Policy Police chronology

In between working on the new online episodes, I'm working through the older stand-alone episodes, remastering them in Manga Studio for print. It's a bit of a slog, but well worth the effort.

A whole bunch of things have occurred to me as I've been doing this. Unfortunately a lot of it is pretty pretentious. So it needs some more thinking about before I inflict it on the world.

However, here's something concrete that's come out of my thinking. I want to organise the stories in the next book in chronological order, according to Policy Police time.

Some episodes presume knowledge and events from others, other episodes contain clues as to the season, for example. Well, having thought about it, it seems to me that everything in the Policy Police world (at least as far as the stuff I've got planned until December 2011, our time) takes place within the space of one year.

So, here it is. Makes sense to me, anyway.

March – April 2025: Reaching the LEARNER
April 2025: Cutting a dash (the original)
April – May 2025: Up close and personalised
May 2025: Election special
May 2025: Going green
June 2025: Big Breakfast
July 2025: Surplus to requirements
September – October 2025: Return of the repossessed
January 2026: Pretty Vacant
February 2026: Cutting a Dash 2
February 2026: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED
March 2026: Anniversary Waltz

Nana and the tsunami

We're booked to go to Japan at Easter. So, as you can imagine, I'm following events there with great interest. If the Foreign Office changes its advice, we certainly intend to go.

I know it's a bit off of me, but there's a place in the back of my mind where I've been worrying about the fate of the characters in the manga 'Nana'.

Nana Osaki and most of the members of the two bands Blast and Trapnest hail from a coastal town in the northern part of Japan. Or at least a part where it regularly snows in March. So I feel it was certainly hit by this month's tsunami.

Nana will have just celebrated her 30th birthday and it's 10 years since she left for Tokyo to pursue her singing career. So there's a kind of excuse for them to be in their hometown about now.

I'm sure Ai Yazawa has thought of this as she recovers from her illness. That there is now an option where all the main characters are wiped out in a single catastrophe. I've got a catastrophic ending to Policy Police that I know I can fall back on if all else fails. A kind of nuclear option. But, as our leaders used to say in the cold war, the point of such an option is not using it.

The tsunami also offers other options. It is also a story of survival. That "life is about getting knocked down over and over, but still getting up each time," as Nana once said to Hachi. Losing things that were "always there" can focus our minds on them even more sharply. If Ren's warehouse apartment is destroyed, will it help Nana finally get over his death? If the Terashima Hotel is washed away, will it force Nobu to make an active decision about the family business? These events may even offer an opportunity for Takumi to redeem his past bad behaviour.

Just goes to show that despite the extended hiatus in the Nana story, and the vast amount of writing and drawing that would fill the gap until the present day, these comic-book characters live for me in a kind of parallel-universe Japan.

Policy Police: Return of the repossessed #2

At last the second episode. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Return of the Repossessed.

 

My computer died within days of me surrendering my work machine, but thanks to ebay I'm back up and running again. Was away all last week, too, so it was all a bit touch and go this month.

Policy Police Cards

I've fancied doing this for a little while now, and had thought about it a little recently. Then last weekend my son was at a chess tournament, so I designed these while I was waiting in the "Parent Pen". It was in a primary school, with little chairs. So you can understand how I suffer for my art.

The reverse says "Call the POLICY POLICE" along with the url for this site. I got them produced by moo.com - and I had them within the week. Maybe I should start leaving them in phone boxes... do people still use those?

Policy Police: Return of the repossessed #1

At last the next longer story begins. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Return of the Repossessed.

I suppose I've been thinking about this story for about a year now. It's changed direction several times in the face of a real world that has been in a state of flux. I've even changed the name over that time, but I've settled now on name#3.
There are 11 episodes scripted, so it should come to an end in December 2011.

As you can guess, the challenge was to come up with something that had the legs for the long haul in our turbulent world. I think it's up to the task. See what you think.

Where things are with Policy Police right now

I was talking to a friend the other night and mentioned that I'd got episodes scripted until December this year. It sounded a bit mad just saying it, so I dug them out and read them. To my relief I quite like them. They will be tweaked some as each episode gets drawn, but I'm happy with the overall direction of the story.

Which is good, because I'm thinking a lot about the drawing stage right now. I'm still working on drawing the first episode of the upcoming story, but it's nearly there. I've been learning about working with panels and pages in Manga Studio as I work towards the next Policy Police book... I've reworked one of the short stories into page format now, but I think the whole thing will take some time. As much because the 20-frame screen version has become a 29-panel, 6-page version for the book. 

Anyway. I'm guessing the first episode of new story will be posted within the week. Something to look forward to.

Bad Advice....

Instead of cracking on with the next episode, I've recently got distracted into a competition run by Mario Live whose little tutorials are teaching me how to use Manga Studio. So, to encourage him, and learn about using panels at the same time I did this little one-pager:

http://mario-live.com/blog/2011/01/drawing-contest-2-participant-3-steve-davies/

You can vote for me by hitting the Facebook like-button you'll find at that link.