First color page....ever!

So page one is done.

 

It took forever to touch up and color the original art and then combine it with letters pulled from scans of the printed comic. Working with the art I did back in 1999 for hour upon hour, you get to know it well. Sometimes I wanted to high five my 20-year-old self for awesomeness. Other times, I wanted to take the hot tube time machine back to my youth and slug young Todd for being a moron. 

 

Before this, I drew everything free hand with just pencil, so doing my first inked comic with straight lines, lined up items, etc, well, lets just say it required lots of touch ups. Later pages will be easier in that regard, at least, as I got better. 

 

I had lots of technical challenges and problems I had to overcome, which I'm going to have to find better solutions for to speed up the process. I'll go into detail on that in future blogs.    

 

Right now, I'll just say it was a lot of fun to do and a thrill to see completed.

 

I won't be posting the full completed page every time, but I've always liked this one. One thing that I forgot to put that will be added, is a word balloon running across the top of the first panel saying "Sometime in the late 90s..."

 

To put the page in context, the story begins with a couple pages of television footage (remember when TVs were that shape?), flipping through coverage of a high school massacre and a series of talking heads using it to promote their issues. Then on page 3, we see Stickboy turn off the TV and go home from college for the weekend and the real story begins.  

 

This particular story is inspired by the aftermath of the Columbine tragedy, and the media and special interest feeding frenzy that followed, with Stickboy and Psychoboy caught up in a world of censorship and paranoia. It's humor with a bit of depth, but it's still pretty wacky, featuring a light gun game with mutant space chickens, an action figure of OJ Simpson, a bazooka, a crazy clown and more 90s references than you can shake a Clerks laser disc at.

 

So without further ado, page one...