When I was reading Megatokyo at school, I’d often leave the site open all day and load new pages whenever I got the chance. At the bottom of the page, under the comic itself, is a rant section, which is basically a blog. I didn’t take the time to read every rant, but if I ended up stuck without internet access, a single page would sit open until I got online again and I would read every scrap of text on the current page.
It was one such page that led me to Demonology 101.
I can’t explain why I fell in love with this story as quickly as I did. Something about the setting and characters. I liked the grey feel of things. Her art evolved and grew so much over the course of the story. I started reading the blog and checking the sketchblog religiously. A discovering a new sketch was the best thing that could happen in a day. When I finished Demonology, I moved on to her second webcomic, Ice.
I fell so utterly in love with that comic. As much as I loved Demonology, it wasn’t until the last few chapters that Faith’s artwork seemed not just allow the story to be told but to tell it. Ice had all the years of Demonology to watch and learn from.
I think one of the things that was most exciting for me was already being a fan when her first book went to print. I got to experience the excitement as she got a publishing company to give her a contract to do Zombies Calling and see her career change from an online person who’s artwork and storytelling I thought were awesome to a real live published author. It was like watching my own dreams come true.
I now own all three of her books, two of which she wrote and illustrated herself and the third which she drew for other writers. I’ve made fan films of Ice and Zombies Calling and would love to do more film work with either of those stories, or one of the others, if I had the cast and crew to handle it. My video of Ice is linked, but before you go watch that I want to tell you one more story about why Faith’s work is so awesome and it has to do with my Zombies Calling filming experience.
I got to do a research project for a class, and it could be anything I wanted it to be as long as it was related to my major. My major being mostly undefined at the time, this translated into practically anything I could think of. It just had to have some element that looked at an overlap between writing, art, or theatre. I chose to take a short segment of Zombies Calling, adapt it for film and talk about the process and the differences between the storytelling media.
My window of time for filming was tiny. I basically had three hours between the time I could get one member of my cast there and the time the other was washing the pink dye out of her hair and heading to the homecoming dance. Our set was hurried and not very well constructed and our lighting was pathetic, but the acting was some of the best stuff I’d gotten out of my performers to date. Why was this? Neither had had a script for more than fifteen minutes before shooting, and though they’d both read the book it had been months. We hadn’t prepped or rehearsed any more than we usually do and a whole lot less than I might have liked. Why were we all three suddenly managing to act so naturally?
We took the scene pretty much frame by frame as far as the comic was concerned. We were loyal to every word and every action. And each tiny, insignificant action proved to be worth it’s weight in gold. Such little things, like Joss running her hand through her hair. I would never have told my actress to do that. I wouldn’t have thought of it. She might have moved a little on her own, but that tiny action was so natural and so human and perfect that it changed everything. It made Joss real and this is why Faith is one of my idols. She was able to make Joss vulnerable in a single motion. The whole scene I filmed was a quiet, intimate conversation in the middle of a graphic novel about zombies. How often does someone achieve that so gracefully?
If you haven’t read any of her work, I recommend picking up one of her books at your local library or bookstore, or following one of the links I gave you earlier and going through the archives. Demonology is completely finished, and Ice is close to complete but updates are sadly uncommon. Her most recent online project, The Adventures of Super Girl, is adorable and updates regularly.
There. I’ve given you lots of options, several of which require very little effort on your part. So you have no excuse not to go read at least a little bit of one of these stories.