entries for an imagined music encyclopedia. He thought he’d send it to me, as it was right up my alley. The attached documents had biographies of Anna Solomon, songwriter Karen Prince, the Tiaras, and all the various periphery characters. J. had already put his world together, and his instincts were right—I was instantly hooked.”
As for the inspiration, Torres quckly points to his father, who passed away in 2002. “It all began with my dad who I thank for instilling in me a love of all kinds of music,” Torres said in an earlier chat with Newsarama. “Comics as well. I've always wanted to write a comic book that I thought he would dig. He was a fan of Mike Grell's Jon Sable, Freelance so at one point I thought I'd attempt something in that vein. But one day while reading about the legendary Brill Building and all the famous people who worked there, it hit me that some of their stories would translate well in the comic book medium. In my head, I even saw those comics drawn by people like Mike Allred - see Red Rocket 7 or the Hernandez Brothers - see Love and Rockets or Jen Van Meter and Christine Norrie - see Hopeless Savages.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DLTpg17.jpg"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DLTpg17_t.jpg" width="175" height="270" align="left" border="0" alt="page 17"></a>”Then shortly thereafter, A&E ran a week's worth of Biography episodes starring some of the same people I read about: Dionne Warwick, Bobby Darin, Burt Bacharach, and when I told my dad about it he got pretty excited and asked me to tape the shows. Math was always my weakest subject, but I could always put two and two together. So…Days Like This is about a fictitious '60s girl group, loosely based on the Shirelles, the quintessential girl group whose influence we're seeing to this day in pop music. I've had a lot of fun researching the era and working out my plot, and I think it'll be a swell story for people who like slice-of-slice stories, period pieces and comics with a musical flavor.”
Historically, comic book stories involving music have had tough goes at fully bringing the world of music together with words and static art (and no soundtrack – envision lyrics in the air above characters’ heads with an odd musical note floating by…). Torres explained that he’s bee fully aware of this particular hurdle from the beginning of the project.
“We've all seen comic books with ‘soundtracks’ or stories depicting musicians playing instruments or have read lyrics coming out of singers' mouths,” Torres said. “All that stuff depends on the reader's musical knowledge, but what if they don't recognize the lyrics or know the song? Usually, it's not so crucial to the story, but in the case of a comic about music… I think it could really add to the reader's enjoyment if they know the music being referenced, or it could even frustrate the reader if they don't ‘hear’ the song in their head, make them think they're missing or not getting something. So, what I'm thinking of doing is totally leave real song titles/refs and any kind of lyrics out of the dialogue/captions. And just have musical notes in the balloons and floating in the air. That way, the reader dictates what they ‘hear.’ Not me. I don't know, maybe I'm over-thinking this. But anyway, that's the plan.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg20.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg20_t.JPG" width="175" height="270" align="right" border="0" alt="page 20"></a>For Torres, Days is the latest in his continuing collaboration with Oni, something he still credits to alcohol and Spider-Man. “About three years ago at the San Diego comic convention, I got Oni editor-in-chief Jamie Rich good and drunk,” Torres said. “Then with the help of one of the Image founders, who shall remain nameless, I took pictures of the guy who dressed up as Spider-Man at that year's show - you may remember him, the one with the saggy butt - doing unspeakable things to Jamie dressed up like Vampirella. The hardest part was keeping the wig on Jamie. Getting the Vampirella model out of her costume was like taking candy from a baby with implants, though. Anyway, Jamie had such a good time, he asked me to pitch some ideas to a friend of his at Dark Horse. When that guy turned me down, I threatened to develop the film and got some publishing contracts out of Oni. Oni is a good publisher for me because Jamie Rich cares too much about his rep and will publish my comics to keep his bad boy image. Oh, and James Lucas Jones rocks. Joe's cool, too. He signs the checks.”
In addition to the comics, Days Like This will contain supplemental material written by Rich about the climate of pop music that inspired this project. The OGN runs 80 pages, black-and-white, and retails for $8.95.
Click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the pages…
<center> <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg21.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg21_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 21" hspace="2"></a><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg22.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg22_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 22" hspace="2"></a></center>
<center><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg23.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg23_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 23" hspace="2"></a><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg24.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg24_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 24" hspace="2"></a></center>
According to the publisher, Days Like This is set circa 1962, and revolves around Harmony Plaza, a buzzing factory for pop music. Hits for bands all across the world are written there, and teenage heartthrobs like Dana Darling and Robbie Mann got their start in those musical hallways. So did Anna Solomon, now ex-wife of music mogul Abe Solomon. Anna is taking her divorce settlement and starting her own music label. Her first signing comes when she discovers Christina James and her two friends singing at their high school talent show—and Tina and the Tiaras are born.
