So this summer I started working on a Cop Story plot where Chauncey conducts an investigation in a school for disabled children. During the time I fiddled with it I got kinda attached to the background characters and decided I wanted to do some short spin-off stories with them.

The very basic idea was to take your generic “a bunch of school kids search for adventure and find trouble” plot, only to do it with non-generic characters (because the thing that always turned me off young adult literature was how authors were going out of the way to make characters as average as possible, obviously mistaking average for most relatable). Then add the frustration every teenager feels, multiply it by two and there you go.

I can talk for ages about the inner dynamics of the story – how Teague, the central character of the spin-off, feels that him being in that school is unfair and that everyone mistreats him and thinks that he’s some kind of incapable idiot but he doesn’t notice how he applies the same stereotypes to his classmates. Basically, all the snarky (anti)social commentary that didn’t fit in Cop Story went there.

So yeah, I scripted a short comic and even pencilled the first page but then I decided I wanted to finish first episode of Cop Story first. And then I came up with other stories so it looks like this will be on the back burner for a while. I might pick it up alongside the second episode of Cop Story, we’ll see how much time I’ll have on my hands then. Till then, have the sketches (and it’s not even all the characters involved).

Oh yeah, and for those who were concerned – Leicester’s kid and wife survived! I was going to draw a comic about them to follow Happy Birthday Houston but couldn’t figure out a plot fun enough. There is the part of Cop Story with a working title “Bring You Son To Work Day” planned where no-nonsense hardcore macho Leicester doesn’t tell any of the other cops about his son until they pressure him and he ends up lying, same as those posters on his wall are a lie. And of course the truth eventually comes out. But it’s a story for later.

When I was younger I had this problem with not being able to come up with a story I’d stick with. Now I have the opposite problem – I learned to create stories I’m more or less satisfied with but I don’t have the time to draw them all.

Cop Story site
Cop Story tumblr

Cop Story © Oly R.