The Fabler

We at the Fabler Blog would like to humbly present you, the esteemed reader, with our first new profile of 2010. The man of the hour is a gentleman who goes by the handle of Gibson Twist, purveyor extraordinaire of online graphic novels (largely through the Smack Jeeves webcomic network).

Twist (not his real name, though it is the handle through which all of his creative content is released) is a New Brunswicker who has been active in webcomics for several years. In February of this year, he will be celebrating the three year anniversary of his primary ongoing series, Pictures of You.

Twist describes Pictures of You, of which he is writer and artist, as “a story about the best friends you’ll ever lose”. I would add to that description that it’s a compelling trip down someone else’s memory lane, packed with believable, well-developed characters and just the right amount of nostalgia.

I  say ‘just the right amount’ in that the narrative never becomes burdened in nostalgic sentiment – it’s a spice that Gibson uses to flavor his dish, rather than a base that drowns out the rest of the recipe. Quaint metaphor for the win, no?

Though Gibson has only been active in webcomics for a few years, he used to be involved with paper zine publishing back around the early-to-mid nineties.

“I did that for several years actually,” he says, “and kind of drifted away from it and got into other kinds of writing. I guess I was away for probably about ten years before I got the impetus to do Pictures of You.”

Gibson says that when he started the project, he only intended for it to be around six to seven hundred pages.

“But then as I started rewriting and developing the story and characters further”, he explains, “it more than doubled its length. I envision it now to be more like fifteen to eighteen hundred pages when it’s done.”

Despite his epic ambitions for the page count, Pictures of You is a highly accessible read. Not only is it very possible to jump in at the beginning of any one of the chapters written to date, (though you obviously won’t get as much out of it as otherwise) but Twist has successfully created something that a wide variety of readers could find compelling.

“You know, I always envisioned the story as something that would appeal to people around my age,” says Twist, “that is, mid-thirties, maybe even late twenties. What I’ve been finding more and more however,  is that it also holds a lot of appeal for a younger demographic, like teenagers to early twentysomethings.”

To really get an idea of the unique sort of charm that Twist magically weaves through believable dialogue and sincere character interaction, you’d have to stop by the webcomic’s host site and look through a few panels yourself. Actually, I strongly recommend doing this now. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

….

See?  See what I mean?

Depending on where you may have randomly decided to begin reading, you may have noticed that some of the art from Pictures of You is in color, while in other instances it’s entirely black and white.

Gibson started the comic entirely in monochrome, only deciding to add color to new panels as recently as last year. Since then, he has decided to go back and color the original books, one chapter at a time.

“It’s actually been quite interesting to go back and look at not only what I was doing back then, but also how the style changed throughout,” Gibson says of his experience coloring the older pages, “Like seeing the difference, for instance, between what I was doing with black and white at the beginning of Book One, and what I was doing with it at the end of Book Two. It’s also been interesting to see how well the color applied to what was always intended originally to be black and white.”

Twist, whose other activities included (until recently) managing a record store in the town he lives in just outside of Fredericton, is also currently involved with a comic adaptation of a story he had written previously, titled “Our Time in Eden“.

Unlike Pictures of You, Gibson is not behind the art for Our Time in Eden. Instead he recruited Ben Steeves to illustrate the comparatively much heavier, mature-themed comic about loss of childhood innocence.

“It was something I never thought I could turn into a comic,” says Gibson, “Just from the nature of the way I’d written the novel, I’d never really figured it would translate properly into sequential art. I honestly couldn’t say what changed. I was just thinking one day about the story and different graphic aspects of it and it just came to me how I could trim a little here, and add a little there to make it work in a graphic setting.”

As it turns out, Gibson was right – Our Time in Eden works beautifully as a comic. Steeves does a fantastic job of capturing the mood and emotions of the two central characters – the disenfranchised, apathetic protagonist Tim and his long-estranged childhood companion, Ellis.

“With Ben, we have this sort of unusual synergy where we each understand what the other one is thinking and are able to build on the other one’s strengths,” says Gibson of the partnership, “It’s just one of those magical, cohesive kind of relationships that you don’t really find very often, and he’s been a dream to work with.”

The synergy he mentions really does come through in the panels of Our Time in Eden. As a disclaimer to those interested in perusing the comic, be prepared for a story that does not shy away from heightened emotion – reading Our Time in Eden can be a visceral experience, especially in its ability to resonate with those who have ever lost/screwed up a relationship that was important to them. And really, show me the picture perfect android of a person who hasn’t.

Between creating new strips for Pictures of You, coloring the older chapters of that same title, and working with Ben Steeves on Our Time in Eden, Gibson (by necessity) commits a large portion of time to his ventures in online comics.

“I’m motivated by the people who come and visit the sites when they really have no reason to,” says Twist, “as well as the people who have shown me a lot of support and love – a lot of my readers are very loyal. I just feel like I need to live up to their trust in me that I give them a good story without taking too long to tell it. That’s the kind of thing you don’t want to let your readers down with.”

As for future plans, Gibson is currently working on several other comics with other artists that he hopes to see come together in the near future. He’s also working on a releasing a physical, grayscale version of the first two books from Our Time in Eden as well as securing a publisher for the eventual release of Our Time in Eden as a graphic novel.

For more from Gibson Twist, you can find links to his work on his profile over at Smack Jeeves.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming