Launch Date
April 2000
T
I wanted to make a “gritty” story about a no-nonsense guy, so I am trying to reproduce that “hardboiled” narration that is the cliché of mystery stories. We’ll see how well I pull it off. I see Jake as a practical existentialist rather than a philosophical one. Of course, the whole story is a little tongue-in-cheek. I want to write him serious—this isn’t slapstick like The Naked Gun--but I’m hoping that the whole thing is somewhat humorous.
That “grittiness” is why the art is a little less precise than usual. I was actually trying to slap this together to give it a rougher feel. I should have known that the slapped-together look takes a lot of work. I’m not really satisfied with the art, but it is in the neighborhood of where I want it to be.
I thought that I’d try to do the whole thing in magic markers; but it turned out that I’ve become spoiled on India ink. Unfortunately, markers just suck. So after outlining the panels in a marker, I went back over them with a brush—c’est la vie. After the slapping on of the inks, it still looked a little too clean, so I took another pass over it with a pen, creating some basic shading and grey tones with stippling and thin lines.
I’m currently thinking that this will be a 3 to 5 page story; but I’m going to try to learn from my last story and try to plan this one out a little better. I hate it because it takes longer, but obviously, it’ll produce a more coherent story. I’m still going to try to come up with it “off the cuff,” but then I’ll polish it up.
Incidently, Jo just caught that I wrote the wrong name on the title. The main character is Jake Shade, not Spade. This is funny because I intentionally named him Shade, because it was easy to confuse with Spade (as in the famous Sam Spade); it was to be a running joke in the strip (as you’ll see in the next few pages). Looks like the joke’s on me. I’ll try to go back and clean it up.
Lauch
Date
May 2000
Notes
As you may be able to tell, I'm trying to stick with the 9-panel grid for this
storyline. That may not seem like such a big deal, but it's a constraint that
is somewhat difficult to manuever. A lot of older comics follow the 9-panel
plan, and it makes for a simpler set up, but trying to stick to the format is
tricky. The nice thing about it is that it forces you to make certain decisions;
for me in particular, I have to figure out how much I can really fit into a
panel and not make it too cluttered. As I've mentioned, I find it difficult
to draw things small. Add on the narration, and the the space gets even smaller.
The other thing that I'm playing with in this story is the images. I'm going less for a moment-to-moment panel transition and more for an image-to-image transition, with each image chosen (hopefully) to produce an emotional or aesthetic response. It's more of a thought piece than an action piece--so I'll linger on these kinds of scenes, whereas others will move more quickly in time.
Admittedly, when I imagined this page, I was was motivated by a desire to draw specific "parts"; that is, I thought it would be funnier to introduce the second character in a series of images, without actually showing the reader the whole character. But hopefully by doing it this way, you also get a lot more. For example, Shade is focusing on particular aspects of the woman--so we get a sense of where his head is. Jo thinks that it is clear what is on Shade's mind, and that the narration is almost irrelevant. I can see her point, but I think that the narration adds a little more than clutter. For example, if Shade sees her lips as the "color of a bloodied fist" hopefully that lets you in a little on his character.
This page came out better than I expected it to, but I'm still trying to find a nicer balance in the shading. I'd like to be able to get the piece down to 3 tones: black, white, and a medium. I think that I'm getting closer to where I want to be, but the whole thing is still a bit cluttered.
Lauch
Date
June 2000