We are grateful to be working with Paul Tobin and are really excited to see his machinations in the story of the Falling Skies comic. Paul graciously accepted the opportunity to write a few thoughts about his process on writing the Falling Skies story for the comic. Thanks, Paul!

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about the process of crafting the Falling Skies comics is the act of hurling a spear. Editor Scott Allie handed me that spear, and then we conferenced back and forth with the studio people (largely the always-affable Mark Verheiden) regarding exactly where I should throw that spear, and how far.

     It wasn’t an easy task, but it was still an enjoyable challenge. I had several of the show’s scripts in front of me. Character breakdowns. The secrets of the show. Lists of characters that could be in the comic scripts…or HAD to be in them. A DVD of the first episode, given to me way back in the late summer of 2010, meaning I couldn’t show it to any of my friends and had to keep it in a bank vault along with my prized Big Jim action figures and Benny Hill autograph.

     And once everything was assembled, that spear was in my hand. It had to be a spear, because the Falling Skies episodes are all about moving forward. We couldn’t do any flashbacks. There was no “remember that time?” to be done. We had to choose a launching point and hurl the spear.

     What I was doing with the writing was giving the basic rules of the world. The lives of the characters. Establishing a framework for their current situation, and the hopes and dreams (and terrors) of their survival. The entire Mason family had to feel real to me before I could make them feel real to anyone else, so I made up little quirks for them. It’s a writing technique I love to employ so a character doesn’t come off as a cardboard cutout. If someone is tall, dark, and handsome, there’s nothing to him. But if he’s tall, dark, and handsome and checks for his wallet whenever he goes through a doorway and has a Sherlock Holmes sticker on his right boot for a reason he won’t talk about, then the character begins to take on a life of his own. Those are just examples, of course. The Mason family had other quirks…some that made it onto the printed pages and some that didn’t, but all of which served to keep them “alive” in my mind…as real characters intermixing with Dr. Anne Glass, Porter, Click, Anthony, and all of the others.

     Another challenge, of course, was to not only pack in all the information and present it in a cohesive story format, but also to divide it into four-page segments, which is how we released it online: four pages a week. The challenge was a blessing in some ways, because it meant the writing needed to be quick hitting and relentless, just like the show itself. Doesn’t mean that there can’t be some quiet character moments (retaining humanity in the face of war is a huge Falling Skies theme), but the comic and the show both have this feel that the aliens are always just a frame away…a tension that I think adds to how humanity is, in effect, being hunted here.

     Luckily, the studio people and I were able to come up with a few people that are pretty good at fighting back. Therein lies the story.

-Paul Tobin

http://www.paultobin.net/

http://twitter.com/PaulTobin