See, Descent was born in a dream -- possibly the worst nightmare I've ever had in my life. In the nightmare, this evil guy with his face in shadow asked me if I remembered something, then said, "I remember it like it was a meal ago!" His voice was a whisper backed up with thunder. He grabbed my private parts in his taloned hand, and these snakes came out of his sleeve, he was squeezing harder, the snakes were writhing around and trying to bite. I opened my eyes, still dreaming, trying to wake myself all the way so I could have kids someday, maybe. I managed to do it, and came awake all drenched in sweat, muscles clenched solid, scared out of my mind.

Don't ask me what the dream meant. Don't ask me why the first line from Primus' "Tommy the Cat" would be so scary. I just knew there was a good story in there, somewhere, and if that dream was my real life, I'd have a pretty medicinal relationship with booze.

John and I had been talking about doing our own comic, and this seemed to me to have the elements we needed: a story with a vaguely supernatural theme, strong visual possibilities, and a screwed-up slacker for a main character that I could write with a fair amount of first-hand experience. When I ran it past him, John was enthusiastic. But he had a surprise for me. "Bill, I've got this idea," John said. "Do the whole thing with photographs. Do it up on the computer, make it digital, put it on the internet."

Sounded daft to me, but what the hell. I sure as hell couldn't draw it. I can't even draw decent stick figures, let alone actual people. So I scripted the first issue, the first draft of which was pretty brutal. My girlfriend hated it, wouldn't look at me after she read it, but thatŐs another anecdote altogether. I gave it to John and he went to work.

I wanted it gritty. I wanted it bleak. I wanted a Los Angeles where Philip Marlowe would feel right at home. John delivered. A thin patina of soot covers everything, and no one's clean inside or out. Innocence has no place in Waste L.A., unless it's the contrived innocence of a hooker playing young for you. Innocence will get you killed.

The first issue took us a year and a half to make. Somewhere along the line I pretty much lost interest in it, but John was working steadily, trying to get me off my ass. Finally he said, "Look, why don't I just take over and do it myself?" That's when I realized I wanted to write it, that I liked the characters and didn't want to give them up. And John had gotten really good at this digital photography stuff. He was doing these fantastic things to the photos, making them look less like still images and more like people in motion. Making them cook. Wow. Issue two took six months, mostly because I kept re-scripting it and asking John to take more pictures. Issue three will have taken about two months by the time its done. We're getting good, dammit, and issue four will probably take a month, like most other comics.

Descent (and its writer) doesn't aspire to high art, whatever that is. It aspires to create a mood, to lift you, Gentle Reader, out of your clean, whitewashed, the-man-will-make-it-safe-for-you day-to-day life, and drop you in a pit of scum.

Mostly, I aspire to entertain you. Here's hoping I do the job.

JG'S TRADE SECRETS DEPT.
Fig. 1: Here's how I put together a typical shot. First I read through the script and do thumbnail sketches. (Now you know why I didn't draw the whole thing.)	Fig. 2: Initial photo of Bill & Mott, from which I used only Mott's body.	Fig. 3: Background taken at apartment down the street. Note convenient lack of neighbors.	Fig. 4: Bill was enjoying himself a little too much in that first shot, so I put him through some real pain to get just the right grimace. Look on page 8 for the finished picture.