Ed
Chickens in the Mist was one of our greatest adventures and a convention favorite that we have run for almost 20 years now. So many characters have met their end racing down the muddy dirt roads and crashing into the Piney Woods or pecked to death and eaten by the giant mutant chickens.
So many jokes said at many, many tables. Many of which I can’t repeat due to their graphic nature, but despite blushing, and throwing Bennies at my players (Denver, I’m talking about you!), it was so much fun, and many people still talk about their experience with it. Songs were actually written and performed about this game.
We wanted to tell the story of so many games in our graphic novel. We had a meeting in Huntsville, Texas that included me, Preston DuBose, and Craig Largent as it was about halfway between College Station and Lufkin (Craig lives in Lufkin, Preston in College Station). We sat there and designed the overall story in three parts and developed the characters that would star in the new adventure and tale.Â
We split the work of writing the three issues with each one of us having the opportunity to edit the work before we turned it in.
Edward Sellner of Visionary Comics and Games worked patiently with us on how to write for comics which is a very different, and very new way for us to learn to write. Pages look more like the pages of a movie or theater script, and it must go panel by panel with descriptions for the artist and commentary of the characters. Our first draft of the first issue needed technical polish, but again, Edward was patient and worked to teach us how to do it better. We may not get things right the first time, but we sure do the second time. Â
IMHO we knocked it out of the park.
Then we got to watch the incredible artists take over. Ariel Medel drew the comics and did an incredible job. Here is a link to some of the comics he has worked on: https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/people/11976/ariel-medel/comics
The colors were added by the talented Paul Little and the letters by Jacob Bascle.
I can’t wait for y’all to see the final edition of this graphic novel. To make it even better, we have rewritten the original adventure for the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition of our favorite game and have included ready to play characters from the graphic novel at Seasoned level.
It is pretty awesome if I say so myself!
Preston
I actually wrote about the graphic novel not that long ago on Substack. Rather than rehashing everything I said in that essay, I hope you’ll go read that and then come back here for a few extra details about the writing process. For starters, obviously we had a huge head start since we already had the adventure to use as a base. What we didn’t have were heroes, so the first step was coming up with a group of diverse character types. We opted to treat the group as though this was their very first adventure, so they have no prior exposure to the paranormal or monsters. This is their very first, very terrifying, encounter.
Obviously one of the characters would need to be a student journalist, since the hook involves investigating an illegal bloodsport betting operation out in the country. From there, we made cases for other archetypes that would make sense. I won’t spoil the surprises, but I’ll say the archetypes will be familiar, even if these particular iterations of them are all new.
Since characters drive the story, we also developed whole backstories and interpersonal relationships among the characters. The restrictions of a script format meant that much of that information wasn’t explicitly stated, but it did drive how the characters reacted to the situation and with one another. So while many of you are already familiar with Chickens in the Mist, I promise you that the graphic novel will deliver a story that still feels fresh.
Finally, I’ll end on a bit of trivia. Ed mentioned that the script was split into three parts so that we could each contribute, but what he didn’t mention was that the original plan had been to release CitM as a three comic miniseries. That’s why, when you read the graphic novel, you’re going to find pages that feel as though they are pulling back and reintroducing a new chapter. Three comics would have been neat, but since this is all one story it’s probably for the best that it’s being presented in one volume.
