Black Snow Comics

Black Snow: Two Drink Minimum page 21

So we have the start of a new scene, and it’s the cops. Remember when I talked about an improvement in the writing and trying new things. This page is a great example. Why? Because we are basically jumping into the middle of a scene in progress.

Not the most revolutionary idea in the world, I know. In fact it’s often taught that you should trim down the beginning and end of a scene. But it’s big for us. Alex has a tendency to write scenes in a fairly drawn out manner. That’s his natural style and I think it works well for certain things, especially inept mundane comedy scenes. Like the bar we just finished. But here’s something we are trying a lot harder to do this time around: Focus the comedy.

Not every scene needs to be funny. Not every character should evoke amusement in the reader. We really want the comedy to come primarily from Black Snow and his friends, and how clueless they are. For that to really work the people around them should know what’s going on and have their stuff together.

For instance, the cops are being played a lot more seriously this time. Lets talk a moment about the cops in the original comic book. Firstly, they were around for awhile but most readers seemed to ignore or forget them. Why? Probably because their story was slowly built up and not tied too directly to the main story. That is until issue 6 when they became a central focus with the arrival of Redmond and the formation of their team. Then they became interesting.

We wanted to start them interesting this time and jump right into the thick of it. No screwing around. And I’m glad. Brad, whom you see on this page with an as yet unnamed chief of police, was one of my favorite characters that was only just starting to shine when the comic books ended. Hopefully he’ll shine from the beginning here.

I think he’s one of the more complex interesting characters we have, as he’s got a lot going on and some real dimension to him. If you read the original then you know a bit about him and his relationship to other characters, if not wait and it will be revealed in the story. Even if you did read the original you never got to see where we were headed with him and where he’d ultimately end up, and that’s something I really want to get to this time.

I gave him a bit of a redesign here, most notably changing his hair. It’s darker (to make something more clear and natural later in the story) and it’s got a bit more style to it, where his original was kind of a really conservative 70s throwback mixed with a Ken doll. We even had Redmond make a joke about how ordinary it was. I also greyed up the temples a little. His clothes were changed a bit to be more traditional, and I gave him the classic gun shoulder holsters. I really like his almost cliche 50s-esque tough cop aesthetic.

Obviously I chose to play up his angry side here, as he is a man with a definite temper problem. A bit about the chief. I decided to completely redo the character. Funny that he looks a bit like the old chief, but black. The old chief was me drawing Ed Asner. In fact my original design looked so much like him I had to change him to looked different with things like the mustache. This chief is based on a real former Detroit chief of police. A recent chief who resigned in disgrace and controversy, if you’d like to figure it out.

It just so happened that he looked kind of similar to my modified Ed Asner, which I didn’t realize until I was pretty far into drawing the page. As for the office, it’s based on photos I found of real police chief offices, and I really like how it turned out. I love the overall feel, as I think we’re really hitting that classic black and white detective noir look now.

Look for the next page soon, maybe even before APE this weekend!

Ah...If only he waited a few seconds more....

Hello and Konbanwa to Page 6 of I’m Famous in Japan!

This page is part of a updated series written up by Alex, which I’ve had a lot of fun with. The script called for a press conference, pretty much as shown here, but I did play around a little, and threw in some interesting ‘extras’ in the background.

This is a little idea I have lifted from my favorite manga, ‘Love Hina’. Often there you see comedy happening in the background, away from the scene’s relevant cast, and I kind of liked how that worked. The script called for the press-pack to be saddened by Lone Wolf’s Disneyland announcement, but I couldn’t help throwing in that suicidal guy.

Something that also came to me later, was to have him actually go through with it…juuuuust in time, to miss Lone Wolf’s re-announcement. It’s kind of tragic and hilarious all at once. My humour is twisted that way…alas…

Coming up…more Famous Japan parody nonsense! We’re in Japan proper now, and there’s plenty to make fun of!

-Rawr

Ohhh wait…..before I finish.

This weekend is APE! What is APE you ask? APE is the most important thing ever. Nostradamus even wrote about it his Les Propheties, describing how it would unite humanity in peace, with ‘flowings of beer and comic pages’….which is a pretty damn good prediction, since comics weren’t even invented yet.

To witness this, go to San Francisco this Saturday or Sunday, go to the Concourse and find the Black Snow Comics table at APE!

Go to APE! Gooooo to APE! Rawr commands you!

My wonderful fans may have noticed that I’ve been relatively inactive in recent weeks. Shouldn’t this be a time to get super active? We are less than a week from our big appearance at the Alternative Press Expo. Well, I’ll try to pick it up this week with some drawing, hype and fun.

