10 am: One page down.  Jad uploaded page 1 to the site for me and came up with the title.  She’s happily asleep now.  I’m trying to plan one page ahead mentally so I build momentum.  Alex is eating chips and watching Youtube vids.  I can hear him eating over Skype and it’s making me hungry.

11 am: Page two took a little longer than it needed to.  Making page 3 a splash so I can catch up a bit.  Also, space ships are fun.  Alex has been inspired by videos he’s just seen and has begun.  Andrew Drilon is a machine.

12 nn: Page 4 is my hero shot.  Trying to keep my layouts as varied as possible to keep the delivery interesting.  My brother Roby had an anchovy pizza delivered for me.  Probably shouldn’t try to draw while I’m eating, but I’m fucking starving.

1 pm: Took too long on previous page, but detail there was necessary.  Using a bit of a cheat on page 5, combo with some basic Photoshop effects… am hoping it comes across clearly in the read.  Okay, enough pizza.

2 – 3 pm: Page 6.  Kinda screwed myself with that big exposition shot, but it had to be done.  Listening to Around Comics to keep focused.  Alex is on a break.

4 – 6 pm: Kat gets on Skype to talk me through pages 7 and 8.  And it’s just as well, coz I can’t figure out how to refill the copic markers she lent me.  Jad helps me figure out the forthcoming ‘mind assault’ scene via text message.

7 pm: Talking comics with EJ as I figure out page 9.  Taking a bit of a shortcut again, but I make sure Johnny Danganan knows about it first via YM.  He’s staying awake and online just like the rest of us.  Copy-paste zoom-in might sound like a cheat, but it ‘s the effect it has on the suspense that I’m after.  If what I have planned works, the next page will be a surprise.

8 pm: Recorded an episode or Tres Komikeros with EJ and the recently resurrected Alex.  Page 9 is in bed, and I take a breather to put some tiger balm around my wrist and on my neck.  Oy.

9 pm: The simplicity of page 10 is therapeutic, but I hope the ‘switch’ isn’t too jarring.  I probably could have delivered the transition a little better.  Also, drawing clouds with copic markers is hard.  Kat and Jad talk anime over Skype while Alex links us to 4chan crap.  Don’t they understand how serious this whole thing is?

10-12 mn: I employ a bit of a cheat again for page 11.  I spot the ‘flesh’ parts of the characters in cast black, just like Risso does.  I just recently started reading 100 Bullets.  Sue me.  I hope it works out okay.

1 – 2am: Neck and back hurts now.  My internet bugs out all of a sudden and I am unable to upload pages.  I lie down to talk to my girl over the phone and have a snack.  I entertain the idea of just going to bed now but Jad reminds me of how much effort I’ve already put in and eggs me on.

3 am: Back at the desk to draw page 12.  Still no internet.  I have Jad on speakerphone and a flock of angry ducks.

4 am: Page 13. I am drawing a raw duck embryo.  I don’t know whether to be mad or thankful that I don’t have access to Google images.

5 am: I’m gonna try to end this thing here, at page 14.  I’m chopping out a lot of stuff that I would have wanted to do… but I don’t think I’ll be able to do the ideas justice at this point.  So there it is, a dirty little bow.

— sleep —

7 – 8am: Still no internet, and three more pages to upload.  Internet cafes in my area are all closed, on account of it being a Sunday.  I find out Alex is awake, so I head over to his apartment to commandeer his laptop and upload my story’s conclusion..

9 am: Breakfast with Alex at McDonald’s.  We feel like we just got out of jail.  If jail was… y’know… fun.  And with prizes.

— pass out —

Amor: So the idea for this volley came from our initial chats to eventually collaborate on a comic, with the intention of chronicling the foolishness that the project began with.  I guess we can say for now that we are slowly working on a comedy comic together and safely leave it at that.

Tyler: I love the secrecy. We ARE working on a comedy comic together and I will leave it at “Hurray!”

Amor: To get the ball rolling, let me ask you this — what are some of your favorite funnies in mainstream comics?  As a comedian, your standard for junk like that might actually be pretty high, no?

Tyler: I love the comedy in the first half of the Bone series. It’s so fun and innocent and does such a good job of making you fall in love with those characters. I loved the joke-to-page ratio of the Formerly Known as the Justice League series from 2003. Peter David always manages to sneak some smart jokes into X-Factor. Early Invincible was really fun. Starman had some great jokes and was also an amazing series. Having some level of comedy, just like the real world, makes a comic a fully rounded experience.

As a comedian, I don’t think I have a higher standard for what is funny, it’s just more exposure to it. It makes me crave original humor. You can only hear so many Aquaman-is-useless-on-land jokes before you think “Check. Got it. Let’s give him a hand made of water, that’ll do it.”

Is there a difference on the artist’s end when it comes to comedy? Do you have a special joke pen?

Amor: Man, I wish I did.  Not a lot of illustrators will freely admit it, but the skill to render the wide range of emotions needed to make a comedy comic work is pretty challenging to develop.  Pros will tell you to look in the mirror, yeah well that doesn’t necessarily make it universally simple.  You mentioned Formerly Known as the Justice League as one of your favorites — my love for the BWAHAHA stuff goes back to the JLI, when I used those books as a gateway drug from Archie.  Kevin Maguire’s a complete genius at conveying the emotions needed to make Talking Head Books work.  Other favorites of mine include the genre-bending stylings in Next Wave, and the fourth-wall breakage of any Adam Warren book.

The Aquaman jokes are all good at the start, I guess… but after a while it gets stale and overdone, which really only makes it attributable to lazy writing.  And since no character would actually freely mock Aquaman to his face, it’s really just the writer mocking the character vicariously — know what I mean?  Which brings up the relevance of voice…

Tyler: Well, to be fair, there are ways of mocking Aquaman to his face. He speaks very little French, for one.

Voice. I love talking voice. Voice is essential to good storytelling. When you think of all of the most distinctive, popular characters in comics, what they have in common is a clear voice: Wolverine, Captain America, Batman, Deadpool, Joker, there are others. These are the characters that jump off the page: you can almost hear their “voices” as you read, especially the bubs.

But giving voice to a character is hard. It’s a combination of language, attitude, worldview, accent, emotion, motivation and on the artist’s end, design, look, movement and a ton of other small details that make up the character. It’s so easy to miss one or two of these or over-emphasize others and then the character ends up out of balance and bland or fake.

Aquaman is a good example of this. In many writer’s hands he just doesn’t have a strong voice: he just seems like an underwater superman. Or dying secretly dying with an octopus face. But you look at a mini-series like Peter David’s Aquaman: Time and Tide and he has a clear character, a strong voice and it’s just amazing work. It’s a must read, even though he’s just a bâtard poisson muet…. you know what I mean.

Amor: Hehah! Indeed, I do.  In contrast to that though, something that annoys me a lot, is when a writer will inject too much of himself into a character.  And though it may still be funny in the context of the story, certain characters simply don’t say certain things.  In Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, Wolverine tells Armor to step up her game or else she’ll be transferred to Excalisuck, or something to that effect.  That’s a funny joke… but Wolverine doesn’t say that.  Xander says that.  Buffy banter does not a good X-comic make.

Tyler: Yeah, definitely. Wolverine is not great with banter. He’s got a great stand up comedy act though. Sort of a gruff Carrot Top.

Every writer brings their personal take to the character but the best writers explore the voice through the character rather than laying their personal voice on top of the character. But Wolverine saying “Excalibullshit” would be pretty cool too.

If der tamting twange…

in da neighborhood…

watchuwatchucall…

Weekend! That was a command.

—————————————–

Yes sir.