In Charlotte, Zombies Are So Hot Right Now

"Playing Dead," the six-page comic you see in this month's Charlotte magazine, came into being months ago with a simple question: Are sports dying in this town? The Panthers finished with a 2-14 record. The Bobcats missed the playoffs. Again. My original assignment (back in March) was a 400-500 word think piece on what the hell happened last season.

I suggested a different route: Trying to figure out if Charlotte, as a sports city, was major league or minor league. I took the buckshot approach. I looked up a bunch of guys who were all very visible around town. These were guys who had been around for a long time, and had made some sort of impact on sports culture here. I made a bunch of calls but came up with four guys: Jerry Reese, Mark Packer, Muggsy Bogues and Gregory Good (the Catman).

I took their differing opinions and wrote up a 1,500 word story. It was okay. But I thought of something. I emailed Richard Thurmond, Charlotte magazine's editor: 

JEREMY: It occurred to me that I really have four sort of superhero names and characters here, Muggsy, Packman, Catman and The Litigator (Reese). I don't know if that's worth playing up more. I had this delusion of sort of a graphic novel, where all four of them come together like the SuperFriends and solve Charlotte's sports problems.

RICK: I think you may be on to something.

At first, it was going to be one piece of art. Then Rick mentioned that he'd always wanted to do something that turned out like a mini-graphic novel. The piece got pushed back to make way for another sports story that ran in July. Suddenly, we had the time and space to make it happen.

Enter Rich Barrett, a terrific artist who lives here in Charlotte. He's working on an ongoing graphic novel about a character named Nathan Sorry. He posts it a page at a time on his website, then writes notes at the bottom explaining the choices he made with the art, the story, and the layout. It was all incredibly helpful for me, a guy who was a casual comic book fan, but had no idea how to create one.

Rick, Rich and I got together in late June to figure out how it would look. We decided against giving our protagonists super powers. We decided to keep the subjects' words and ideas intact to keep this as a journalistic exercise. You can read the text of the story in a very straightforward way.

The pictures, we decided, would allow us to do some things you couldn't normally do in this sort of story. But it still had to be a functioning comic, and since there was no singular sports supervillain, there had to be some sort of common goal, like convincing someone to buy a ticket, or convincing a cynical fan not to give up. Rick suggested adding zombies ("They're hot right now."), and then they became sports fans zombified by the lackluster season. Our four protagonists would have to try to turn them back into human beings.

We needed a common thread character to tie everything together. That became me. For the story to remain journalistic, I had to stick to the words that my interview subjects gave me. But since I was in it, I could say whatever the hell I wanted and move the action along any way I needed to. That solved another problem.

I then worked with Rich to storyboard six pages, panel by panel. Rich, in turn, took the panel, suggested ways to keep the action flowing and the pictures compelling, and then started to sketch. Then, he traced over, drew the detail in, and added color.

Here's an example of how part of one page worked. I started with a snippet of the original story:

“We’d like to think we’re a major league city, but we’re a major league town,” says Mark Packer. “The key word is town.”

Packer spent 13 years on the airwaves here in Charlotte, taking calls from Charlotteans who were heading home from work and just needed to say something. Most listeners tried to outdo each other on Packer’s “Whiner Line,” making overly dramatic jokes for Packer’s panel to react to. When they’d had enough, Packer would simply say “Next one please.”
He’s used to giving rapid fire opinions. He has plenty. The Bobcats will never feel like the Hornets, he says. A Knights stadium uptown would be a home run. Unless you want a gameday experience, TV is the way to watch a game now. “If it stinks,” he says, “you can watch something else.”
We’re not a minor league town, Packer says. We’re a NASCAR town. And moreso, we’re a college town. There’s no ACC team within a hundred miles of Charlotte. But we just can’t stop talking about Duke this, UNC that. “We grew up with it,” he says, and he’s not just talking about other fans. Packer’s father Billy was a basketball analyst for 35 years.
I took that and boiled it down to its basic elements, then storyboarded the elements.

PAGE 3 PANEL 8 (small): Thwack!

(OFF SCREEN): Next one please!

The zombies are whacked away by a swinging microphone on the end of a cord.

PAGE 4 PANEL 1:

NARRATION: Mark Packer is best known by another name, The Packman.We start climbing up a radio tower to get away from the zombies

PAGE 4 PANEL 2:
NARRATION: For 13 years, he was the King Solomon of Charlotte’s sports talk radio.

A flashback: Showing Packman in a radio studio, surrounded by ringing phones. You can see what people are saying. Also show a football in a deep fryer.

PHONE: Love the show!

PHONE: Normally I agree with you, but...

PHONE: I’ll take my answer off the air.

PAGE 4 PANEL 3:

NARRATION: Now, he’s left with his opinions...Back to present. Packman has his microphone and he’s talking into it. But it’s not plugged in.

PACKMAN: A Knights stadium uptown would be a home run.

PACKMAN: The Bobcats will never feel like the Hornets.

PACKMAN: We’re a NASCAR town. A college town. We’re a major league town.

Then, Rich tinkered with the layout, and came up with a rough sketch:

And finally, he put together a finished product:

Obviously, this is an oversimplified version of how this all turned from text to a page. When something wasn't working, Rich would email and we'd work on ways to fix it. Some of the details were mine, like the Hornets helicopter and Gerald Wallace and Stephen Jackson wearing ghost costumes. The zombies-- their actions, faces and grunts-- were all Rich. The ones surrounding us in the final panel were all modeled after people who responded to a late night "casting call" from Rich on Twitter. Reply to me, he said, and I'll put you in the comic.

I can't say this enough: this was a team effort, with Rich leading the way. He did most of the heavy lifting here, and put in a lot of long hours, including some time when he was supposed to be on vacation. If you haven't checked out his other work, you should. I started on page one of Nathan Sorry, and had a hard time stopping. Also, a big thanks to Rick, who saw this thing through and kept me away from what would have been a weaker ending. He saw this needed space, time and guidance, and provided plenty of it. Plus, he knows that zombies are so hot right now.