Illustrated by Scott Chantler, the project came to life (according to Oni EiC Jamie Rich, although see below for Torres version of events) after some freewheeling by Torres. “I remember it was a Friday night, and my e-mail dinged,” Rich said. “It was J. Torres. He had been toying around with some ideas and had written up some entries for an imagined music encyclopedia. He thought he’d send it to me, as it was right up my alley. The attached documents had biographies of Anna Solomon, songwriter Karen Prince, the Tiaras, and all the various periphery characters. J. had already put his world together, and his instincts were right—I was instantly hooked.”
As for the inspiration, Torres quckly points to his father, who passed away in 2002. “It all began with my dad who I thank for instilling in me a love of all kinds of music,” Torres said in an earlier chat with Newsarama. “Comics as well. I've always wanted to write a comic book that I thought he would dig. He was a fan of Mike Grell's Jon Sable, Freelance so at one point I thought I'd attempt something in that vein. But one day while reading about the legendary Brill Building and all the famous people who worked there, it hit me that some of their stories would translate well in the comic book medium. In my head, I even saw those comics drawn by people like Mike Allred - see Red Rocket 7 or the Hernandez Brothers - see Love and Rockets or Jen Van Meter and Christine Norrie - see Hopeless Savages.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DLTpg17.jpg"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DLTpg17_t.jpg" width="175" height="270" align="left" border="0" alt="page 17"></a>”Then shortly thereafter, A&E ran a week's worth of Biography episodes starring some of the same people I read about: Dionne Warwick, Bobby Darin, Burt Bacharach, and when I told my dad about it he got pretty excited and asked me to tape the shows. Math was always my weakest subject, but I could always put two and two together. So…Days Like This is about a fictitious '60s girl group, loosely based on the Shirelles, the quintessential girl group whose influence we're seeing to this day in pop music. I've had a lot of fun researching the era and working out my plot, and I think it'll be a swell story for people who like slice-of-slice stories, period pieces and comics with a musical flavor.”
Historically, comic book stories involving music have had tough goes at fully bringing the world of music together with words and static art (and no soundtrack – envision lyrics in the air above characters’ heads with an odd musical note floating by…). Torres explained that he’s bee fully aware of this particular hurdle from the beginning of the project.
“We've all seen comic books with ‘soundtracks’ or stories depicting musicians playing instruments or have read lyrics coming out of singers' mouths,” Torres said. “All that stuff depends on the reader's musical knowledge, but what if they don't recognize the lyrics or know the song? Usually, it's not so crucial to the story, but in the case of a comic about music… I think it could really add to the reader's enjoyment if they know the music being referenced, or it could even frustrate the reader if they don't ‘hear’ the song in their head, make them think they're missing or not getting something. So, what I'm thinking of doing is totally leave real song titles/refs and any kind of lyrics out of the dialogue/captions. And just have musical notes in the balloons and floating in the air. That way, the reader dictates what they ‘hear.’ Not me. I don't know, maybe I'm over-thinking this. But anyway, that's the plan.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg20.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg20_t.JPG" width="175" height="270" align="right" border="0" alt="page 20"></a>For Torres, Days is the latest in his continuing collaboration with Oni, something he still credits to alcohol and Spider-Man. “About three years ago at the San Diego comic convention, I got Oni editor-in-chief Jamie Rich good and drunk,” Torres said. “Then with the help of one of the Image founders, who shall remain nameless, I took pictures of the guy who dressed up as Spider-Man at that year's show - you may remember him, the one with the saggy butt - doing unspeakable things to Jamie dressed up like Vampirella. The hardest part was keeping the wig on Jamie. Getting the Vampirella model out of her costume was like taking candy from a baby with implants, though. Anyway, Jamie had such a good time, he asked me to pitch some ideas to a friend of his at Dark Horse. When that guy turned me down, I threatened to develop the film and got some publishing contracts out of Oni. Oni is a good publisher for me because Jamie Rich cares too much about his rep and will publish my comics to keep his bad boy image. Oh, and James Lucas Jones rocks. Joe's cool, too. He signs the checks.”
In addition to the comics, Days Like This will contain supplemental material written by Rich about the climate of pop music that inspired this project. The OGN runs 80 pages, black-and-white, and retails for $8.95.
Click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the pages…
<center> <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg21.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg21_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 21" hspace="2"></a><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg22.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg22_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 22" hspace="2"></a></center>
<center><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg23.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg23_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 23" hspace="2"></a><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg24.JPG"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Oni/DaysLikeThis1_pg24_t.JPG" width="140" height="215" border="0" alt="page 24" hspace="2"></a></center>