Posted in: Comics | Tagged: birdland, Comics, kickstarter, shane gordon murphy

The Insanely Detailed Anthropomorphic Art Of Shane Matthew Murphy – And Birdland

Published Sat, 10 Aug 2013 16:00:42 -0500

Shane Matthew Murphy writes;

Hi, I'm Shane. I'm one of those 'creative types'. I like to draw. I've been doing it for as long as I can remember. The story my mother likes to tell is of my three year old self asking her to draw Spiderman, only to promptly 'correct' it for her once she had finished. I guess that means I've also been a control freak for a long as I can remember.

Art has long been a passion of mine, but until recently, one relegated to hobby status. Something I loved to do with the time that wasn't spent working in an unfulfilling job for the sole purpose of paying the bills. And like most creative people, most of that time was spent trying to figure out how I could make a living doing what I actually enjoyed! I never really thought art could be a career option. So I continued to work, while using my spare time sketching out incoherent story ideas that would never really amount to anything because I would never be able to compete them in order to actually share them with anyone. Birdland was a conscious decision to change all that.

Instead of trying to reinvent the storytelling wheel writing obtuse, sprawling fantasy epics, I would write a clear story about a subject I was passionate about, using an established genre, and taking place in a familiar setting. This is how Birdland came to be. In short, it is a crime noir set in the Great Depression, inspired by golden age film, jazz and classical music history.

Music and film were obvious choices. I grew up obsessed with each, spending most of my youth forming bands and filming backyard movies. With this project I became increasingly interested in early jazz and classical composers, as well as the wonderful American and foreign films produced in the silent era and into the 1930's and 40's. I began to read about Louis Armstrong's unlikely journey from a poor boy sitting in for cornet in the early 1900's New Orleans 'slow drag' brothel bands, to his eventual move north into Chicago, New York and his status in 1925 as the "most respected player in Jazz." I was constantly watching and re-watching the great black and white films like Fritz Lang's Metropolis and M, Cagney's classic portrayal of a young criminal in The Public Enemy, Bogart's brooding Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, or Orson Welles in Citizen Cane. I tried absorbing every detail I could from the sets and the dialogue, the clothing the actors wore, even down to the shadows they cast on the walls.

I've spent the last several years reading and researching these and many more elements of this story such as the origins of Opera as the 16th century Italian's attempt at recreating Greek theatre, also the troubled history of the papacy and the fascinating power plays responsible for such incredulous stories as the infamous Cadaver Synod. The historical influences are too numerous to list and they will all come to play a part in the bigger story of Birdland.

Kickstarter has been an amazing experience, and a great way to release Birdland into the wild. It's been truly moving to see so much positive feedback. It's a great feeling to see a complete stranger connect with something you have put so much time and effort into. I feel very honored to have a funded project and am now hard at work at meeting the very cool stretch goal BIRDLAND IN TECHNICOLOR! A fully colored special edition of the comic, colored by the lovely artist Sarah Rene Straub.