Maxim U.K. -- Dirty Harry #2 (2005)

The second and last of the Dirty Harry strips for Maxim UK (color by Sarah Dyer, of course). 

It's basically a cut and paste script from the first installment, with a first act of random violence (that has nothing to do with the rest of the story), a second act of debauchery, and a third act of bizarre slaughter in a foreign country. The final wrap-up panel can be read as "What will happen next?" or "We are so done here".  Or both! The feature was put to rest. No one really cared about the one-track story of Dirty Harry, including the magazine's staff, apparently. My editor seemed relived it was over as well. I was sad to see the paycheck go, because it was solid. I didn't like drawing the royals, even to make fun of them, so I didn't mind it too much. 

I amped up the gore in the script to have something to do for fun, which isn't taking the high road, but that's like saying I should try to class up a Milk & Cheese strip. Sometimes you gotta throw some more red sauce on a piece of undercooked meat. I didn't add much else to the script that I can remember, except the "improbable" line in panel two. This was mostly a comment on the script, because the swordfish cutting the servant in half didn't really make sense even if you're dealing with an Omen-style psychic attack kind of thing. It's not a saw. And the angle made things a bit difficult, I think this is a case where a writer "sees" an action more like a movie than a static series of images. I've seen worse "asks" in scripts, but I remember finding this one difficult because of the space limitations. There's a lot going on in the page (which is better than nothing going on, I have to admit). The panel needed more room horizontally to show the action and result. I think it works, the joke is the guy's cut in half and it's gross and that's what had to be shown. Messiness is called for, but I like to swing away when I show someone getting hacked up, this felt very stifled, if that makes any sense. Does that matter? Maybe not, but at the time it did. You think about the way things work, the way they can work, and the way you'd like them to work. Sometimes you go with #2. It's no crime. 

I can definitely get too literal-minded when I work, and that includes incredibly unrealistic scenarios like talking dairy products beating people up. Sometimes this is where making comics takes you. A lot of thinking -- often very weird and subjective thinking -- can take place when you work on these things. You have to balance that out with the deadline. And the page rate. Although I often forget the latter. Once again, as someone once told me, "You don't get paid by the line". 

I may have added the trophy remains of the servant in panel five, but I can't remember for certain. If I added it, I shouldn't have. The ghost of Will Elder made me do it. Which is odd, because he was still alive at the time. 

Next: Something I wrote myself which is also dumb, but the jokes are better (if I do type so myself). A Milk & Cheese strip that was done for Wizard Edge. What's Wizard Edge? We shall see -- in the next fascinating post! 

Music, maestro!