Chapter 6 Page 8 (Patreon)

Definitely didn't mean to go this long between pages even with the break. This page was a struggle for me and if you don't mind me braindumping I can probably explain why.

Back when Out of the Blue first started and I gave Felix a guitar I knew at some point in the comic he would probably sing a song. Now something I do, that I imagine every comic artist/writer does, is write myself a mental check to be cashed later. I didn't need to worry about how and what Felix would sing. That was future me's problem. But the future is now.

Since then I learn a lot while working on Out of the Blue and most recently I've learned that I'm not a songwriter. And I don't even consider myself that much of a writer to begin with. I must have written 6 pages in my notebook of some of the worst song lyrics you can imagine. I justified this in the comic as Felix probably isn't the world's best song writer either. It's more of a hobby to him. But have you ever read song lyrics without the song. Even a good song can read like average poetry. And in a purely visual medium having a character "sing" a kinda mediocre song just didn't read right and I didn't know what to do. 

Maybe cut it down to just a verse? Maybe look up simpler song styles from the era the comic is technically set in instead of having Felix accidentally inventing a musical genre that doesn't exist yet? The emotional weight of a song lyric is almost entirely dependent on the way it's sung is it even possible to have a fraction of that with just a written word? Is that even true? What about dialogue then? Do I have any business judging music or poetry?

After a lot of back and forth I ended up with something I thought I could work with. It was pretty corny and sappy but Out of the Blue is a pretty corny and sappy comic in my mind. (Felix is currently singing a song to his dead boyfriend in a dream, come on.) I had the grand idea of maybe having a song codify the main theme of the comic by having Felix sing about being left behind and the nature of home and things changing and the idea that you can never go home again but what if you never left in the first place. It was all a bit bad and too on the nose and never felt right.

In the end Felix isn't a professional musician. Playing his guitar is just a hobby. It's something he's stuck with because he feels like it's one of the only things he's really good at and it still brings him some joy. Not to be too autobiographical. Of course he sings and writes his own little songs but ultimately he can't really push himself out of his medium and express himself with words in a way he's satisfied with at this point in time and I imagine that frustrates him a lot. As he explains in a very meta kind of way. So he just quietly plays for his friend instead.

But who knows. Maybe in the future I can come up with something that I'm satisfied with. I know other comics have done music in a way that works. I called Out of the Blue an experiment when I first started it. It's grown a lot but that's still true. I've thrown a lot of spaghetti at this comic and some of it has stuck and some of it hasn't. I'm still learning.