Chim Chum and the Page 4

Another deceptively complex page with a large amount of layers that took some real time to create. One of the reasons it keeps taking so long is the fact that I’m basically trying to treat each panel like a unique picture as much as possible, more-so than probably ever before. What do I mean by that? I’m trying to make each panel as different as possible to give energy and a proper sense of mood to what could otherwise be a fairly dull, overly serious or much more comedic scene.

I think through the drawing and writing we’ve already done a decent job of setting a tone that is pretty gritty, while still maintaining the quirky weirdness and bizarre humor that made the original comic books enjoyable. I think going too far in any one direction is a mistake, and we’re striking a good balance.

As for the overall scene so far…man, Black Snow is a mess. What an intro to a loser. I really like it.

This particular page very much has the feel of the original comic, pretty much throughout with the odd dialogue exchanges. It also has a few panels that are fairly “classic”; Black Snow thinking about what he thought Lightning Man’s name was and the final panel with Mary speaking as if he is an idiot. A funny thing about that last panel, it was not written that way, it is the beginning of a longer dialogue, I just thought it really worked to split it that way.

Now lets look at this awesome piece of guest art.

I really love what Adrian did here. He captured the personality of the Lone Wolf while somehow making him more cartoonish and heroic at the same time. I also really like his approach on the hair and costume. The blue highlights instead of my white is something I’ve always wanted to try, and was in fact experimenting with last month when we were considering making Black Snow a color title. The idea of the gloves and underwear is awesome, as my approach has been to treat it more like skin than a costume. Honestly, in some ways I think he’s outdone me here, and I may have to steal some elements from this.

My wife commented that it reminded her of the Tick, which is funny since that character is obviously a source of inspiration for me in all aspects of our comics and the Lone Wolf character, like in that skin/costume thing I just mentioned.

So next it is my turn to do some guest art for Adrian’s comic Chim Chum and the Portly Samurai, which you can read at http://www.chimchum.com/ Hopefully I’ll be able to do him justice and repay his efforts. We’ll see!

After that I promise I will do the next Famous that I’ve been putting off. It’s been sitting fully laid out, just waiting. I really wanted to get Two Drink Minimum firmly established first and not lose any of my momentum on the project. I guess after 4 pages and a cover I feel I’ve done that, though I’ll really feel it once the first scene is complete.

It will be interesting to see how it feels to jump back into drawing a bright and cheery Famous after spending some time in Black Snow’s dark and gloomy world.