Welcome to The Emerald City (Part 2 of 2)

Now to give you a quick set up of these next few pages; as we saw in the first set the detectives and Officer McMillan have just started their investigation. We left off with Detective Head giving Detective Yamamoto his feelings about Officer McMillan. Officer McMillan was unfortunate enough to catch a piece of Head’s editorial as he hustled up the tapes from the SPD parking garage. This natural lead to a very uncomfortable situation, but there still is a murder to solve and the investigation must go on.

As McMillan explained in the last page of the last set, he got the boys to edit the tapes into one continuous feed. Now our detectives get to sit down and see the grisly murder that happened hours before in their own parking garage.

We are pleased to show you this preview of book 1. Please write us some comments and tell your thoughts, the feedback means so much to us.

-Kevin M. Jones

Welcome to The Emerald City (Part 1 of 2 cont.)

I am pretty excited we got these pages worded and up here for you guys to take a look at! This book/dream is something Kevin and I have worked so long and hard to create. Even though we had so much going on in our lives we have always worked on the book and kept grindin. This is the next best thing to having a printed copy in my hands. Seeing the pages worded and the book nearly complete is hella exciting. I am pretty proud of both of us, and I am proud to be able to present to ya’ll to read, I think you’ll dig it.

The pages you see up here are kinda experimental in the wording, but we wanted to get them up. So if ya want to comment on them that would really be cool. Other than that we just kinda want to put em out there, have ya’ll take a look, and hear what ya think.

So I am back to the board to finish up pencils and inks on the third book. As you fellow artists know it takes a buttload of time to get a page turned out. So enjoy these pages and I look forward to hearing about what ya think of the story, the art, and the wording. We will put the next series up after the first 3 pages had time to marinate, then we will say some things about the scenes after hearing what ya ‘ll think. As always, thanks a lot for visiting and reading. We really appreciate it.

Jason

Welcome to The Emerald City (Part 1 of 2)

Here is the first set of pages that we promised! We are quite excited to present these pages to you. We have done some tooling around with the fonts and the general presentation (read as: sitting around and cursing at our computers), but they are not entirely set in stone. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! From the blog all you need to do is click on the page to make it bigger. For a quick rundown on what content you will be seeing on these pages check out my last entry to the blog. So really it is our pleasure to give you the first worldwide glimpse of the Emerald City.

-Kevin M. Jones

Pages Coming Soon

But before we get these pages up; I thought I’d take the chance to kind of layout what you are going to be seeing from these pages. We are going to put up 6 pages in total in two sets of threes from issue 1. These pages are going to focus on the characters that we introduced earlier (check out their bios if you haven’t yet): Detective Ai Yamamoto, Detective Richard Head, and Officer McMillan.

Basically these six pages are what get our police involved with the main storyline. What you get to see in the first part is shadowy murder about to take place in the parking garage of the downtown Seattle Police Department. Following that you will get to see homicide detectives starting their investigation of the bizarre and grisly murder.

The detectives quickly discover that this is not your usual murder case as they are sifting through the evidence. What they keep coming up with seems to be impossible. One person manhandled their way into the police parking garage and proceeded to murder a police officer with their bare hands. Something about the evidence tickles the brain of veteran police officer McMillan. He predicts that this is just the very beginning of something really bad; something he has already been through once.

A few of my personal thoughts on why we decided on these pages out of 30 page comic:

For myself I thought these pages were important to show not only because the police play such a big role throughout the story, but because they are one of the few mundane characters in the story. We have a few more “everyday Joes” who play pretty big roles in the story, but none as big as the police. I really like this aspect of writing for them because they are finding stuff that is really abnormal and really frightening. It is true that they are homicide police and have seen some really bad stuff, but as the story goes on you get to see how the “normal” people react to and handle these situations. Also I love the art in these scenes it makes me so happy to see some of my ideas ripped from my mind and put on paper without a misstep. Everything to how the characters interact with each other has been captured beautifully by Jason. Speaking of which, these scenes also really show off the working relationships and personalities of our police officers. The first set should be up here shortly; sadly regular life has slowed us down a bit, but they are coming real soon. Thanks!

