The Cover, Part 1: Gah! Color!

The colored cover art.

So the cover I posted yesterday was my first step towards turning my old college class project into the first story in my online comic series.

The first story is about my protagonists, Stickboy and Psychoboy, feeling like the whole country has turned on them. So, of course, I had to have Uncle Sam going on a rampage for the cover. The drawing of crazy Uncle Sam is a homage to the amazing cover to Batman #451 by the incredible Norm Breyfogle that has Joker shooting bats with a Gatling gun. I kept the Gatling gun cause it seemed more appropriate than when I drew Uncle Sam with an Uzi (well, "appropriate" being a relative term here...).

The cover, like the rest of the comic, was originally intended to be black and white. I never thought about color at the time, nor did I miss it. I was used to doing black and white comics. All my high school comics and character sketches had just been No. 2 pencils on white paper.

Black and white was chosen for the comic because it was intended for print, and color costs a helluva lot more than grayscale, especially if you're dealing with little print shops. But on the internet, obviously color is free, so I've decided to go full color on it.

Color completely shifts how you think about the art and becomes part of the storytelling. You have to figure out what type of blue does a crazy Uncle Sam wear. What time of day is he shooting at our heroes? And what color are those damn bricks?

Mind you. there are a few color images here and there of Stickboy and his pals, but those were just character shots for promotional images. Doing it in the context of a whole image that tells a story is completely different. This is the first time I've colored part of an actual comic. Doing a real comic image of Stick and Psycho in color made me alternate between orgasmic joy and my brain wanting to snap in two.

I'm pretty happy with the results, though since it's online it'll look different on every monitor you look at it on, which will no doubt drive me nuts. I may tweak some of the colors before the end, these things are always subject to inspiration up until they're published.

So I welcome the brave new world of color for the series. After all, how else would I have found out Psychoboy had such dreamy blue eyes?