But in case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to instead of spending my time on the internet, it’s been several things really. Chiefly I’ve spent a lot of effort moving into a house. I’ve been apartment living since I started at UC Berkeley in 2005, so it’s very nice to be back in a house, in a decent neighborhood. That being said, it’s a lot of work. The old tenants left me several things to clean up and fix, and I’m still not quite done moving out the small stuff from the old place or cleaning it.

I am mostly done unpacking…my stuff. What I didn’t mention is my family decided to move in with my 77 (or 78, she isn’t sure) year old grandma, and her move (which of course became my move) has been a real bitch. And she has tons left to unpack. Part of the reasons for moving in together was her loneliness, worries of her health, helping both our sides financially, and thinking it would be good for our son (who wouldn’t want a built in babysitter?).

Unfortunately she had a minor stroke on our first night in the house and had to be hospitalized. So that weekend I moved my stuff and hers on Saturday, stuck around the hospital until very late at night, tried to do some unpacking, spent Sunday unpacking and moving the rest of my grandma’s stuff (she has way too much), picked her up from the hospital, went back to unpacking, and I’ve been tired ever since.

It has been a rough adjustment living together, as she has a tendency to get on my nerves and the stroke (and other recent health issues) seem to have really weakened her, making her suddenly very dependent on help.

Besides that, Comcast has been a mess and taken several visits and over a week to still not finish installing/fixing my cable, internet and phone. At least the net seems fixed as of last night. Quite annoying as they seems fairly unorganized and each tech says something different.

In addition I’ve been engrossed with A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Fire and Ice. I’ve really enjoyed reading the series since I received it as a gift for Father’s Day (I never claimed to be a fast reader, and they are long) and talking about the series constantly with super-fan Alex. So I really wanted to get caught up and finish this latest book. I finished it last night. I gotta say, I didn’t love it. The series had a great first book, a damn good second book, an amazing third book, a weak forth book and this fifth book, while a definite improvement over fourth book was still fairly weak. It had a lot of cool parts, to be sure, but overall it felt like not much happened and what did happen wasn’t that good. The latter part of the book was particularly disappointing, as was the way that stories from the fourth were never really advanced much (if at all).

Beyond that, work has been consuming lately, in ways I’d rather not discuss. Oh yeah, and all the new seasons of shows started on TV this week as well.

So there you have my many excuses for my inactivity. I could go on, but hopefully that’s enough for you. It’s enough for me!

Hopefully that will all change starting today.

It’s been a a busy time for making comics. Here are the latest.

So I’ve been busy trying to crank out the rest of that bar scene. And yes, page 20 is the end of it, hopefully that isn’t a spoiler for you. It shouldn’t be. I think it turned out well, and I was able to produce 3 pages in a pretty timely manner.

I worked on 18 and 19 somewhat concurrently, so I was able to finish them on back to back days. So did my zeal to finish them quickly hurt the quality? I don’t think so. Best I’ve ever drawn? Probably not, but I don’t think they’re bad either. In fact there are some things I love about them. I like how this scene was divided into a few smaller scenes at different locations in the bar in these last few pages. It adds something to the overall believability of the world, and makes the scene more exciting/less tedious.

O’Reiley and Eric’s exchange is very much in the vein of the original comic books. Some oddball comedy there. I’m happy we’ll be able to tell more of the Eternal Barkeep’s story this time around, as things were only hinted at and starting to build in the comic books. I think the actual bar area came out looking really good here.

Why whiskey sours? I don’t know. Alex wrote it. I think that is one of his drinks of choice. I’m a Jack and Coke man myself. If I’m feeling a bit more exotic I’ll get a Rum and Coke, or when I really want to sweeten things I’ll White Russian it. The dude abides. I really like the panel looking back over at Black Snow and Elephant Boy in all their stupid glory.

These 3 pages actually smack of the much maligned issue 1, as this is a very similar scene to what took place in the opening scene. I’m not sure if Alex realized that when he wrote it, since he particularly hates issue 1. This may subconsciously be part he enjoyed. Hopefully we did it better this time!

We get the true intro of the Native American superhero Jon Killingbear, who was always a bit of a bro in the original, but I think we are going to play it up even more-so this time around. We also get the re-debut of the much redesigned Lightning Lad. Originally when I first thought about the Lightning Lad character I thought of a Robin looking type. Then I came up with the more bizarre full masked rubber suited, thick goggled electricity themed look that I used. This revamp is sort of a mix of both ideas, plus some inspiration from a character I played in a short high school superhero movie. You can find it on YouTube.

