A 12-Pg Comic You Probably Haven't Seen: Comics Comics #1 (2018)

After a night of scanning, here's 12 pages of layouts and finished line art for a comic I drew for a project called COMICS COMICS in 2018 (not to be confused with the COMICS COMICS magazine/online source). 

This was a Kickstarter-funded comic from Starburns Industry Press, the high concept being that the stories would be written by stand up comedians and drawn by (duh) comic book artists. I have to admit that the only contributing professional comedian I was familiar with was Patton Oswalt, who I'm sure most if not all of you know from his work both in film, television and comic books. He's a self-acknowledged nerd and has written a number of comics, he has a superhero series currently running with Dark Horse. I became allergic to stand up comedy about twenty years ago, when I was younger I followed stand up and sketch comedians the way some folks follow musicians or cartoonists. I followed comedians, musicians. cartoonists, actors, directors, animators, game developers, I was a big hot mess of a nerd.  

There's not much to really say about the story Sarah and I worked on. I don't want to throw any darts at the writer I collaborated with, but I found Eliot Rahal's script had a lot of the problems you find when you're dealing with a writer who hasn't done a lot of comic book writing. Some things don't read off the page as well or with as much impact as it might have spoken aloud in a sketch or live action scene. The timing tends to not hit the right notes. There's often an awkwardness in pacing and how the panels are broken down. I'm good handling a lot of dialog, being a, let's say, verbose writer, for good and/or bad (recently there was a bit of a viral situation regarding The Eltingville Club pilot and comics on Twitter/X, and when the inevitable backlash posts came in many of them basically were of the "I ain't reading all of that shit/fuck that, go write a book" variety. Obviously not future discoverers of The Bungle Family.

So, I can't say I was super excited while working on this comic. I took it solely for the money, which wasn't terrible. I can't remember what else was going on at the time, work-wise, but I remember needing work, so it couldn't have been much. So, I took on the gig. It was a pretty straight-forward job. I remember drawing page 3 first because they wanted an example from each artist and that was a page I thought I could do the fastest. Sarah colored it and we had one page down. Process-wise, you can see the layouts become sparser and less detailed as they move along, by page ten or so they're very sketchy. I had to work as quickly as possible and there were a lot of backgrounds that needed reference, so I never quite felt like I got a hang on the characters and the style. It's slightly off in places, there's some inconsistency between characters and even within some of the character work. I meant to work in a more cartoony style. I wanted to use a looser, livelier style but my anxiousness and compulsiveness locked me into a tight inking style with thicker lines and more texturing than the pages called for. There's some panels and pages I'm pretty okay with, there's others I'm still mad at. Some of them took way more time than I should have spent on them as a thinking freelancer, but it got done and there were no schedule issues. Sarah cleaned and colored everything, fixed up some lettering and dropped in a balloon patch I did after I left it out of page one.  

Here below is a layout-to-page comparison of that first page I drew. You can see the inks tightening things up, and where I lost some of that spontaneity you tend to start out with in layouts. 

I would loosen up on the lettering as well if I was drawing this today. As always, most of the job -- for me -- is the lettering. It takes up so much time and is the main source of hand and wrist pain. I always mean to get a digital font made of my lettering, but never have. I still like doing everything on the page. Plus I don't want to spend on a good, professional personal font right now. Cartoonists can be stubborn. And prideful. And stubbornly prideful. Of weird things. 

On the whole I think I did a decent job. I tried to use character acting, texturing, sound effects and a sense of energy to boost the script as much as I could without overthinking. I stiffened up on a lot of things. Like I said, I never had time to really sketch out the characters, I hit the ground running to make the page rate not get stretched too badly, knowing I'd spend a lot of extra time on the inks and lettering, The page three layout has a drawing of the main character on the right-hand side that was my basic design for her, I think I sketched three prelim takes before doing that one and digging into page three. I never got the hang of the principal, he's not "on model" in a bunch of panels. I mostly enjoyed drawing the jock, I found him the easiest to mess with and do some weird things to his face and anatomy. I just wasn't comfortable during most of the pages, I was aware of time, money and trying to work up some enthusiasm for a lot of pages that didn't have a lot of visual oomph. That's where the texturing came in, I needed something to play with besides the faces. Panel 3 of page 3 is one of my favorite images from the story, I had fun working on that. I also had fun on the last page, where things got weird and gave me some different visuals to play with.

Again, you likely haven't seen this comic because it was a Kickstarter book, although I believe it was in limited distribution through shops afterward. Also, Brendan Wright the editor of the book (and a former Dark Horse Comics editor), was accused of sexual harassment and stalking in 2020*, when a number of other comics professionals such as Cameron Stewart and Warren Ellis were being rightfully dragged for their behavior**. he was subsequently removed from other comics projects he was involved with and given the industry boot. Good riddance to bad rubbish***.

I think that's everything I can recall about this comic. Obviously the draw here (get it, "draw"? Comics? Ha!) was Patton Oswalt, but for all I know some of the other writers might have blown up since then. The comic artists, well, hopefully we're all still alive and eating. Hell, same for the comedians, stand up/comedy is not lucrative for most folks. At least we cartoonists can stay home and sit down all day. 

The main thing as far as this post is concerned, really, are the pages and layouts, which I hope you will enjoy looking at. I have all the original art, layouts and the hardcover version of the comic on hand and I don't know what to do with it. Originally someone involved with the project -- not the editor -- was going to buy pages from the story but that fell through. I found the pile in the flat file while looking for some art people have asked about and figured I'd post everything since it's barely been seen. I'll probably bundle everything, pages and layouts and book, and try to sell it. 

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this look at something under the radar. I mean, even lower under the radar than usual. Because with comics, there's seemingly no bottom. You know what I mean.

* https://www.cbr.com/dark-horse-brendan-wright-accused-sexual-misconduct

**https://www.denofgeek.com/comics/wave-of-sexual-misconduct-accusations-rock-comics-industry/#:~:text=Later%2C%20former%20Dark%20Horse%20editor,of%20sexual%20harassment%20and%20stalking

***Although I'm pretty sure Ellis has managed to still slither his way through many entertainment world channels because of the size and reach of his following/cult. I'm not up on the industry these days past whatever major blow-up or blow-out happens that reaches social media to the point where I'd see it.