Encore

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Our story begins in a small, family-owned bank in Allston Massachusetts, sometime in the late 1980s. Wanting my story to feel more realistic, I chose a setting close to where I lived at the time. Panel 1 is the corner of Harvard Street at Brighton Avenue. The neighborhood, right between Boston University and Boston College, had more liquor licenses, fast-food diners and run-down music bars than any other part of Boston.

Looking at it now, the storytelling's pretty good, fused with "young buck genius". I'm particularly proud of the Alan Moore/Harvey Kurtzman zooming-out backwards in time progression. The lazy title typography was done with Letraset transfer lettering.

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In the first few panels, the robbers are heavily stylized, based on a thin-line look I thought would make me ink faster. Silly cartoonist. Crosshatching with a technical pen was dumb and time-consuming. I was probably get the look of old-fashioned dip pens, without the mess. Tech pens, however, are designed for a slow, deliberate mark-making. This ate up a lot of time without looking very professional. This is where my "young buck genius" ended.

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I was more concerned with storytelling than rendering when producing these pages more than 20 years ago. In that light, the art still holds up. The drafting errors, all in the first panel, make me cringe. Harvard Avenue looks like a 1-way street with no parking lanes. The car is a 1986 BS Sedan and out of perspective. The fire hydrant is 5 feet tall.

Staying with Panel 1, even the subliminal storytelling's off. The first robber in the car reaches to unlock the passenger-side rear door. This makes no sense. Why would he have run past the car, enter through the driver's-side rear, then open the opposite door from inside? Why would the door be locked in the first place? Where was the harsh advice of Alex Toth when I needed it?

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Still proud of the storytelling and page layout here. The inking, however, is all over the place. Imagine an undisciplined mash-up of (a) Barry Smith's "morse code", the "quick-motion thin line/thick brush" technique by Frank Miller (by way of Carmine Infantino and Hugo Pratt) and Moebius' open line. I was probably trying to hide lazy pencilling with lots of ink.

The warehouse was two or three blocks from where I was living at the time, so very easy to research the exterior. Not an ounce of thought was given to the interior. The bottom "ass grab/zoom out" technique works as intended.

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The Panel 1 reaction shot was clearly inspired by John Buscema's storytelling example in "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way". Panel 2 still looks impressive, in an obsessive mark-making, John Severin way. The only thing that still ticks me off is the additional "thick brush stoke" element introduced in Panel 4. Publishing your old work "warts and all" sure has drawbacks.

Then again, some of those warts got covered up. Just last month, I corrected large errors that've bothered me for years. In the published version, the gang's overweight leader is shirtless for no apparent reason. The drawings of his girlfriend look like I'd never seen a woman before. Digitally correcting these errors in "pencil" was easy; matching the inconsistent inking style with Corel Painter was a lot tougher.

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My primary concern was getting the story told clearly, without confusion. So once again, the drafting suffered. The pants of Panel 3 are embarrassingly lazy. And as the story unfolds, you sharper readers will catch onto a major storytelling blunder.

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Did you catch the "major storytelling blunder"? from this and last week's page? Tony Davis of Million Year Picnic spotted it in seconds. What was I thinking? Was I thinking?

The windows are drawn so lazily it's distracting. And the crosshatching of Panel 4 is way out of control. Oh yeah, I start using markers for sound effects. This is a radical departure from the style established in the first few pages.

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For the most part, I'm happy with the chaotic, brilliantly inconsistent inking, page layout and style. I wish I decided on our hero's physique. He starts off as a middle-aged, pot-bellied man. Here, he looks like a wide receiver. The lazily-drawn windows distract from the story.

The lettering was overhauled with fonts. My original version was hand-lettered by Dave Sim. When remastering the scans 10 years ago, I wanted everything to be "mine", but didn't possess my current hand lettering skills. Thus, the Letter-O-Matic font seemed like a great compromise. The vector word balloons, however, are modeled after Artie Simek's.

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The girl is completely redrawn for this publication. If you'd seen the original, you'd be thanking me right now. The old drawings of her were so bad, you'd think I'd never seen an actual woman in my life. Still, as long as Steve Ditko lives, I'll always be the second-worst girl drawer in comics.

The gang leader in Panel 5 was also redraw, with the exception of his trigger hand and forearm. The hero should probably have been corrected as well. This look does, however, match my original intent of mixing the two styles for dramatic effect.

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Who knew a dead man was that good with a knife?

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If you're still alive, be grateful. My mom still hates this story.