Black Snow in front of Detroit's Fist of a Champion
“Every man’s got to figure to get beat sometime…Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” -Joe Louis
Those are actually two real quotes by Joe Louis. I had to take a moment away from my vacation to address this guest art by Sean Harrington. It is really a beautiful drawing of Black Snow lighting up a cig in front of Detroit’s monument to Joe Louis, the Fist of a Champion. Take some time to read Sean’s always sexy and exciting comic, Spying With Lana.
This picture really is quite stunning and iconic. He really nailed the tone and feel of the comic in a way that I’ve always struggled to do. Honestly, I’m jealous of this one. I wish I had made it. It will be great fuel to inspire me to push forward.
Of course Black Snow didn’t quite start out as the gritty, urban Detroit drama it has evolved into, but this image represents where I see things heading. As time’s gone on I’ve tried to work more of Detroit’s real settings into the comic and push things towards a darker, urban tone. I think you really start seeing it halfway through Issue 4. You’ll definitely see it in the Black Snow graphic novel, Last Call, which drawing should begin on very shortly.
So bravo Sean, you’ve outdone yourself. And if you ever want to work on a lengthier Black Snow story just let me know, because clearly you could do great things with it.
Sorry, no bizarre yet fitting lyric quote wittily mis-attributed to someone or something today. I’m short on time and energy. I’ll be starting my approximately 8 hour drive to San Diego with my family early tomorrow morning, for a nice extended weekend vacation.
What to say about this comic? One interesting thing to note, it’s the last one I have written. I still don’t know if I’m going to be continuing as writer or if Alex will be back. Also, I don’t know where we’re taking the story next, which is exciting. If you recall, I started writing to allow Alex more time to work on finishing the Black Snow graphic novel, Last Call. You may also remember that his deadline for a rough draft is tomorrow! Will he make it? I doubt it, though I have seen him writing it lately. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Anyway, I really like this one. It’s been too long since we’ve seen Nicole, and I thought this would be a fun way to bring her back. Btw, my wife is a Starbucks employee, so that probably had some bearing on me choosing that as a charming and modern profession for a lady. I like Nicole’s rapport with Daniel here, as they never really interacted much before, what with Daniel being all strung out on the plane. Oh, my wife says I got the look and feel of Starbucks right this time, as before it look more like a generic restaurant. I guess she would know.
I think this one looks really good, as I spent some time working on the setting. I also think the word bubbles and font have come along nicely. I really like the two close up panels in the middle, that show some emotion from both characters. It easy has a snazzy punchline! What more could you ask for.
I grace you on this holy day, as I am told it is of some significance. My people inform me that we are celebrating the grave robbing of the Jesus of old by allowing rabbits to hide eggs in our homes and give candies to our children. What utter nonsense! I love it!
What next, we disembowel the Reverend Billy Graham and celebrate by dressing our dogs as cats! You silly street urchins are so odd, with your strange customs and ridiculous traditions. Oh how I loathe all your filthy ways.
It has come to my attention that my reality show I’m Famous! has recently exceeding 100 episodes, or some such gobbly goop. 103? Why am I only being told now? Where was my fanfare and celebrations? I demand celebrations!
It warms my heart to see that these strange drawing men have taken to paying me tribute by depicting my unflawed form and visage, though I wonder why they are all so bad at it? It must be difficult for such flawed men to depict perfection. Just take a photograph, fools!
The tabloids have covered the story of some inter-nerds speaking ill of me on their podcast? What the devil is a podcast?! Some nerd language? What trash these uncultured swine speak! I know not whom they think they are speaking to, but these nerd fellows had best watch themselves, lest I give them the thrashing of a lifetime!
So go forward and enjoy finding your disgusting hidden ground treats, eating your chocolate Jesuses, and throwing your colored bunny born eggs. I will not participate in such uncouth and bizarre behavior. Instead I will finish reading this hilarious book, as its lies and fantasies do so entertain me!
I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on, Running on-running on empty, Running on-running blind, Running on-running into the sun, But I’m running behind, Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive, Trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive – The US Economy
This was a fun one, and I was able to get a lot of my drawing mojo back. Not totally, and I still went through the redrawing a bunch of the lines things. But not as bad. Those rounded word bubbles didn’t take me as long either, and I think they look pretty good! In case you’ve never done a rounded word bubble working in Photoshop and were wondering what the big deal is, well for me it’s just that the oval shape lends itself to taking up too much space, especially vertically. This problem grows exponentially when you increase the width, due to the nature of the shape. My simple, elegant solution? I chopped off the top and bottom of these shapes with a straight rectangle on the larger ovals.
The font has really grown on me, and I think it looks even better here now that I increased the size and adjusted the vertical spacing. In case you’re wondering where I got this and other fonts, I got them free at http://www.blambot.com/ for free!
I did my coloring the same way as I described on the last Black Power post. It took awhile. I think next time I’ll try the technique Rawr suggested, using the polygonal lasso to color in those stupid fill bucket gaps.
I’d like to share something with you that happened while drawing this comic, that I hopes demonstrates my passion and love for drawing these comics. First off, this comic, like many others, was started at about 5AM, because that’s my main free time. I work full time, like to spend time with my wife, and have a fairly demanding almost 3 year old son. So waking up early is the best chance I get to draw. Yesterday I got the nice option to leave work a little early, my wife and son weren’t home yet, and I wanted to bust this out. It had been a demanding day and I had to continue dealing with work emails as I drew, but I got home and got straight to drawing. I drew until I literally fell asleep because I was so tired.
