Posted in: Comics | Tagged: action lab, Comics, danger zone, kickstarter, Mark Bertolini, Scum Of The Earth

Where Scum Came From, And The Journey It Took To Get Here

Published Sun, 29 Sep 2013 08:00:35 -0500

Mark Bertolini writes for Bleeding Cool:

Scum of the Earth

My name is Mark Bertolini, and I'm a comic book writer. I have several published books to my name, including an ongoing supervillain series called Breakneck from 215 Ink (http://www.215ink.com/catalog/) and an original graphic novel called Long Gone published by AAM Markosia (http://www.markosia.com/titles/long-gone/).

This October I will have my highest profile release to date, the 3-issue miniseries Scum of the Earth coming out of Action Lab's Danger Zone mature readers imprint.

http://www.actionlabcomics.com/action-lab-extends-line-with-new-digital-first-books/

I'd like to talk a little bit about where Scum came from, and the journey it took to get us here.

Scum of the Earth came about in a couple of ways. The first was a random post on Facebook about a tagline for a comic I developed waaaay back in high school called the Corpse Corps. You see how clever I am? Playing on the fact that a lot of people don't know that 'corps' is pronounced 'core'. Corpse Corps. It was a bunch of undead zombie-ish characters (and this was at least 10-15 years before the current zombie craze hit). The idea never developed beyond an initial drawing of a bunch of zombified, rotting characters and the tag line "Life's a bitch, but death is a bastard."

So one day, at random, that tag line came back into my head and I posted it on Facebook. Just because. And then something happened.

My buddy Rolf Lejdegård is a comic book madman. He's a friggin' walking comic book idea machine. The guy has more comic ideas before breakfast than most people have in their lives. I suspect ancient rituals involving the killing of goats and massive amounts of coffee are involved…

But anyway, I put that uber clever tag line up and promptly forgot about it. It was just a thing to post, you know? So I post it…and in comes Rolf with the world's biggest literary hand grenade…and he hands me this:

"Meet Laura Bitch and True Bastard – two bourbon toasted gunslingers caught between hardcore scores and soul depraved rehab! Dirty, violent and simple, or so it seems…but who is the alien hitman and why is he after the mysterious markings on the insides of Laura's heart?"

Yeah, I know, right? He totally blew up my idea (which, to be honest, wasn't much of an idea) and replaced it with the genius idea of a modern day Bonnie and Clyde kind of story. I immediately knew I had to write this. I had to.

So I did. I developed the story over a day or two (everything was burning a big fat hole in my brain, I couldn't rest), and started scripting. I decided early on to make this a graphic novella of fifty pages or so. And I wrote those fifty pages in one intense six-hour writing session. I came out of it with a pounding headache and I wanted to puke, but I had the story done. Fifty pages. I did my second pass a couple days later, fixed a few things, and then just like that, it was done.

The second thing that happened with this is that I started looking for an artist, and got a message on Facebook from an artist named Rob Croonenborghs. Rob has previously illustrated the 215 Ink book "Jesus Hates Zombies: A Jurassic Kinda Life", and he actually told me he was a fan and had me at the top of his list of writers to work with. I don't think I've ever been at the top of anyone's list for anything! I presented the idea to him, and he took it and ran.

And fucking ran. He started sending me sketches, character designs, and thumbs for the first batch of pages. As a 50-page book, he broke it down into 10-page chunks to work on. I was stunned when I saw the first pages start to come together. Rob has an incredibly original style that continues to blow me away. It was gritty and dusty and sun-baked and felt like the desert. It was everything I wanted. Rob's a machine. He pencils, inks, colors, and letters Scum of the Earth. He nailed the character designs, made these characters feel like real people.

The story actually started out with the title Laura Bitch and the True Bastard, but once we had a good bunch of pages ready and started submitting them, we got a bit of negative feedback on the title. Which made sense, I think. We weren't trying to be insulting at all, it was just the names of the characters, but Rob and I decided to make a change to the title, so it became Scum of the Earth. Actually, the title is "Laura and True in Scum of the Earth". It felt like a good title, as this was like an old grindhouse movie turned into words and pictures on pages.

We worked on Scum for a long time, and Rob went over his pages and perfected things and changed things and we suddenly had a fantastic looking package…but what now?

I'll tell you what now – it was right around that time that Action Lab comics announced the creation of the Danger Zone, their mature readers imprint. I figured it couldn't hurt to send Scum over to them. We'd had a few rejections on the book already, so one more wasn't going to hurt.

But there was no rejection. They really liked it! The Action Lab crew and I started to talk more and more about the book, and we eventually signed the deal that will be bring Scum of the Earth to life as part of the Danger Zone's second wave, a digital-first release. We had to make some changes to the book, as Action Lab wanted to release it as a 3-issue miniseries rather than the graphic novel I'd been envisioning. I brought in my friend and top notch freelance editor Steven Forbes to help me break the GN into 3 issues to fit with what Action Lab wanted. Breaking it up this way actually made the story even stronger; as I had to do some re-writes and add pieces to the story.

I'm incredibly psyched about the impending release of Scum of the Earth. It's a story that means a lot to me, it's a large piece of work in my fledgling career, and it represents what could maybe be a game-changer for that career. It's going to be my widest release, and I couldn't be happier that people will soon be able to read about the violent exploits of Laura Bitch and the True Bastard.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter @mark_bertolini, and check out my blog at http://markbertolini.wordpress.com/

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