-Kevin M. Jones

Rest In Peace Robert Jordan

I know that this is a comic blog about a comic book that Jason and I have been making, but today one of my real life heroes passed away. I have always been interested in being creative, but never really knew which direction to channel my creativity to. I started reading the Wheel of Time series when I was 14 years old. Before that I had hardly touched a fantasy novel, and because of my “troubled youth” reading wasn’t high on my priority list. But his series pulled me in, and I can really say was something that kept me from falling all the way into the abyss. He made that much of an impact on me and I never met him. His writing style was exciting, and dynamic; something I do my best to emulate within my own writings. In our series we use a number of characters to tell a story, something I really got from Robert Jordan’s writing style. I wish I could have told him in my own words how much his writing meant to me and millions of other people. Today I felt like I lost a childhood friend and mentor.

I would like to extend my condolences to his family and close friends.

Thank you for everything

Rest in peace

-Kevin M. Jones

The Art of Kurt McMillan

I remember when Kevin first brought me his idea of McMillan and told me about him and what he was thinking. At first this character idea of someone like Ving Rhames popped into my head. I did up some drawings but it didn’t fit at all. We talked more and McMillan’s Irish roots really accentuated his character and personality. After Kevin ripped up the rejected cop’s character and power bombed me I stared seeing things his way｡｡｡ and things seemed to write themselves. McMillan’s’ character was pretty unchanging. After that power bomb incident, the drawings of McMillan and his personality stayed pretty much the same. He has become one of my favorite characters both to read and to draw. He’s a bad MoFo. Why he isn’t always a major character and is often pushed outta scenes by a certain officer, we’ll call him Head, he is very important to the police and their investigation in the city. Even Head knows that. Kevin does a great job with his character and his dialogue, and I want do his boy justice with the art.
What I like drawing about McMillan, ya know beside that whole being a bad ass with a bad temper thing, is that he not a hero type character. He is always doing is job, his police work behind the scenes, not aspiring to be a lead detective or some glory cop. He has been in Seattle for along time and has seen things that others couldn’t begin to fathom, yet that doesn’t hang off his neck like some special medal or trophy. He has nothing to prove to anybody yet it seems everyone wants to learn from him….if it wasn’t for that reputation of his. So when drawing him it’s a bit different because he is this cop who is this fantastic character- yet I have to draw him buried into the background to make room for lesser characters who think they are important. That is challenging for sure. Besides that, McMillan is a cool looking dude and I like drawing his temper, his reactions with people he respects and those he doesn’t much or not at all. And like Kevin said before, McMillan fits in perfectly with the other two detectives, Ai, and Head.
I really enjoy reading their story and of course drawing them, so I hope you will as well. We will be putting up an actual scene from the first book focused on these three characters so that you can get a chance to form your own opinion, and hopefully tell us what ya think! Thanks a lot for being on our site and revisiting.
Jason

Reflection on Head

Richard Head is a pretty cool character to draw, because it gives me a chance to work on his smug facial expressions and his sometimes childish body language, but at the same time drawing him as an overall confident and intelligent man in his actions. Richard Head’s original drawings aren’t too much different to what he has become today. He went through some massive overhauls in his character. I think Kevin said in his earlier post that originally, Head was supposed to be this jerk, but that’s changed, and one of those major changes is that I wanted to add this sort of uniqueness to his face that portrayed his now cunning personality and ability. I didn’t want him to be that TV pretty boy cop…cause he ain’t -but he is a veteran and he is hard, and I want his face to reflect the times he has seen(see his bio), hence that mugging look he’s always sporting.
What also is interesting is drawing the interactions with him, and the other cops (Ai, and McMillian). It’s a lot of fun and very challenging to draw his traits. Kevin has done a great job in creating these different personalities through his writing, and the interactions change depending on the situation and/or when talking with different characters. So I wanted to capture it with the art. Trying to bring out the tension, or trust or whatever happens to be going on in the scene or with whom. With the police a lot of time might be spent in discussing the crime scene or trying to figure out what the hell is actually happening in this city, and its crucial to draw to fit this dialogue, and present it in a way that’s both, of course, compatible with the scene and character personality, but also to create an incredibly interesting panel to look at. It might not be an action scene, fight scene , or one of those scenes where everybody is standin’ around flexing in ridiculous poses talking about fighting。。。。 I want to present this dynamic activity that pulls the reader into the story, because you never know when there might be clues or crucial scenes that let the reader join in the police story, and help to give each reader a different take on what is indeed happening. Sorry but we wants to make ya’ll think! Hell, that’s important in any great story, or movie, and I think comic books need to recapture that once again. These cops are great tools in that sense. Shit, their characters aren’t perfect, but like with officer Head here you can see they are true to who they are. Richard Head gives a cool perspective to the story, and while being a bastard he really works well with Ai’s style of police work.
Jason