That is something that I don’t remember ever happening before, or maybe once before. I’m a lot of things, but no one’s ever accused me of being lazy. I’m a pretty driven, determined and organized guy. So it’s not like I just lazily settled down for my daily nap or something. I very rarely nap. I literally drew until I couldn’t hold my eyes open, and later woke up still sitting on my couch with my laptop and tablet in front of me, and my stylus in my hand. Oh, and when I woke up I finished drawing.
So if anyone ever says I don’t care or try hard enough, well they’re dead wrong. Drawing funny little pictures ain’t as easy as you might think.
One last thing I’d like to address, since I just can’t seem to let it go, is a few more thoughts I had on that Digital Strips poodcast review. Firstly, if drawing really polished detailed realistic art is the main criteria for being a great webcomic as they’ve suggested (and nothing to do with the tone, theme, humor, writing, or having a different art style) then how do they explain the success of the most famous webcomic of all, XKCD? Also, why did they earlier in the show praise Peanuts Minus Snoopy, a self admittedly blatant Garfield Minus Garfield ripoff by the way. It doesn’t contain any original art, and is only based entirely on the humor of distorting those original comics. And if were talking classic comic strips, where was this great, realistic art in some of the greatest strips of all time, like my inspirations The Far Side or Calvin and Hobbes. Hell, where is it in most strips? Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Peanuts (which they specifically said was one of the best in the podcast), Pickles, Monty, Blondie, Get Fuzzy, or any other number of famous successful strips had cartoonish looking characters with little backgrounds and no accurate perspective. It’s a ridiculous criteria they’ve applied to me. This was said in the show, but even more directly during our email exchanges.
Which brings me to my final point. They seem to make a big deal about the fact that I use a full page comic strip format, so that makes I’m Famous! somehow a comic book and it should be judged under those standards (they alluded to it in the show and said it directly to me in email). Huh? It’s a full page comic strip. They aren’t that uncommon online. Each page is meant to be able to be read as a self contained joke. Yeah, they’re funnier and make more sense if you read them all in order, but so do all sequitur comic strips. It would be ridiculous for me to try to use the same storytelling elements (like the much harped on camera angles) to a format that only allows for a “story” to be told on a single page.
Yeah, again like most sequential comics there are over arching story elements, but it still a single page format. Where were all these much lauded story telling elements, panel variations and camera angles in those famous strips I mentioned above? Were they all bad comics because they almost always had the characters facing the camera (an actual criticism described to me in the email when I asked how exactly my shots were all the same)?
Let me make this as clear as possible to the boys at Digital Strips and anyone else confused: I’M FAMOUS! IS A COMIC STRIP, NOT A COMIC BOOK! Notice how the title and date appear at the bottom of every page? That’s a clue. It was never meant to be a comic book.
If you want to see me do a comic book with an emphasis on storytelling elements go read Black Snow. That IS a comic book. Soon that will be a graphic novel, where you’ll get even more story telling.
Now why would I have to explain this to Digital Strips? It’s the second word in your 2 word name! You should know what a comic strip is to be able to critique one!
Ugh.
Now listen to a classic that describes my level for dealing with this nonsense.
Take a look at that beautiful poster for the Lone Wolf Begins by my man Mark “Rawr” Egan. While you’re at it check out his awesome comic Back Office. Rawr, you’re quickly becoming my favorite man in this crazy webcomic community.
I love this poster and wanted to put the original Batman Begins poster up so you can see the attention to the point of reference in the drawing. I like to include homages (or blatant imitations) to classic photos, comic panels or movie scenes/shots in my drawing whenever possible (go back and see if you can spot any, especially in Black Snow (hint, issue 2 has an extended one)), so I can appreciate the work that went into this. It also really catches the I’m Famous! vibe. Read that tag line at the top! Also take a moment to read the bottom credits. All good stuff.
I like what he did with the Lone Wolf here, especially extending the mask piece down the bridge of the nose. Also capturing the cleft chin and way he made the hair make sense are great. The hair kind of reminds me of an 80s rocker.
The wolves are funny too. We’ve never put any effort into explaining why he is the Lone Wolf, or what he has to do with wolves, much like we don’t really explain much I guess. Apparently he has wolf powers though, as that’s what I wrote in his character description so many years ago! The big joke has always been that the Lone Wolf is almost never alone, and has a sidekick named the Wolf Pack. Over the course of drawing Famous I have tried to incorporate wolf like fangs into the character, which I’m really happy about.
I really like the mask here, and the symbol created from it. Just seeing the Lone Wolf get any kind of serious treatment is hilarious. I think I may have to continue with this idea of inserting him into parody posters, as it’s so fun and fits with the whole Famous theme (in fact two recent comics had a movie poster for a Black Snow movie and the amazing Skate Goat movie).
Strange to see the Lone Wolf with a cape. Out of all the heroes I draw I think only 2 have capes, one is a lazy fat pig and the other one of them is dead now (rest in piece Lightning Lad). Not sure why. I could see the Lone Wolf wearing one. That could be a story about him getting one to be flashier. Hell, we have a tentative future storyline about him wearing hot pants!
So to sum up, I love seeing other artists interpret the characters I created, and Rawr did a spectacular job here.
Now take a look at an amazing clip from the original Batman movie, which the Lone Wolf could have fit right in.
