About a year ago, I told my wife I needed to do something. I went downstairs and started drawing "Johnny Space Commander and Dick Droid!". I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to get this thing out of my head. The thing that had been in there for so many years, formless, aimless, but there none the less. I had drawn a comic strip for many years. That was different. This was a book length story, could I do that? A comic strip is like telling a joke. Panel, panel, gag. This had to have a story. A real story. Beginning , middle and end. It had to make sense, more or less. And it had to be colored, and words had to be written legibly over at least 25 pages. Lots and lots of words! I have no patience for that.
I had to see if I could do this.
Four pages. I'll draw and write four pages. Like a movie preview, an old fashioned serial. No problem.
Once I started It came pouring out of me. Pencils done. Ink it. Sharpie pen all the way, I have no patience for using a brush on this tiny scale. I have been a watercolor artist for a good 20 years, so my idea was to color the thing right over the top of my drawings. Each page I looked at as an artwork by itself. This seemed to be going well, I couldn't stop.
Robots, Aliens and Romance! Regurgitating festering years of MAD magazine and comic book addiction into some type of ridiculous mess on paper.
Action and Romance! Sort of. The kind of romance found in the Ian Fleming names I applied to the characters.
I needed to show our star doing what he does. Some kind of action set piece.
And of course I couldn't forget the robot sidekick!
The whole thing ended with a fart joke. Classy right?
I was so excited! It looked great, a little primitive compared to later work on the book (Look at those hand drawn and lettered word balloons!), but at the time fantastic! And it was so easy, like I had finally started doing what I should have been doing all along!
To be continued....
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