Black Snow Comics

Black Snow: Two Drink Minimum page 50

Curtis Redmond likes to run his mouth!  And in case you were wondering and couldn’t tell, he is a black man, something easier to depict now that I can give him skin tone (though all you get is his hands here).  I think he is one of Alex’s favorite characters to write for, and he finds his voice fairly easily.

I like the idea of people being dressed up (except for Gus) for this meeting.  Seeing Redmond in a suit is funny to me.  I also thought it would be kind of interesting if his hair was so shaggy that it hung over his collar, dehumanizing him a bit more.  You might wonder where the dog ends and the man begins.  Wait for the nude scene I guess (not really!).  I picture it creeping down his back and chest a little, then being a normal man from there.

Imagine having a dog head and trying to live a normal life.  Kissing a woman!  Just gross and upsetting (and something I suggested we explore to Alex).  No wonder he is such a grump.

So yeah, more attempts at realism here.  The brad close-up at the end is actually the first thing I drew in this scene.  I wanted to really capture a quiet smoldering intensity as he listened to his outrageous new boss and his extreme stance on capes.  I like to start with the panels that I can envision the easiest and push the challenges back til last.

I tried something different with that profile shot of Redmond on the bottom left.  More of a stylized silhouette that I’m really happy with the way it turned out.  I want to keep doing more like that.

Kind of a lot of swearing in this scene.  And that panel marks our first drop of the f-bomb, something Alex has pushed for since Issue 3, and I always fought against (even just changing it when I drew the page without telling him).  It just takes things to a level I didn’t want to go to.  But I thought it was fitting now and goes well with our current tone.

You can’t write something for your grandparents to read forever, which was actually a legitimate concern of mine.  What can I say, I’m a family oriented guy who tries to honor the good name.  But that can get in the way of art, and I’ve read it’s a bad attitude to have.  So fuck it!  Sorry, Grandpa.

I guess my son won’t be reading this anytime soon.

Plus we’ve already had characters calling each other faggots, and I think once you’ve crossed that line swearing rules kind of go out the window.  Not that I want a lot of casual swearing, that is a crutch of poor writing and I don’t ever want to be a part of that.

On a different subject, this is page 50!  This story is really moving along, and I think we’ve done a lot in those 50.  As much as we could have/wanted to?  I don’t know.  It’s a pretty significant landmark in our story telling though.  The longest fully continuous story we’ve done to this point was the 40 page Issue 5, which was mostly a big fight that I choreographed mixed with some key points and dialogue Alex had written.  So this is pretty different.

It is a whole different challenge writing and drawing a longer story like this.  How far are we?  I don’t know, because it is not all written yet, so of course it isn’t laid out.  I do know the majority of what we have left to tell story-wise, and I’d guess we are around the halfway point.  Alex optimistically thinks we are quite a bit further than that, but I’m pretty sure he’s wrong.  I’m also pretty sure we won’t be done in time for the convention in May, but I’ll still try.

I will say this, things are about to pick up in excitement and pace very soon, so we are almost done with the set up phase.

Oh, and fans of the original, don’t worry, it is not just going to be a rehash of the comic book’s story.  That would be boring for you and us.  We’ve gotten plenty of fun surprises in store!

Black Snow: Two Drink Minimum page 49

So here he is, Detective Redmond! In case you didn’t figure it out, he was the one speaking to the group of police officers on the last page. Alex wrote this as a very fairly detailed splash page, and I think I drew it very closely to what he described.

Why a splash page in the middle of the story?  I didn’t ask, but I imagine it is for maximum impact for readers seeing the dog-headed Detective for the first time.  Why does he have a dog head?  I imagine you’ll find out at some point, but for now all you have to know he is obviously a freak who would fit in with the superhero/villain world, but has chosen to become a cop.  Something that is pretty much unheard of in this world and upsets both cops and capes alike.  Oh, and he’s a hotshot from Chicago, so there’s another reason for Detroit cops to dislike him.