Last But Not Least McMillan

There is something about a tough Irish street cop that just feels right. Being Irish from my mother’s side of the family (everyone laughs when I say that like I am telling a joke.) I just feel a special bond with this character. During the creation of our characters we have bounced names and ethnicity off of each other, but Kurt McMillan was one of the few characters that I had clearly envisioned from the very start of it all.

I like McMillan because he is a tough cop; all of the greatest fictional cops are tough bad-asses. You have Inspector Yuen (Tequila) from Hard Boiled the movie, Bud White from LA Confidential, Alonzo from Training Day, William 'Billy' Costigan Jr from the Departed, and the list goes on and on really. Most of the tough cops are not slick, one-liner type of guys; they just kick booty. But on the flipside that doesn’t mean they have an IQ of double digits. McMillan is unique to write for because he likes his station in life, he has no motive to move up; just he lives for grunt police work. He is a guy who believes in doing things right as well. He has high morals for innocence bystanders, but once you enter the war of the streets his morals change. Looking at him in relation with our other two officers of the law it makes for wonderful blend of dialogue and perspective.

We wanted to give you a taste of our police force in Emerald City because the story starts with them. And now that you have read all of these boring, long-winded words of mine we are going to get into the good stuff, actual pages with our police in action. Thanks for checking out our characters and check back shortly for some pages! (more rambling from me included!)

-Kevin M. Jones

Kurt McMillan

Name: Kurt Matthew McMillan
Birth date: 05/14/1970
Age at the start of the series: 36
Place of Birth: Dorchester, Massachusetts USA
Height: 6’4”
Weight: 223 Lbs


Profile:

Born in the rougher neighborhoods of Dorchester, Kurt considered fist fighting a regular part of life. Kurt’s father, a member of the notorious “Winter Hill Gang”, was murdered by a hit squad from the Patriarca crime family. Kurt’s mother took over the duties of both the father and the mother; refusing to accept help from members of her late husband’s organization for fear that they might recruit her oldest son. From that point on Kurt tried his hardest to be a father figure for his younger brother, Christopher, and sister, Elizabeth. Kurt’s brother took the absence of his father quite roughly and dropped out of high school, but avoided going down the career path their father had chosen; instead Christopher McMillan chased his dream of becoming a professional boxer. Of course their mother wasn’t happy she had wanted all of her children to go college and escape the Irish ghettos of Boston, so Kurt felt it was his duty to his mother to attend college, which he did at Boston College on a football scholarship. Kurt never had much interest in academics but he was a competent student. He found his calling at a Boston Police recruitment drive and knew he was going to be a police officer. However, he knew that doing so in his hometown would lead to trouble do to his father’s former lifestyle so he looked for openings as far away from home as he could; he found his opening in the SPD.

McMillan is cut from a different cloth then the modern police officer; his superiors often describe him as a “throwback” police officer. Starting his campaign with the SPD Kurt was befriended by another hard-boiled officer of the law, the now retired Detective Ezra Drake. While Drake was known for having my tact than McMillan has shown with his time on the force, many of his cases have indeed ended with one vs. many firefights. Being taken under Drake’s wing hasn’t always been easy for Kurt, because Drake was successful on so many levels while Kurt doesn’t have any aspirations of glory.
Kurt has earned the respect of his fellow beat officers with his attitude towards doing the job, and for the fact that he will resort to old-fashioned head busting when he feels it is necessary. In his time with the SPD Kurt has served 16 suspensions for excessive force, but it still highly regarded for his efforts from his fellow beat officers all the way to the chief of police.

