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Gateway City – A Love Letter

Russell Mark Olson writes,

Back in 2008, I picked up sticks from the sultry September streets of St. Louis, Missouri and boarded a plane for England. It was probably the most romantic thing I've ever done. Romantic in several ways, top amongst the list was to be with my girlfriend, Emily, whom I had met the previous year while she was backpacking across America. It was also romantic in the adventurous sense of the word. It is romantic to leave the world of familiarity and enter into the mystery of the unknown. I was also pretty certain that it was going to be permanent, that I was leaving the city that I loved for the girl of my dreams. Soppy right? But romantic.

Flash forward to 2015, I had been running a weekly webcomic called Jors & Rust for some time, a buddy comedy starring super-condensed versions of myself and good friend, comedian Josh Arnold. I was having a good time with it, but I had been way too improvisational and was losing track of what the story was really about. So, I put it to bed for a while and started something new. Something that I kept mainly to myself. Absence makes the heart go fonder and all that, so I had been reading quite a bit about St. Louis and its history. Daniel Waugh's Egan's Rats captured my imagination in a way that I have only once or twice experienced. Move over Capone, get out of the way Dillinger, St. Louis was once home to the meanest rum runners and low-lifes this side of a Hammett novel. I began to tease out how I could bring these men and women of violent enterprise to life in comic format. I played around with ideas in a sketchbook for a few months before cracking the nut.

St. Louis is called the Gateway to the West, as it had been the main supply point for early settlers heading out to make their fortunes in the gold mines of California or become property owners on the Great Plains. For those unaware, the city has immortalized its past role in the settling of the west with a giant steel upside-down "U", the Gateway Arch. I imagined an alternate history and meaning for the arch, one more fantastic, and menacing. A portal to other worlds, to the universe beyond the mighty Mississippi. And so my mash-up of Sci-fi and Noir genres was born. Aliens had invaded the city during Prohibition. Boom.

I guess it's a case of write not only what you know, but what you love. I love noir, I love sci-fi. I love St. Louis, and history and architecture and playing fast and loose with what is real and what is daydream-fantasy.

I was about an issue and a half into the story when two major events took my focus: planning a wedding and renewing my permanent residence visa. Wedding went fine. Best day of my life. Two days after, I received a letter that my visa had been rejected. Hostility towards immigrants and all that.

Two weeks later, I was back in the States to reapply for my visa. The bureaucratic gods must be appeased. The application was re-submitted within a few days of being back in Missouri, but a new decision decided to drag its heels. I filled that time by having my ever-patient family cart me around the city so that I could take reference photos, visit the history museum and pick up local history books. I picked up with the comic, finishing issue three, when I realized that the story needed a bit more romance…and that the main characters needed to be tossed around a bit more, that they were really experiencing culture shock, bewilderment and loss.

So in 2016 I started over, I wrote a script for one issue with a frame for the first arc and plot points for the next arc. I also started sharing it. I self-published the first four issues and started hitting the con circuits, with my wife in tow. She discovered, somewhere in issue 2, a fondness for flatting. Comic making can be a real drain on a relationship. Unsociable hours, deadlines, spending holiday time going to conventions…it is uncompromising. But that's art. Art is romantic because it is beautiful and it hurts you and those who love you, and in order to make it all work, all interested parties have to realize that Comics is a lifestyle. For Emily and I, being able to work on the book together makes us both investors, we both have a share in the work and getting it out there.

Gateway City has become a love letter, to my shining city, to comics, to my family and to my wife. And I'm not asking for a date or anything creepy like that, but it's also a love letter to you, the readers. The first version of the story was just for me, but it lacked something, something like external emotional investment. But the story that is now in print was made for an audience. It was made for people who have known uncertainty, who have been beaten by and triumphed over adversity.

The collected first volume is currently live on Kickstarter. We were fortunate enough to get funded in just over a day, but I want to reach more readers. I want to share these characters and this city with more folks. Adventure is always better when it's shared.

If you decide to back the project, send me a message of "Bleeding Cool" after you've pledged and I'll mark you down for an exclusive bleeding Bumper Donati print.

—-

Gateway City Vol. 1 collects the first four issues of the comic and includes extra scenes, has been re-edited by John Freeman (Downthetubes.net, Doctor Who Magazine) and includes a foreword by Roy Thomas (former Marvel editor-in-chief).

Russell Mark Olson is a comic artist and writer living in Portsmouth, UK. He is currently working on the Cult Empire series Lady Hollywood.

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