Cartoonist Goes to Hell Line Art

Someone asked me about buying the original art for the "Cartoonist Goes To Hell" back cover from Dork. I told them it wasn't for sale because it's not a complete page, there's only the title and the first panel along with two figures. I wouldn't know how to price it, and I have the dumb idea that I'd like to trace off the first panel and recreate the other panels.

I have a lot of originals -- full pages and Fun Strips -- that are missing elements. I don't work digitally but in some cases Sarah can "clone" or duplicate panels and elements so I don't have to redraw everything. I used to draw every Fun Strip title panel by hand, including the recurring features like Myron, Phil the Disco Skinhead, The Man Upstairs, etc. At some point Sarah began dropping in the logos to save me some time.

The "Cartoonist Goes to Hell" comic is one of the earliest examples that I can remember where I planned a page with clones panels like you can see above. I still often trace a repeated panel by hand on the board because I'm not crazy about the mechanical aspect of cloning entire panels. Sometimes it works as a beat just fine, but it appears lifeless and, often, synthetic, and it sometimes takes me out of the reading experience. Especially with some digitally-drawn comics where -- depending on the artist -- I'm hyper-aware of the digital look and feel. That being said, there's nothing inherently wrong about repeating a panel mechanically or digitally, it's just my personal tastes and slight OCD tendencies in action. Most times I just "have" to trace off the panel I need repeated and draw the other panel, usually with a few slight changes if it makes sense.

That wasn't the case here, the gag meant keeping that background stiff. Repeating backgrounds with new art dropped over it, like animation cels, bothers me less than cloning an entire panel. These panels were a bit much to repeat by hand, there's so much detail and my linework would vary across the rest of the page and the panels would "wobble" a bit. Or maybe not. A lot of cartooning is dealing with your idiosyncrasies. Some of them get transferred to the page, some keep things from the page.

Recently I sold several pages from Dork #7, including the cover and the final page. Both were missing elements, the cover needed a question mark added where, in print, it was cloned from another and dropped into the art. The last page had a panel that was cloned except for a small figure. When someone asks about buying a page that is missing a panel or elements, I offer to recreate the missing art (for an additional fee) so the page looks as it did in the printed comic. For this customer I did so. But there's no way I have the time to recreate the missing backgrounds for this page to be "finished". Maybe someday.

Print is the main thing, always, but I keep the lights on with the Patreon and selling original art. Sometimes I do extra work pre-print because I know I'm going to sell the page (or try to sell it). It's an internal tug of war depending on time and how the arm's doing.

Speaking of time and the arm, I have to get back to that WIP cover. I've been inking it along with a commission and starting some new Fun Strips for the site. It's detailed and a bit of a hand-cruncher but I've been enjoying working on it. I'll be updating about it here sometime this week once it's done (well, mostly done -- I still have to draw a title and do some minor lettering).

Colors/digital assembly/toy erasure in panel four by Sarah Dyer