Tag Archives: Sadomannequin

01Dec/20

Title Spotlight: SadoMannequin

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Title Spotlight: SadoMannequin

By Kurtis Fujita

Comic Books and Film. The two are complimentary artforms which focus on the craft of storytelling. There was a time when comic book adaptations of blockbuster films like “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” and “2001” were a dominant force in the industry of sequential art. However these days, it would seem that film adaptations of comic book properties have superseded their inverse counterparts. All one has to do is look at the multitude of films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to witness the skyrocketing popularity of this cinematic genre.

Yet another complimentary juxtaposition of film and comics is that of the short film and the one-shot comic book. Both tell a short self-contained story and are artforms that are more closely associated with independent artists than the corporate driven stories of feature length film and ongoing comic book series.

Enter “SadoMannequin” a lurid tale of horror, humor, and seduction. The story originally conceived as a short film by movie maker Jim Torres is adapted for the paneled page in a one-shot issue by the creative team of writer Roland Mann, penciller Kris Hsieh, inker Chuck Bordell, colorist Taco Silvera, and letterer Mike W. Belcher.

“SadoMannequin” begins on a late Alabama eve whose onyx sky is punctuated by the jagged luminescence of lightning bolts illuminating a raggedy looking warehouse. We are introduced to our hapless protagonist, the pudgy everyman named Peter. Peter is a new hire who receives instructions from his surly colleague just as the latter is leaving work for the evening. Peter is given what would seem is the most simple and easy of work tasks:

“Watch everything. Don’t touch anything.”

Easier said than done.

As the evening progresses, Peter can’t help himself and begins exploring the warehouse and eventually comes across a statuesque female mannequin garbed in the sultry latex attire of a Dominatrix. As the light of the moon cascades across the vixen’s curvaceous physique, Peter is surprised to see her come to life before his very eyes. It seems like a dream come true for our protagonist, until he realizes that this is more of a nightmare than anything else.

The “SadoMannequin” throttles Peter relentlessly with the stinging tendril of a vicious whip to an inch of his life. He has no choice but to preserve his life if not his dignity, by using the cold steel of a nearby pistol and the precise ballistic impact of a silver bullet. The bullet finds its mark square between the eyes of the seductive helion who is sent back to her infernal resting place.

Peter is safe now to follow the instructions he received earlier in the evening.

“Watch everything. Don’t touch anything.”

Easier said than done.

With the knowledge that by the light of the moon he might be able to transform another female facsimile into the living temptress of his dreams, Peter grabs yet another mannequin and places her in the moonlight. As he hoped, the pale rays of lunar light invigorate the lifeless figure into a living siren. She approaches him, grasping his collar with intensity, pulling him close to her. Peter’s lips purse together and his eyes close in anticipation of the forthcoming passionate kiss.

Suddenly, a crashing bolt of lightning interrupts the romantic interlude.

The next evening we find a similar scene as the introduction of our story. This time, a new employee, John, is taking over the same night shift as Peter. John begins his nightly duties looking after the various curiosities inhabiting the warehouse. Just as it appears that things are taking a turn for the mundane, John comes across the grisly deceased corpse of Peter.

The ethereal silhouette of the lethal seductress of night, “The Sadomannequin” approaches silently behind John like a coiled cobra ready to strike.

John doesn’t notice her stalking figure behind him. He only sees the haunting gaze of the deceased Peter, glaring out at him in a tragic, vacant stare.

John’s heart races and he realizes that he has only one task now.

“Escape.”

Easier said than done.

“SadoMannequin” is a fast paced romp which balances action, humor, seduction, and horror much in the same fashion as the Evil Dead film series by cinematic powerhouse Sam Raimi.

Readers will definitely find a lot to enjoy in this cautionary tale, but be warned…you’ll never look at a mannequin the same way again.

The talent:

  • Roland Mann– writer; Cat and Mouse writer and Silverline Head Honcho. He has been the driving force of Silverline as a publisher, including the current, successful relaunch of the brand!
  • Kris Hsieh– penciller; his only comic work. He became a lawyer!
  • Chuck Bordell–inker; one of Chuck’s many Silverline works!
  • Taco Silveira–colorist; “met” Roland online to do this work.
  • Mike W. Belcher–letterer; some of Mike’s first Silverline work.
  • Dave Roberts–cover art; Dave did a long run on Malibu’s Mantra, where Roland was his editor.
  • Shawn Murphy–cover colors.

Order SadoMannequin here: https://indyplanet.com/sadomannequin

19May/20

Craft: Roland Mann – Writing: Adapting “A Something” into a Comic.

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Hey there, Silverline readers and comic creators! I was able to get a hold of a very important person at Silverline, our Editor-In-Chief Roland Mann. Roland has a long and storied career in comics that you can read about in his Creator Page. He has also worked on many projects that involved adopting other mediums to comics.

With the world now familiar with comics being adapted into phenomenal blockbusters, I wanted to look at what that process looks like going the other way. Here, Roland talks about what is involved when a writer is asked to adapt something else into a comic. – Tim

Adapting “A Something” into a Comic.

If you had asked me when I first started writing if I would do so many adaptations, I’d have told you no, that I was only going to write original stories. Stuff I’d conceived in my own head. Yet, as I look back, I’ve done quite a few adaptations: Rocket Ranger (PC game), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (novel), Wizard of Oz (novel), Gladiator (novel; the comic was never published, but I did the work!), SadoMannequin (short film), The Remaining (feature film), and She-Devils on Wheels (B-movie)…more recently, my adaptation of Thumbelina. Then there are the works that seem to be adaptations, but are rather a “sandbox adaptation,” meaning I’m playing in the original sandbox, but I am writing original content. My Battletech and Planet of the Apes series fall into that category.

