We’ve decided to make our first graphic novel, Boys Don’t Cry, available to download for free under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND, though the print copy can still be bought from our online shop if you prefer that route.
Teenage goths, bereavement, Edinburgh, families… What more do you need to know?
Boys Don’t Cry by Jacqueline Saville, Mark Pexton, Andrew Woods is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
In our continuing quest for new audiences, we’ve ventured to comic shops in other parts of Yorkshire, specifically Sheffield. Our literary graphic novel Boys Don’t Cry (why not read the synopsis) is on sale at Sheffield Space Centre – it’s completely non-genre (macabre in places perhaps, but not horror. No scientific or fantastical elements. Just a teenage goth with shallow friends) so it does seem a bit weird in a way, but I’m not about to complain.
One day we might leave the county boundaries, but for this weekend we’ll be sticking around as it’s the Leeds Alternative Comic Fair tomorrow and all 3 of us will be heading along to check it out after lunch.
The soundtrack to our graphic novel Boys Don’t Cry is now complete – click on the link if you have spotify, but for those that don’t, here’s the list (one track per scene, as long as your definition of a scene matches mine):
Of course, if this was a film I’d fade out of some of the longer ones, and Pictures of You and Aerie are for the two scenes that sort of cut back and forth so some kind of blending may be necessary, but you’ll have to imagine that. I hope it adds to your enjoyment of the book (or brightens your day, or makes you go listen to a forgotten album – it made me dig out Patti Smith’s Horses).
Ostragoth+tea+bourbons=decision-making. Yes, we can make decisions if pressed. We have business card designs, a list of Mark’s paintings to order as prints and postcards, a list of bits and pieces to buy for Thought Bubble (table cloth, paper bags etc) and a vague idea where to get them, a selling price for Boys Don’t Cry, and a tentative title for the next comic (I’m guessing we’ll change our minds on that one).
The proof copy of Boys Don’t Cry is expected through the letterbox soon, so the final printing should happen just in time for Thought Bubble. This is what the finished book (graphic novella?) will look like if you open it out (i.e. back cover, spine, front cover):
Boys Don't Cry, the cover and spine
To whet your appetite, we’d like to share one of the finished pages of Boys Don’t Cry:
Page 12 (probably)
An earlier page may get split over two, hence I’m not totally sure which page this will be, but it’s fairly early on. Feel free to let us know what you think.
Back in the summer of 2004, minding my own business on an Edinburgh street and open to story ideas floating in from the ether as usual, I saw a group of teenage goths. One lad was walking slightly behind the rest, maybe the pavement just wasn’t wide enough, but whatever the reason it sparked a story which wasn’t completed for nearly two years. In the meantime I met Mark Pexton, already an impressive artist with sequential art ambitions. We spent the next couple of years getting better at our respective crafts (and in Mark’s case finding an international audience with book covers, comics, story illustrations and more) and Mark started talking about adapting ‘the goth lad story’ (we still tend to refer to it as gothlad) as a comic when he had the time. It’s now grown into a ‘graphic novella’ called Boys Don’t Cry which we’re preparing for printing.
So what’s this gothlad story all about? It’s dreamy and atmospheric, it’s set in Edinburgh and St Andrews, it has nightmare sequences, grief, loss, and horses. And a teenage goth, naturally. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I can honestly say that if I hadn’t written it I’d want to buy it, and that’s a good start.
