This is a reminder that we are in the last week of the Kickstarter Campaign for Issue #3 of In Our Dreams Awake. At 11:59 PM on Friday night, we’ll reach the end of the road for this one. We’ve hit our initial goal of $500 and are moving toward $1000!
If you haven’t done so already, go to the Kickstarter Page and check out the project:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ioda/in-our-dreams-awake-3-a-dreampunk-comic
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I’m not necessarily one to find/look for meaning in signs in my life. Oh, I’m not immune to it and have my own superstitions, but I don’t spend too much time considering it. However, whether I believe in them or not, there are little things in our everyday world which sometimes lay out a message you might be on the right track. Small reminders, universal beats to help subtly (or perhaps not-so-subtly) guide you. Maybe it’s something which has seeped out of your subconcious to help create the eventual path in the first place.
As close in on the end of the Kickstarter for Issue #3, I went looking through the old emails for the project, trying to find the little bit and pieces that I had long forgotten in the past 15+ years. The back and forth in the earliest of days between Egg and myself as we worked the story, bouncing ideas off each other, trying only to improve on the building blocks of the story each time. Those moments of inspiration where we began discovering things about the characters and what their goals may or may not be.
Sort of a…
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Some of the things in the very original breakdown:
The first outline was for a 9-issue story. Talk about being overly ambitious on what we might be able to do all those years ago (remind me one day to tell you the 60 issue story I have for Moon Knight – if only Marvel would call!).
Jason Byron was originally an important man. He was not a simple artist just trying to live his life, but instead was going to be a Lord or Duke of some sort.
In the Cyberpunk story there was going to be something much more similar to the movie Office Space in regards to his job. I have no idea how that was going to work. Definitely no gangs. And no angry cats. No Drowned London.
Jason would have much more of a comprehension of what was going on between the Dream worlds very early in the process. As seen in issue 1, these two worlds are tied together by him, but as things begin to spiral a bit, those worlds can start to bleed over.
There was an assassination attempt on Fantasy Jason. I totally didn’t remember that one at all.
As opposed to splitting issues between the two Dreams, we’d spend the full issue in one before switching over to the other. At least early on that would mean no “flip-book” feel to things. I mean, we obviously had 9 issues to fill, so why not really deconstruct this story!
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So what were the guideposts that helped us along?
The biggest one was the quote from Henry David Thoreau. Egg discovered it somewhere and suddenly we had a proper title for the story.
At Christmas that year, I received a series of writing themed gifts. One of them were Post-It notes with the Edgar Allan Poe quote on it. It almost felt like they’d read our emails.
I was listening to Van Halen, and suddenly realized the lyrics for “Love Walks In” feels like they are describing Jason Byron’s whole problem…
Love Walks In – Van Halen
Contact is all it takes
To change your life to lose your place in time
Contact! Asleep or awake
Coming around you may wake up to find
Questions deep within your eyes,
Things you’ve never realized
CHORUS
So when you sense a change
Nothing feels the same
All your dreams are strange, love comes walkin’ in
Some kind of alien
Wait for the opening
Then simply pulls a string
Another world, some other time
You lay your sanity on the line
Familiar faces familiar sights
Reach back remember with all your might
Ohh there she stands in a silken gown
Silver lights shining down
CHORUS
Love comes walkin’ in
Sleep and dream is all I crave
I travel far across the Milky Way
To my master I become a slave
Til we meet again some other day
Where silence speaks as loud as war
And the earth returns to what it was before
CHORUS
Love comes walkin’ in
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At the end of the day, the story is one we felt compelled to tell. In our email echange, Egg asked me a key question about the story:
“Is this a story of hope or failure?”
And I like my response, because even through all the tweaks and changes to the very first kernel of an idea, I think we’ve kept to this singular guiding light:
“The story, at its core, is probably a little of both (failure and hope). Hope that our lives can be brighter than they are but also failure in the risk of not living in reality. Plus, there’s the issue of what reality is truly. Is it what we perceive, or is it what others perceive?”
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Remember there is only two and half days left to back the project! And thank you for all the support up until now!
