It’s funny how stories come together.
Take three elements:
- a side story from the STYX graphic novel that got cut for space (and because it just didn’t fit in);
- a hella talented comics creator;
- and a beginnings of a completely unrelated comic that has yet to be fully realized…
And there you have the start of something beautiful.
I started developing said side story into a standalone for Hyeondo Park to draw for The Chemistry Set (TCS for short) — concerning a manga-ka who asks for a last chance to tell the unrequited love of his life how he feels about her — but kept getting jammed on what the story-within-the-story was, what platform this writer wanted to use (or was already using) to get his message across to his lady love.
The story’s 16-20 pages; you can’t introduce a whole universe with its own story logic on top of dropping into a STYX story, know what’s going on, get hooked on the new characters, follow their journey through new mini-universe, and come out the other side satisfied… can you?
I’m aiming to prove that it can. Said other comic — hard science fiction taking place around the Sun — is something that’s been burning in my head for a while, waiting to get out (my own answer to PLANETES and 2001 NIGHTS)… so I wound the threads of the characters together and am going to see what they’ll bring to each other.
At any rate, this story — HOTHOUSE ORCHIDS — should work better than the ill-fated STYX Halloween story I wrote once upon a time, featuring a teenage voodoo priestess and Dom facing off against a zombie. Well, not your average zombie. (Who knows, maybe that one will surface sometime too.)