A Brief History of Ruffians
With great delight, I’d like to announce that Ruffians has finally been collected into a massive graphic novel! A big thanks to our Kickstarter backers for helping make this book a reality. Ruffians has been more than a decade in the making now and it feels very strange (almost surreal) to finally be holding it as a collection, it’s even stranger to finally be able to put it on a bookshelf. It’s been a long road to completing this book and so I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the project and where it’s taken me.
About Ruffians
Ruffians is a love letter of sorts to my inspirations, growing up I was a huge fan of Dick Tracy comics, gangster movies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Looney Tunes, The Ninja Turtles, Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil and the action-adventure genre in general. So Ruffians is kind of what happens when all those inspirations are swirled up in a blender and put to paper. At its heart it’s a story about friendship and dealing with loss.
Origins
Like many cartoonists, I’ve carried around ideas for characters and books for years. The idea of making a comic about hitmen/ assassins was one that’s been in my head since middle school. Over the years the characters have changed, but for whatever reason the names Malt and Scar have been constants.
Fun fact, Malt was originally supposed to be the hero of the story and Scar was the name of the evil crime-lord that ran the city. In my first self-published comic, Drunken Cat Presents, way back in 2001 this was even the case, but at some point I redesigned Scar into the little blue bear and once that happened it became very apparent that this story was his.
What’s in a Name
Another fun fact, originally the series was called Assassins. However, the title ended being trademarked by Amalgam Comics, an imprint owned by both Marvel and DC Comics, and my younger self imagined the two companies tracking me down and suing the pants off of me. So, with much hair pulling, I came up with some alternatives, but none that I was really okay with. In the end my Mom suggested the word “ruffians” as the title. I liked the sound of it and the fact that I could still use the logo I had designed for the series with only a few minor adjustments. And so it went.
Beginnings
I began working on Ruffians way back in August of 2004. I had just finished college in Cincinnati and just moved across the country to San Diego. I was 21, ready to make my dreams come true and self-publish my first professionally printed book. Why I decided to have my first book be an epic multi-issue affair can simply be chalked up to the naivety of youth.
2004 was a strange time in comics. The internet was still relatively young, Print-On-Demand was just sorta starting, and all the comic printers of old were disappearing. I had originally planned on using the printer that produced Cerebus but, by the time I had finished the first issue they had shuttered their doors. I ended up having the first issue printed through Morgan Printing. I took it as a sign that they were the people who printed the first Ninja Turtle comics.
And with that I was off and running.
Coverless
With the second issue I came to the realization that comics are very expensive to make and it’s hard to save money when you’ve moved to one of the most expensive states to live in the United States. I was faced with the decision to either figure out a way to make the books cheaper or come out with issues at a glaciers pace. Feeling that the only way to build an audience would be to come out with the book regularly, I chose to sacrifice the color cover and some of the page count. It was a hard decision, but a necessary one at the time.
With that Ruffians came out almost every other month for the first five-ish issues.
The Middle Issues
With issue 6 I slowed down my production slightly. This was partly due to going back to school and also partly due to experimenting with the book. I’ve been a fan of the movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, since I was a kid and with this issue I decided to try to make my own version of it in comic book form. At the time, I was working at a camera shop and had made friends with a number of photographers. I asked one such friend, Patrick O’Dell, if he’d be willing to help and that weekend we shot all the photos in what one could only describe as an elaborate Invisible Man shoot. I’m sure the other residents at my apartment complex were a little concerned.
Then I had to draw Scar and make him look like he was actually there when we took the photos… and several months later I found myself still working on it.
With issue 7 I decided to make the whole comic a tension builder, bringing everything to a slow boil. Which meant drawing a ton of extra panels to slow the reader down and build the pacing, which also meant that production slowed to a crawl… and several months later I found myself still working on it.
Hiatus
At the beginning of 2008 I reached a point where I couldn’t really continue producing Ruffians. At this point I had just published issue 7 and was about halfway through drawing out issue 8. My solution was to find a publisher to print Ruffians for me. The problem was that I wasn’t confident that the first issue was drawn well enough to attract a major publisher.
I (regrettably) went about redrawing the first issue. A process that I don’t recommend to anyone. Just let stories be. It’s hard to put yourself back in the same head space you were in when you first drew something, inevitably you overthink and second guess every move you make.
Finishing the Story
Five years later, I found myself still meticulously trying to recreate Ruffians #1 and make it as perfect as possible.
Around this time I reconnected with Derek and we had started writing together again. At some point he brought up Ruffians and convinced me that redrawing it was silly, a better solution would be to finish the story. I thought about it for a bit, decided he was right, dug up the pages I had already created for issue 8 and went about finishing it.
I’d like to thank Derek and my wife, Amy, for finally getting me off my ass and supporting me in finishing this story. I couldn’t have done it without you!
What’s Next
It’s hard to imagine a world where I don’t have Ruffians looming in the background, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never been the type of creator to not have several projects going on at once (or several more that I want to start working on), so I’ve already started on my next project (or two). Plastic People is currently my next long-form story. I’m about half done with it as of this writing and will hopefully be wrapping it within the net year. Beyond that, I’m also serializing a satire called Applewood Canyon and working on some more short stories.
As far as Ruffians is concerned, I’m pleased with how it all turned out and even more than pleased to finally have it on my bookshelf.