Hobbies and Habits:

McMillan is a very capable cook, and enjoys cooking as a way to escape from the pressures of work. He is also a huge fan of Noir fiction, which he reads almost daily. McMillan is famous throughout the SPD for his temper and for his inability to mask his feelings; he is known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve.

Behind Richard Head

The character Richard Head is basically the childhood friend you had who is extremely smart and can be a good person but is pretty much a jerk. He by no means is a villain just a bit selfish and wants to climb the promotion ladder so badly that he tends to step on people to get up that ladder. But with that said I feel he isn’t bad person, just self-centered, and at times jealous of other people. He does believe in police work and is believes he is doing the right things; most the times.

One thing I wanted to do with him throughout the series as a writer is not to fall into that classic sitcom type of character who is a jackass and is very stupid. Richard Head is very bright and knows what he wants to do with his life. He just needs to manufacture a way to get there.

Throughout the process of the creation of Emerald City, the police have stayed pretty steady in their characters. But while Ai has stayed pretty much the same in her role and character, Richard Head’s role has changed so much as he grew deeper as a character. Originally I just wanted a massive jerk just to cause friction with other characters, but as our world grew and our characters started becoming deeper I saw how much more a character like Richard could offer to the storyline. In reality we know people like him; somewhat elitist individuals who often look at the world through a narrow scope not because they really don’t know better but because it makes viewing the world easier.

Richard Head is a fun character to write for because he can say things that maybe I have wanted to say in certain situations. He is Ai’s partner and outside of having an almost natural talent for police work they are as different as night and day, and this also sets up a lot of interesting and funny dialogue opportunities. I hope that you will get a chance to enjoy reading Richard in action as much as I have enjoyed writing his dialogue.

-Kevin M. Jones

Richard Head

Name: Richard Nathan Head
Birth date: 11/30/1971
Age at the start of the series: 35
Place of Birth: Orange County, California, USA
Height: 6’1”
Weight: 181 Lbs

Profile:

When Richard Nathan Head was at the tender age of 7 he witnessed an armed robbery, and a homicide. While Richard and his family were not physically harmed in the incident, it stayed with Richard for his entire life and from about the age of 12 he made up his mind to join the police. Richard attended Cal-Berkley where he majored in psychology. On the day that he graduated he signed up to join the LAPD. He flourished in LA and become a detective at the age of 26. Richard discovered he had a passion for homicide and again prospered to the point where he was almost a living legend in the LAPD. However, a scandal that became the media’s favorite topic brought the golden boy back to earth. While investigating a murder he was caught tampering with a murder scene and after the Rodney King and OJ Simpson incidents the LAPD could ill afford to have another scandal, and to make matters worse the accused was a black male, something else the LAPD did not need in a scandal; race. The LAPD acted swiftly and harshly, sending Richard back to a black and white and sweeping his whole career under the carpet. After 2 lowly years of being a beat cop again, opportunity knocked on Richard’s door. The SPD needed veteran detectives to fill a number of vacancies within the homicide department. A former colleague decided to throw Richard’s name to the SPD, allowing him to return to the position he thrived in, as well as, allowing the LAPD to remember a “stain” from their department. Once in Seattle Richard again flourished, having learned a lot from his falling out in LA he is much more by the book, but is still known to “wing it” from time to time. Richard has 3 sisters and is the 2nd oldest of the 4 siblings. His family remains in California


Hobbies and habits:

Richard loves college football and follows the Pac-10 almost religiously. Even though he is a product of Cal-Berkley, he has adopted the Washington State Cougars as the team he follows. Richard is a social drinker, but the problem is he doesn’t hold his alcohol very well; making not a very good social drinker. Despite that he is quite skilled at climbing the “social ladder”, by talking and befriending the right people. Richard’s alcohol of choice is scotch; something he picked up when he was under to make himself appeared more cultured. Under pressure or when his ego is fed, he tends to rake his fingers through his hair.

