As a test, I uploaded some old issues of Captain Kinetic and One Man Guy. Seems to work pretty well!

Just click the cover to start, then navigate by clicking the left and right-hand sides of the image itself to go forward and back.

Originally, the casting of the book was to follow the casting of the video version, but I decided to switch the lead and the “love interest” roles. But even in this early sketch where the lead was still white, you can see the basic facial features have carried over to the final design.

Below is a scene from issue two that might not end up in the finished product, due to pacing issues. Adapting the screenplay is a challenge for several reasons: things that work well on screen often don’t on the page (pick up any movie adaptation comic and you’ll see what I mean) and it’s a first script, so there are things I’m wanting to change as I go, to make it more interesting for the reader. Mike and Sheila spent a lot of time on the phone in the screenplay, and I want to move away from that a bit in the comic.

Want to see your interpretations of these characters here? I’m looking to collaborate with an artist on this series, so drop me a line if you think you’d be a good match.

zan (aka Charles Christensen) started reading comics in earnest after picking up a copy of Power Pack #14 at the local 7-Eleven in his hometown of Gaithersburg, Maryland when he was in junior high school. They don’t have comics at convenience stores anymore.

He gave up comics upon leaving Gaithersburg for The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991, and didn’t return to them until 1996, when he discovered that there was a small community online using the Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game system from the 80s for online roleplaying. After a few months of participating in online games, he started a project of reproducing the original rules in their entirety in digital format, and his website Heroplay has been serving the superhero roleplaying community in one incarnation or another for six years.

zan began working in comics upon meeting Mike Franzese, a co-worker at the advertising firm he worked for, and they began collaborating on the Captain Kinetic project, the first comics work for both. zan also became active in the group now known as Prism Comics, a queer comics industry advocacy project.

There is currently no regular artist on this project. If you have a distinctive style and you’d like to tell the story of these characters, contact Zan. Artist Lucius Romero provided the artwork on these pages and in the first issue preview.

Sheila is Mike’s best friend and has been for about two years, when they met at Mike’s current job. She had the common sense to get out while the gettin’ was good. Sheila is an artist who dreams of having her own gallery shows and won’t let anything stand in the way of her dreams. She’s getting increasingly irritated at Mike’s stagnant behavior.

Steve is the latest in a long line of attempts by Sheila to set Mike up with someone so he’ll stop being so pathetically cynical. This time, she knows she’s hit paydirt, because he’s a musician, he’s gorgeous (“But not too gorgeous”) and he seems like the kind of person who wouldn’t let Mike get away with any of his usual evasion bullshit.

One Man Guy got its start in the year 2000, when I started writing it as a screenplay. I was in a long-term relationship that I’d been abivalent about nearly from the start, and was trying to figure out what I wanted. I came up with a funny, sad story about a man trying to move on from a tough situation and spare himself grief, but ending up simply running in place. It wasn’t until I’d ended the relationship and gotten some distance from it that I realized I was psyching myself up to break up. One Man Guy is ultimately about moving on from a relationship that’s over, while still acknowledging the value of it, and getting on with your life.

At first I started writing it as a project I could submit to an agent or film studio, but the more I wrote, the more interested I was in trying to film the project myself. I’d done a bit of video and film work when I was in art school, and I’ve never been one to think twice before taking on difficult projects. This one was going to be a doozy.

After being laid off from my advertising job in late 2000, I buckled down and finished the screenplay (which weighed in at about 70 pages or so… probably an hour when filmed and edited, though I was hopeful it would end up more like an hour-and-a-half with the music performances ) and set about casting it and planning filming.

By that time, I’d just moved out on my own and was anxious for something to occupy my time, so for about four months I devoted nearly all my time to shooting One Man Guy. I reserved (and paid for) several locations and filmed about half the feature, editing as I went, culminating with a concert scene at Chicago’s Hideout featuring my musician friends Pistol Pete and Popgun Paul. After that, I was completely worn out, and decided to take a break and head out to San Diego for Comic Con. I’d been working on a comic book concurrently with One Man Guy (called Captain Kinetic), and was armed with a handful of ashcan books to dsitribute.

When I got back, I discovered my momentum was completely gone. I gave myself some slack, telling myself I didn’t need to rush back into finishing the film until I was ready. I wanted to bring someone else on to help me get organized, and maybe even co-direct, because I just didn’t have the energy to keep it moving on my own. This feeling persisted a whole year, though, and by the time I was bringing completed Captain Kinetic issues to Comic Con 2001, I hadn’t touched One Man Guy at all.

I’d had some limited communication with the actors during this period, and they were generally open to getting started again, but they had all naturally moved on to other things and had limited availabilities. And one of the locations I’d used (for the apartment of the main character) was no longer available, as the couple I knew who lived there had moved out. This meant that I might have to reshoot several scenes I’d already shot and edited. The longer I waited, the more unlikely finishing the project seemed, and I eventually accepted it.

Fast forward to 2002. Comic-Con time again, and this time I had issues 1 and 2 of Captain Kinetic done, and was starting to realize that beginning one’s comic book career with a superhero comic book, especially one that is something of a psychological deconstruction of the genre, would be a hard sell. The market was “saturated,” I was told by Diamond Distributors, so though they praised the work as good, they weren’t willing to list it in their catalog. I was a more than a little disheartened.

When I was thinking about other projects I could work on, it hit me that I had a completed script for a project that I still thought was really good, and I’m sure you can guess which one I mean. I’m still looking for an ongoing collaborator on the project (I worked with Colorado-based artist Lucius Romero on the first issue) so if you think you’d be a good match, drop me a line at zan@onemanguy.com.