First Draught: The Test

Launch Date
Launch 6b: June 1999

Concept
This was another joke that I came up with during some boring meeting.  I sketched out most of the panels on a sheet of paper that I was supposed to be taking notes on.  I had mostly all of the question panels sketched out in little boxes (maybe 1” x 1”, but no real consistency) in no particular order.

This is basically an excuse to insult beers that I don’t like.  I have a couple of jokes to that effect, so I came up with the “series” called “First Draught” which denotes both the roughness of the joke as well as a slight pun on draft beer.

Admittedly, the whole thing seemed funnier when I was first working on it.

Layout
Decided to go with the no gutter approach in order to squeeze as much info as possible on the page.  I actually think it turned out okay, although it is a bit rough.  The title was done on a separate page and then glued on.

Putting it Together
This comic just kept getting darker and darker the more I worked on it.  It started out fairly light and sketchy, and I just kept applying more and more black.  Hopefully, it isn’t overwhelming.  The piece isn’t meant to be “dark” in the metaphorical sense.

Inking
Done mostly with a pen or marker.  I used a to create the “Ask Doctor Hops” subtitle.  It didn’t turn out as clearly as I had hoped.

Reproduction
The white “Ask Dr. Hops” title didn’t come through as well as I had hoped.

Tools

What People are Saying About

First Draught #1

Mark Sez:

1^st Drought (I sort of combined the good-needs work sections which I don’t like to do but I think it kind of flowed here.)

1-      I thought there was some good art here specifics include Dr. Hops, his magnified face in Q: #7, the bathroom and the “Hey Kids, Drink me” monster who had me rolling. (PS I thought your US was very good in this one J Happy now, bitch?!) There were some minor setbacks with bottle shapes in Q#4,5, the background of the opening and the 2 drinkers at the end looked a little off.

2-      I thought the humor here was good and it is about time someone stuck it too the beer industry. Their stupidity craves insulting and I’m just glad you did it because it was well done. I did feel that you could have reorder the questions e.g. the first one was too sharp and it should have been 4 or 5 so as to have a nice build up to the bigger and bigger insults.

3-      I thought the questions themselves were very interesting and insightful and I liked the humor of the adding up point to get a rating of shittiness. I was thrown by the “-“ in front of the numbers and felt that if you don’t have positive numbers then don’t have negative ones.

4-      I felt the pacing and flow of the piece was also quite nice and worked well for me. On the down side I did think it looked a little crowed, probably because there was so much in each panel that the lack of borders made it seem crowed.

As a side note the title and signature were very well done.