In case you did not know, Detroit and Chicago are big rival towns in many sports.  NFL, NBA, NHL (Detroit’s (aka Hockey Town’s) big thing), MLB, collegiate; it’s safe to say these two cities have a grudge.  Not to mention the old school waring gangsters who controlled the cities during prohibition.  Beyond sports and gangs, the cities have a lot in common as far as history, culture and geography.  Of course Detroit has seen more of a fall, so they have even more reason to dislike a city they were at one point evenly matched with.

I attempted to continue my more realistic approach here, as you can see with the chief on the right versus his depiction in the earlier scene with Brad (though there is clearly some minimalism here as well).  Detroit Mock City fans should know who he is based on.  The lieutenant on the left is based on someone real as well, but no one too famous, so I doubt you’ll figure that one out.

And Detective Redmond is based on a particular breed of dog this time, the dog most associated with police work, the German Shepherd.  I thought it was fitting.  Alex suggested we really emphasize his ferocity and make him even scarier this time around, so I thought realistically depicting his freakishness and given him a mean dog look would do the trick.  And I’m very happy with the results.

My wife, who is dog groomer, thought I really nailed the breed.  If you were wondering, my original character design in the comic book was not really based on a breed.  It was a mixture of the Egyptian god of the dead Anubis, who had a human body and a jackal head, mixed with some classic cartoon depictions of dogs (like Scooby Doo).

I really like Redmond, and I know Alex loves him.  He is loud, long winded, gruff and kind of a prick.  Even more-so this time around.  But he is also highly entertaining, and I love his character interactions.  I look forward to seeing him mix it up with more characters this time around.

We’ve always wanted to get him in a conversation with the Lone Wolf, so maybe that’ll happen someday!

Detroit Mock City 10 - Rise from the Ashes

The tenth, and final Detroit Mock City created for the Cartoonist Studio contest. Feel free to click the image to view it in full size.

We wanted to end our submission for the contest (and possibly the last comic in this series) on a positive note, and say something inspiring about Detroit.

That’s what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know how.  We were trying to think of one of Detroit’s unique beauties we could show, like a nice sunset over a distinctly Detroit landmark or something.  Then I thought about all the hauntingly beautiful photos I had seen of some amazing abandoned buildings, particularly one with plant growth in them.

I brought it up to Alex and we both agreed a plant growing out of the rubble would be a perfect metaphor.  So I selected the photo that I thought best captured the idea of hope growing.

The next hurdle was to figure out what the comic would say.  We tried finding positive, fitting quotes about Detroit from some of it’s prominent residents, then just from anyone famous, and we had a hard time.  There were a lot of negatives quotes, and any positive ones just weren’t a fit.

As we were about to give up on it and take a break to write some TDM I asked Alex “Does Detroit have an official city motto?”  Well, he looked it up and we realized we had just had a serendipitous moment.  The motto couldn’t have been anymore fitting if we wrote it ourselves.  After that the rest of the comic was a snap.

So if this is the last we see of old Homeless Happy I can at least be proud that we gave him a proper send off.  Hopefully my drawing in the final panel captured the true beauty of these majestic trees growing out from the floor of this epic old abandoned building, which I assume was a library, with the middle tree even growing all the way up through the hole in the ceiling.

And hopefully this series brought you some joy and gave you a better of appreciation for Detroit.

Black Snow: Two Drink Minimum page 48

So we finally get back to the cop storyline briefly touched upon earlier in the Brad scene. In the original comic book the cops had some play throughout, but they didn’t really get interesting (for me) until they became a central focus in Issue 6 and Detective Redmond arrived. Well, this time around we wanted to kick-start that plot-line.

We never got to see a lot of it play out the first time around, so I’m glad we get this 2nd shot at it. Of course in this Black Snow centric story the cops aren’t exactly taking central focus, but it is a long term story that will have plenty of time to play out. And it’s actually become one of my favorite parts of the overall story since it adds a lot of different tones and perspectives.

So here we are at the Detroit Police Department, back with Brad, and some new (and redesigned old) characters, and a mysterious off-screen speaker. Fans of the original may be able to guess who it is based on the verbose, overbearing, grim tone.

Alex gave me more direction in this scene than usual, describing more specifically what we see and don’t see.  He thought he might have gotten a bit to ambitious, but I think he did a fine job, and it was an interesting change of pace for me.