Cover Concept

I wanted to add a note as well about this concept idea of the cover. One thing I always hated when I picked up a comic and it had this bad ass cover of two of my favorite characters in some epic battle, only to have to wait to the last page where they don’t even fight, nor is the idea continued in the next episode. WTF?
I want to create a cover that peeks interest and pulls you in, with out giving away the story or misleading you to believe that something unbelievable is going to alter your existence by buying this particular book..
Our idea here I think does just that. Here we have on an all white background this kid, who happens to be Kevin’s nephew, with black side walk chalk drawing up some hideous thing. It’s pretty intriguing, and hopefully eye-catching if immersed in a sea of beautifully colored comics within the racks of your neighborhood comic store.
And, like Kevin said, it would be cool to keep this pattern of Drew drawing these foreshadows into the comic you are about to read, while also showing off some quite cool Seattle backdrops.
Looking at the cover it looks pretty creepy with his little handprints smudging up the background, but it’s still missing the Seattle skyline. Seattle is such a critical aspect of the story we couldn’t possibly leave it out.
That’s about it for the cover thoughts. Looking forward to hear some of your ideas or comments, next we’ll be doing some more bios I think.
Till then,
Jason Sutherland

Emerald City Issue 1: Concept Cover

This is a concept cover for the fist issue of Emerald City. The character on the cover is named Drew Jones; he is a very special little boy and a character that I hold close to my heart because he is based off of my nephew from the time when he was 5 or so.

One concept we have been kicking around is trying to feature him on as many covers as we can, and if we can pull it off featuring him on all of our covers! One major thing that is missing from this cover is the cityscape of downtown Seattle, and the ever famous “Space Needle.” Another concept we want to have is famous places or landmarks of Seattle on all of our covers, since the story is about the city moreso than individual characters.

Both of us love this cover and the idea of having a kid drawing some of the main plot points of each issue as an ongoing theme for our covers. But we know the story already, so what we hope to get is some feedback from you reading our blog. So let us know what you think about any of the stuff you see here; we can’t wait to read what you are thinking.

-Kevin

An artist tries to write....

Being a fan of comics as a child I was really influenced by them. I always loved drawing, and I always wanted to draw comics. Of course, like most kids I found escape in characters like spider-man, and batman, and so on. For whatever reason, I just fell out of interest in reading them, but never gave up wanting to create them. I became interested in stories that were non main stream comic super hero type, I found interests in stories that told tales of history, and stories of bizarre nature. I stopped collecting comics perhaps due to lack of interest in the stories but never the characters or the superheroes themselves.
I moved to Seattle from NY and went to UW. I met Kevin in Seattle, and after meeting we totally vibed. We created a massive world based on our similar interests in comics, history, and stories of a different nature. Seattle is an amazing city, and a perfect place for this story. Seattle has this sort of electric energy to it, similar to that moment right before a major thunderstorm. There is this foreboding feeling that seems to be this raw undercurrent running through the city, and the rain creates and atmosphere of supernatural presence.
Drawing the characters and the scenes in the book I tried to capture this feeling of Seattle in the art. I am hoping that readers will feel this when looking at the art and the characters in the city. Kevin has done a great job with the dialogue and I am hoping to do just as well with the art. We both think that we have put together a pretty magical story, and are sure many people will enjoy it.
Well, I just wanted to give a little shout out, thanks for taking the time to read this.
Jason Sutherland

Ai Yamamoto

Name: Ai Yamamoto

Birth date: 02/18/1979

Age at the start of the series: 27

Place of Birth: Kamakura, Japan

Height: 5’ 7”

Weight: 109 Lbs

Profile:

While born in Japan Ai became a US citizen when she was 11 years old. Ai’s parents moved to the United States when she was still a toddler, because her father was offered a high-paying, high profile position with very big video game company that was based in Japan but had opened its North American office in Washington State. Growing up in the states Ai’s parents thought it was of the utmost importance that she stayed in touch with her Japanese roots, so they enrolled her in a Japanese only school in Bellevue Washington for the weekends, where she learned Japanese and calligraphy. Throughout her schooling she was always in the top 10% of her classes, and that trend continued into college. Ai has always been interested in legal system and in high school she had aspirations of becoming a lawyer. Ai’s parents were delighted when she told them of her dreams and goals. After graduating high school Ai was accepted into the University of Washington where she stated to study towards law school. However during the last quarter of her sophomore year she found her true calling in life, when she decided to take a forensics’ class to help her understand the complete process of the law better. She was hooked, she knew that if she would go on to become a lawyer she would regret the decision for the rest of her life. She wanted to be a homicide detective, she wouldn’t settle on anything less. Her father took the sudden career change very poorly, but her mother gave Ai her full support. After passing exams and going through basic training, she applied to become a detective as soon as the ink dried on her diploma. To her surprise she was accepted based on her high academics scores and her college education. However, she wasn’t on homicide yet, she was placed on robbery. After breaking a number of hard cases her opportunity to work homicide presented itself, and she jumped at the chance. Ai is the youngest homicide detective in SPD history, as well as, the first Japanese woman.

Hobbies and Habits:

Ai enjoys reading; eating out, movies and going to the shooting range (She is a remarkable markswoman with handguns). When under pressure from work she tends to drink Japanese rice sake and work at home even when she is “off”. When she is on the job she sometimes toys with a small jade Buddha that her mother gave her when she decided to become a detective.

Character Profiles

The first character I want to introduce is the young police detective Ms. Ai Yamamoto. It has been a long process in making this series and world, and a lot of characters have undergone massive changes in attitudes and roles within the story. But the smart and tough Ms. Yamamoto has pretty much stayed the same throughout the entire journey that we went through to make a final product. So for me as the writer I see her as kind of the rock, or an anchor of sorts. As we started fleshing out the story and the characters we had to have a ton of sit-down meetings (usually including chicken-wings and beer), and some of the characters were shifted around so much that looking back on some of the old ideas, just seem so silly. But Ai stayed the same, she represented the vision we had in the beginning and the vision we came up with in the end. I have been writing up short character profiles, and I finally get a chance to show them off to people. So enough of this reminiscing, without further ado, I introduce to you: Ai Yamamoto.

-Kevin M. Jones

About Emerald City

Thanks for checking out our blog! This is a blog about our comic called “The Emerald City”, named after my hometown Seattle. We want to get feedback on our finished books as we shop for publishers.

A little about our book:

While we really can’t give away too much about the storyline of our book and our world, since this is the opening chapter for the readers to this world we created and so many things play out in the story that we don’t want to ruin the reading experience by giving it all away on a little blog! One thing that needs to be said about this series is there really isn’t a main character, per se. The series is about the events that happen in Seattle in this world, so all of the characters are important; it isn’t just about one person, or a group of heroes. Also, for the characters during this series we hope that the readers can see their growth as they learn about them.

One of the questions we are always asked by people when we talk about or show our book off is “What kind of comic is it?” which happens to be a very hard question to answer. It isn’t a true “super-hero” comic, but it is safe to say that it does have some elements of that genre in it. The book focuses on some police detectives in the opening issues so that in turn reads a little like a “police drama” which it also has in it. So it is really hard to say what exactly our comic is! All that we can say is we think there is nothing really like it.

Once we get that first question out of the way, people usually latch on to “super-hero” concept and ask about it. “What kind of powers or people are there in your comic?” This question we could answer easily but it would ruin discovering it by reading the book. I will say this, there is magic in the world that we created and it runs strong in Seattle. But there is much more to Emerald City than just that.

And about this blog; we are going to use this blog to introduce characters, and the storyline to anybody interested in looking over our work. We do hope you enjoy it. Also Jason or I will update the blog with thoughts about working on the comic and sort of “development blog” or “directors comments” about certain scenes or themes within our comic.

Finally, “who does what?” Jason Sutherland is the artist, he handles pencils, and he inks. Kevin M. Jones (that’s me) handles most of the plotlines and all of the dialogue.

Thanks for taking the time to read and check back shortly for some updates.

-Kevin M. Jones