The first thing you have to consider when writing an adaptation is what exactly does the editor/publisher want. If they want an exact adaptation, that’s one thing. If you can take some creative liberties, that’s another.

Straight adaptation is a little easier, but not as creative. Adaptation with some creative liberties is what writers really want to do because—well, they get a little creative freedom.

When writing an adaptation, the first thing you have to figure out is what are the important parts? Generally, you can’t get every word of the original thing into the adaptation—so, what’s vital? And what can be cut? I like to take the original and write a summary of it. It’s not creative work, just take the thing… and write a detailed summary of it.

This is where I start looking at the scenes and make notes—“vital”, “important,” “be cool to have,” “if this is gone, no one will miss it.” Things like that. The next thing I do is examine the scenes and try to visualize how many comic pages that scene will need. Yes, it’s often guesswork, but you’re generally working with a set page number established by the editor/publisher. You know what you have to work with.

Then, I add all the pages up. If I have too many—which I always do, I look at the scenes marked “no one will miss” and start crossing through them. Generally, I keep a running tally so I know the page count. Sometimes, though, I’ll just remove all the non-essential scenes all in one swipe and then add it up. I’ll work my way down until I get to the page count desired by the editor/publisher.

My next step is to work on a page by page plot. The old Marvel method allows me to more accurately visualize what will actually happen on each page. Sometimes I find that I’ve allotted too many pages for a scene, or sometimes—more often than the other—I find that I haven’t allotted enough. But I’ll go ahead and do this for the entire story and see what the total page count is.

Once I’ve done the entire thing, I won’t go auto-delete things, but I’ll reexamine the scenes labeled as “be cool to have” and see if I can reduce the pages required. If they’re marked that way, it’s something that would be good to have, but maybe I shouldn’t devote so much space to it. In all honesty, this usually works for me to get it down to the required page count. If it doesn’t, though, I’ll go through those same scenes and try to determine which one(s) can be cut to make room. This has always gotten me there.

It’s still a lengthy process, but it’s a different one than creating a story from scratch. The main thing a writer should remember is that it’s your job to be true to the original, to capture the things from the original that fans love.

24Dec/19

Silverline: Review of Year 1

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Merry Christmas to one and all. As 2019 draws to a close, I thought I’d take a short peek back at the first year. Oddly, thinking about it reminds me of one of the very first “group” Silverline (phase 1) art pieces…30 years ago! Note the date on Steven’s art is 1988!

In June of 2018, I ran the kickstarter for Cat & Mouse #1 (vol 2). The creative team had such a blast doing it and we got to reminiscing about our old Malibu days and Silverline and such…well, they encouraged me to bring back Silverline—which was not my intent in doing Cat & Mouse again…I just wanted to make some comics and have some fun. Ultimately, I caved because they vowed help…

The Silverline Facebook page was launched in February. It now has 1370 people who like it and 1377 who follow it (so…I guess this means that 7 like but have unfollowed). Immediately, and much to my surprise, I started getting submissions and feelers for submissions. I told them all to wait until 2020 (all but one—more on that later) that I just wasn’t prepared for it.

The Silverline website launched on June 18. It wasn’t—and still isn’t—complete by any stretch of the imagination, but thanks to our IT support (and fantastic comic creator, too!) Jeff Whiting, we managed to put a pretty decent site together and have new content published regularly since then.

We worked with IndyPlanet to get a Silverline “store” online, and currently, these titles can be found for sale there: Cat & Mouse (v2) #1, Kayless #1, Tiny #1, Tiny #2, Tiny GN, Demon’s Tails classic GN, Switchblade classic GN, Krey classic GN, Sadomannequin one-shot, Jetstream #1. Soon to be added Cat & Mouse (v2) #2, SilverStorm (v2) classic GN, Switchblade GN.

Around that same time, we started a mailing list (email) because everyone said we should do it—so we did. Using mailchimp, we’ve got almost 400 lovely fans who have the website updates emailed to them. Eventually, we’ll do some mail list only stuff…but that’s down the road a bit…and we don’t want it to turn into “dreaded spam.”

In late June, we successfully crowdfunded Kayless #1 by Brent Larson, Luis Czerniawski, and Leandro Huergo. It was fully funded in less than 12 hours thanks to the support of many of you! (it was completely fulfilled by August, as an FYI…we need that known these days as so many crowdfunded titles are shipping late)

In September, we successfully crowdfunded Cat & Mouse #2. In doing so, we introduced upcoming superstar artist Alex Gallimore to the world! It fulfilled in late October and in November…

The Wellness Family Coloring Book, the first non-comic print publication by Silverline was also successfully crowdfunded, thanks to Silverline CEO, BJ Mann. It features art by Thomas Florimonte!

Silverline made the first official appearance at the Daytona Beach Comic Con! It was the largest gathering of Silverline at a show ever—in any phase (I think 5 was the previous record set, and that was done at Coast Con in the early 90s).

Also, at various points in time SINCE February, we dusted off a few formerly shelved projects:

  1. *Bloodline, 1 shot
  2. *White Devil II, 4 issue mini
  3. *Friar Rush, 3 issue mini

We also put into production:

  1. *Divinity, 4 issue mini
  2. *Twilight Grimm, 4 issue mini
  3. *Speck, OGN

We’ve sent out two additional publishing agreements: one to an indy writer I met on the con circuit, and one to a former student of mine. Once those are signed, we’ll add their projects to our growing list!

2019 was very busy for Silverline. Next week I’ll write about what 2020 has in store, including some of the projects mentioned above. Merry Christmas to you all!