So we have all these new characters being shown without really being introduced.  I can only wonder what a first time reader will make of this group intro.  Even old fans won’t recognize all these faces.

Speaking of faces, you might have noticed I drew things (and “inked” them) in a bit of a different way.  A bit more realistic, especially the close up of Brad.  Why?  Because I’m always trying to improve my art, and because I thought things should slowly and continually get more real as the story gets more dark and intense.  I especially thought the cops should be portrayed that way to provide added contrast.

You might wonder, could I have always drawn it this way, or did I just get a lot “better” really quickly?  A bit of both really.  I know how to draw cartoons and I know how to draw figures, and sometimes I like to vary which style I’m leaning towards.

Not that I’m some great who knows it all and can just come up with any image with ease.  Quite the contrary.  What you see here is the result of studying several graphic novels I’ve recently read, reading a book about human anatomy for artists, closely looking at a book of referential facial feature photographs, browsing a book on lighting (I’ll buy it at some point), and staring at a ton of photographs and drawings on the internet.

Also, in case you forgot my unwritten rule, I hate virtually everything I draw after about two or three weeks.  So when I looked back at the earlier Brad scene and Issue 6 for character designs I was, of course, disappointed/disgusted with my prior efforts (which I thought were pretty good until I looked back at them now).  As always I used my self loathing to spur myself on towards improvement.  I figure if you are going to be negative, try to do it in a positive way.

So while I’m sure in a month’s time I’ll look back at this page and cringe, but for the time being I’m happy with it.

Of (possibly) interesting note, I drew the pages for this scene completely out of order, working on them all simultaneously.  It’s an approach I haven’t done much of for awhile, lately doing things page by page.  But having the luxury of (relative) time I prefer to plot and draw the scene as a whole.

Something else interesting about the writing here, is that we are explaining the “world” and it’s history a lot more than I think we ever have.  We haven’t usually been very good about fleshing out and explaining the “rules” of our superheroes and their powers or things like that, mostly because I think Alex isn’t particularly interested in/devalues those more traditional superhero comic book elements.

So it is something rather special to see him tackle a scene like this and establish things more.  I know it was a challenge for him and he spent some real time coming up with it.

1st Runner Up.  That’s right, Black Snow: Two Drink Minimum gets the silver. 

It happened fairly quietly, and I haven’t seen the Washington Post follow up on the story yet, but when the polls closed on March 30th at midnight Black Snow beat out 18 of the biggest webcomics around in one of the nation’s most prominent newspapers, with a whopping 20% of the vote.

Yes, we lost to Homestuck, who had a staggering 47% of the vote to be crowned #1, but we came in higher than Penny Arcade, XKCD, Girl Genius, Hark! A Vagrant, Wapsi Square, Something Positive, The Oatmeal, Wondermark, Schlock Mercenary, Battlepug, Cyanide and Happiness, Dresden Codak, Girls With Slingshots, Gunshow, Least I Could Do, Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-Boiled Shaman, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and Questionable Content.

The number 3 comic, Girl Genius, only had 7% of the votes.  So while we technically lost this poll, I’d call it a resounding victory.  Our fans slowly kept voting until the poll closed, while most others quit after a few days.  Much like our adopted home town of Detroit, we fought and clawed our way up, refusing to just roll over and die.

Remember my famous/infamous “we need this win” speech?  Well, we really did.  And I think for a comic that didn’t really exist one year ago to be ranked number 2 by a media juggernaut like the Wash Post is a pretty big win.  We’re somebodies with some laurels we can rest on now instead of nobodies who’ve achieved nothing.

I’m sure the poll means little to Homestuck and the other larger published comics, but it means a lot to us.  And I thank our rabid, crazy, stupid fan base for all the votes.

In the long run does it really change anything?  I don’t know, it might give us some bragging rights and clout when it comes time to market and publish TDM or one of our other comics.  In the immediate has it had major impact?  Not really.  More people know who we are and more visitors are checking out the site.  But at the end of the day we are still just a couple of poor guys with day jobs chasing a far off dream.

And once again, thank you for helping us get that much closer to achieving the dream.