Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dc, paris, punk rock Jesus, sean murphy, vertigo

The French Punk Rock Jesus To Be Ten Pages Extra, And In Hardcover

Published Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:00:25 -0600

Last updated Sat, 17 Nov 2012 17:21:30 -0600

Punk Rock Jesus is concluding next month by Sean Murphy for DC Vertigo. A thirty-two page comic book that actually was a thirty-two page comic book, the six issue collection will be larger than most ten issue collections these days. But that's just not enough for the French market.

At the Paris Comics Expo recently, author Sean spoke about how the French edition would have ten extra pages to allow the story to breathe more in certain places, and it would also be in hardcover…

UPDATE: Sean Murphy lays out what is actually happening…

Just thought I'd comment on a few rumors I've been seeing about the Punk Rock Jesus trade and what it'll include. The fact is that we haven't yet decided what the trade will include as far as extras, and we don't know if it'll be a hardcover. Nor has our French publisher officially agreed to produce it in Europe.

One idea I had was adding extra pages to help the story breath a bit more–make it a "director's cut". As I've mentioned elsewhere, Punk Rock Jesus was cut down a lot for the periodicals. Why? When it was approved, we didn't know how well it was going to be received by readers, nor did we know that the sales would rise like they have. I was an untested writer and PRJ dealt with touchy subject matter, so cutting my 200 page OGN down to 6 issues was the safe move for DC. I'd love to have had more, but as a businessman I understood DC completely and was thrilled to be getting it publisher, period. If we knew that PRJ would be doing as well as it has, then of course we would have made the series longer. But that's all 20/20.

I'm extremely proud of Punk Rock Jesus but I DON'T think it's the best writing I can do–it's the best I can do given that I had to squeeze a huge plot into 6 issues. Sometimes I think I should have cut out Thomas' IRA back story to make more room for the main plot, but then it would have lost the strange juxtaposition between Chris and Thomas that makes PRJ such an unusual read.

In the end I decided to let it be fast, loud, abrupt, imperfect, jarring, and short–like how punk rock music is.

And please don't think that adding extras is a "money grab"–all trades have extras these days. I'm just pushing to use mine to improve the story rather than show sketches and doodles.

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