When we left our stalwart group, they were planning to go to Runnovia for a gig, playing big band music for royalty.
Read on...
Notes on these pages:
I love the name Runnovia. It's so Rocky and Bullwinkle!
Page 8 (the airport scene) REALLY would have benefitted from more background in the first two panels. I was going for a remote airfield feel, but there's just too much left out for it to fully read. I do like the flying Packard. It was inspired by Harlan Ellison talking about his Packard on the old Anti-Gravity Room series and by the flying sedan Will Eisner used in a couple very early Spirit stories.
Page 9 (the grand ballroom scene) resolves much better. I had real fun inking those arched cathedral ceilings! I don't know enough about architecture to get every detail, so this is pure swipe file stuff.
Page 10 (the lead-in to the next big moment) also resolves nicely, I think. Speedy's kneeling and the reflections in the floor tiles in Panel One are nice touches. I love Speedy's little "not now" out of the corner of his mouth in Panel Two!
I'm not completely happy with the way the vibrations on the valet are rendered, but I wanted it to be less obvious than simply drawing in a ghost image and speed lines between the two of him. After all, if it were blatantly obvious, Speedy would have seen it right away!
Page 11, the cube dropping over the band, is exactly what I wanted it to be. I particularly like Sandy Beaches, the drummer, passed out over her kit. I like rendering transparencies. We learned in commercial art school that those streaky lines indicating glass or plastic just aren't right, but darn if they don't look right in something like this!
I'm stopping there because the next pages start off with a two-age spread, and rather than cobble it together from multiple scans, I want to wait until I can get to the MCAD large format scanner and get a clean scan of the whole thing. I have a mountain of scans I need to take care of, and will make time for it Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, I think.
For this section of the book, I had a great confidence in the work, and a conviction that I really controlled my storytelling. That held for most of the rest of the book (posted soon), and was very satisfying. I look back at this whenever I lose confidence in craft. While there are always things that can be improved, looking at your strengths can help you through rough patches, even if they come from 16 years ago!
Next: more Speedy Recovery.
