Monday, June 23, 2008

Journalistic Jigsaw Puzzle

Just finished putting together an extremely long article on the upcoming Tori Amos-inspired comics anthology Comic Book Tattoo; the piece will appear in Comic Shop News #1099, in stores 7/10. I had long interviews with editor Rantz Hoseley and with Tori Amos to work with; the challenge was assembling them into a single piece.

I've always viewed putting together this sort of article as a lot like assembling a jigsaw puzzle; each answer is a distinct piece, but the arrangement of those pieces determines the appeal of the assemblage. When everything comes together just right, I begin to really feel that the story is coalescing--and in this case, the story came together even better than I initially anticipated.

A normal CSN cover story is 1500-1600 words; this piece ran 5500, and that was with two edits. And I think that it offers a lot of insight into the editor, the artist, and the scope of the anthology. I always enjoy what I do with Comic Shop News, but some pieces really click for me--and this was one of them.

I'm pretty lucky--there aren't too many people who get to do what they enjoy and make money at it at the same time!

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