Lucky Seven: The Dee Brown Incident

About This Page

After a decade of producing comics purely digitally, returning to traditional was a blast. It was also scary, using this wet ink stuff. The change came from teaching traditional media for Art of the Comic Book. Looking at it now, everything seems rougher than I remembered. The word balloons aren't very smooth and the inking is inconsistent. The title is based on a font that I traced over in ink on a light table. The bystander checking his mail in the first panel is based on Neil Todd, my son's grandfather.

The banter between Dee and Jill Edmondson is entirely fiction, based on known events. They were young and head-over-heels in love, both looking forward to their wedding. Dee was about to get a lot of money from the Boston Celtics. They lived in a Wellesley Hills hotel, checking their mail regularly at the nearby post office.

This scene takes place inside the Wellesley Hills branch of the United States Post Office. The clerks wouldn't let me take reference photos (taking pictures of a federal building in the post-9/11 era is impossible.) Since this story points to a negative chapter in Wellesley's history, I lied about my motives and told them I was researching old post offices for an architectural project. On this basis, the manager let me draw reference sketches. In such a small post office, I was shoulder-to-shoulder with customers standing in line. I got a few odd stares, but was allowed to finish my work.

Getting reference for Jill Edmondson, Dee's fiancee at the time, was a lot more difficult. Searching through Google, microfilms from the Boston Public Library and even Northeastern University yearbooks produced nothing. Running out of time, I based her on early '90s famous women (Shannen Doherty, Tiffany Thiessen, Ashley Renee). Midway through production, a photo from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine turned up.

This struggle was part of my overall challenge to crowbar narrative fiction into historical facts. Knowing when to stop research and simply tell the story has always been difficult for me. Looking at the finished product now, I'm proud of how the background details enhance the storytelling. My traditional inking and lettering skills, on the other hand, were still too primitive.

About This Page

This is the last of the "calm before the storm" pages. I'm trying to show how mundane and normal the day started for Dee and Jill. In typical comics tradition, the dialog is peppered with historical points. The editor suggested I add the patrol man in the first panel as a foreboding element. Police records show that Dee drove a 1990 Pontiac Grand Prix, and wore a black "running suit". Jill's outfit came from a 1990 Anne Taylor catalog.

Doing the research changed my story. The first draft reflected the biased, one-sided anger I felt when the story broke in 1990. Data from public libraries, newspaper archives and online services told a different story: The Dee Brown Incident was not racial profiling. After reviewing the facts, I now believe it to be a racially-triggered, complicated tale of collective human error.

About This Page

My pre-research thumbnail sketch of this page was way off, based on distant memories of Hill Street Blues. Taking reference photos was well worth the 20 minute Commuter Rail ride. Being at the scene helped me tell the story more subjectively and accurately than if I soley relied on second-hand reference.

Walking through the locale added to the overall feeling of a quiet, tacit and socio-economic hostility. Once finished taking photos, I was on the first train home.

This was my first hand-lettered story ever, and boy does that show. My hand skill wasn't developed enough to express my love of outstanding lettering by Howard Ferguson, Artie Simek, Sam Rosen, John Costanza, Tom Orzechowski and Clem Robins. Like a myopic parrot, I also tried emulating artists who lettered their own work -- Wally Wood, Roy Crane, Alex Toth and Will Eisner.

About This Page

This may be my favorite page of "Lucky Seven". It tells the complicated chain of events with concise, infogragic techniques. Working around my demanding freelance schedule, it took 4 months to produce 6 pages; this gave me a much-needed skills refresher. The layout, inking and lettering turned out exactly as planned.

While finishing this page on deadline day, I had the sneaking suspicion I misidentified the South Shore Bank. Soon as I got off the train, I took pictures of the Bank of Boston, the nearest building that looked like a bank. It seemed a little too far fom the post office to be accurately described as "across the street". I called Bank of Boston immediately; that building never was the South shore Bank! Arrgh!

I got on the phone to frantically ask every business on Washington street if they used to be the South Shore bank. This process was complicated by 20 years of bank mergers and staff turnovers. There was nothing online and there was no time to go to a library. No one I spoke to ever heard of the South Shore bank. Luckily one receptionist said "Phil the old guy" might know. Luckily she was right. Phil confirmed that his building, directly across the street from the post office, used to be the South Shore Bank. With this new information, I altered or redrew the critical panels.

Now that it's all done, did this correction have to be made? Who would've known ... how badly would this error have effected the story? Upon discovery, I couldn't let it go. Physical distance between the post office and bank was critical to my indicment "Could YOU make a positive identification from here"? With the buildings closer together, "Lucky Seven" is more realistic, objective and accurate. Correcting this error was worth every bit of stress and then some. Hopefully you agree.

About This Page

Jill's dialog and the detective's comment in the last panel come directly from police records.

The Dee Brown incident was not the result of racial profiling. He lived in Wellesley Hills for months, visiting the post office every day. In contrast, racial profiling is use of an individual's race or ethnicity by law enforcement personnel as a key factor in deciding whether to engage in enforcement (e.g. make a traffic stop or arrest).

Dee's bad day was case of misidentification and miscommunication triggered by racism (Sharlene Harris calling the cops) and the fact that a black man did rob the South Shore Bank a week before.

What have we learned ... if you're going to be accused of bank robbery, join the Celtics?