I wanted a more visible face this time and to really emphasize his youth. I really wanted to make a lovable, goodhearted, naive looking little sidekick. Hopefully that comes through. I think it is an improvement that will ultimately benefit the story.

So this was the big opening bar scene (I’m sure they’ll be several more). What do I hope readers take away from it? That Black Snow and his friends are inept. They’re just some goofy clueless working-class smucks surrounded by a dangerous city. Hopefully this will become more obvious as we get to juxtapose them against more characters in other scenes.

Speaking of, a big inspiration for trying to hurry to finish the scene is that I’m really excited for the scenes to come. I think they are Alex’s best writing. I’ve always felt he was a good writer, but he definitely has some quirks that I could see how some people would dislike. I think people will find that he has made a very strong effort to improve and will see scenes, tones and pacing like we’ve never done before.

It’s easy to see when an artist improves in comics, but a much more subtle thing when a writer steps things up, so I really wanted to call some attention to it and give him props. I don’t really want to get specific as I don’t want to give anything away, but I’ll discuss it more once the scenes are done.

While I’m giving props, Mark “Rawr” Egan continues to surpass my expectations and turn each page of I’m Famous in Japan! into something great. The way Alex writes usually focuses mostly on dialogue and gives the artist a lot of freedom as to what to show visually. I find it fascinating to see what Rawr does with his writing versus what I would have done. He thinks of things in a different way and comes up with really funny stuff. I love the style.

I think it’s really impressive the way he handles the punchlines. As I’ve said before, Alex isn’t a punchline guy. He isn’t really even a comic strip guy. I think that’s part of what makes his comic strips so unique. Rawr finds a way to make these punchlines a bit more traditional while still keeping the unique spirit of the strip intact.

Lastly, you’ll notice a picture up there of a stack of 200 of our APE mini-comics. They turned out really well and I think that are going to get us some buzz at the show. We’re working on getting all the other products ready, and we have a few surprises planned. So get excited and hopefully we’ll see you there.

I also find standing tedious. Get me one of those floating chairs from WallE!

Hello and welcome to the next page of I’m Famous in Japan!

We’ve now reached Japan proper, and this page is pretty much as scripted. I really did want to make this airport scene a bit fancier, but after looking at photos of Tokyo Narita airport, and found it to be a very generic looking airport. The top left panel is heavily based on one of those photos, and as you can see Narita is mostly made of boxes. Having traveled through Asia, I usually encountered weird and wonderful airports with crazy curved designs and glass all over the place. Thus it’s kind of disappointing to see Narita look so…well normal. That isn’t a very big deal though, since most airports tend look identical on the inside, and thus we have the very sterile looking travelator corridor that dominates the page.

I guess if I got that neon effect in, that panel wouldn't be so boring.

This picture inspired the whole travelator idea

The final pun came to me last-minute. The script called for Lone Wolf to sit on the floor, all annoyed with the idea of standing. Then I thought: ‘What is the most thick-headed jerk thing a person could do here?’ And so the image of Lone Wolf sitting on the travelator’s exit came to me. I’ve actually encountered jerks like this in the past, just standing that the end of these things while a large crowd approached. My typical solution for them would be to just plow right through! I don’t know how that would work with LW….

In Japan

Finally, a sort of weird side note. This page has broken one of my personal ‘Cardinal Rules for Western Manga-style Comics’. These are rules I made up a lone time ago to ensure I didn’t fall into some of the pitfalls of other similar artists. I’m Famous in Japan breaks Cardinal Rule No.1, which is: ‘Never set your in comic in Japan!’ Sounds kind of strict doesn’t it? There’s a reason for this rule.

I have seen a lot of Western Manga-style comic artists throw in a whole load of time, effort and talent into a comic, only to set it in Japan….you know…just like the few hundred thousand Manga that are produced yearly in Japan itself. I feel that it’s a massive waste to just copy that. If you are from a country other than Japan, you really aught to inject your own culture and settings into a comic…or at very least not copy the Japanese right down to their location! It’s nearly pointless! And so, I have this rule.

I’m Famous in Japan! is an exception to my made-up rules, since it’s a parody and collaboration comic. The fact that Lone Wolf is even in Japan is main joke of the whole series, and so I really like the idea of bring in this particular comic to Japan. Also, I do like making fun of the very genre I use in my comics. Some people can take Anime/Manga a little too seriously, and it’s refreshing to make fun of it.

Coming soon (I hope) Page 6!

-Rawr