Ryan Lee Blu-Ray Commentary
I roll out of bed around noon and I’ve got multiple emails from Mike. He says the FF is trending, he’s home for the day, and if I can get him a script toot sweet he can fire off a strip that has us directly on top of current events. Would I like to try and flesh out his springboard of an idea? (Stanley doesn’t recognize the Fantastic Four in their movie-morphic forms)
Challenge accepted, sir! Before I even put pants on, I’ve got a really unwieldy script worked out. I learned very early that unwieldy scripts are a blessing, not a curse. It usually means I’ve actually got two strips in my head, and I just need to break them apart. (I often end up sending Mike pairs of scripts where the one follows right on the heels of the other)
The “problem” is that when I dash the pair of scripts off to Mike, he’s already got the roughs done for his own springboard! Because Mike is a Machine and you can’t possibly stop him! And this thing had Sue Storm with a beard, and I’m here to tell you, if that never sees print it’s a crime because it’s one of the most deliciously absurd things you’ll see all year! Those movie execs do like to toy with our toys, don’t they?
Long story longer, the finished product ended up as a hybrid of our two ideas, and this strip has to be the most purely collaborative piece we’ve done yet. My favorite part is Happy Benjamin, because it looks like Bender from Futurama crawled into a Thing suit, and that tickles me to no end. If you look closely, you’ll notice that Happy has a ridiculous smile painted on his face. That’s going to play a role in the strip very soon.
The other “important” thing that came out of the exercise was that my layout solution for cramming all those characters into a very limited space ended up being almost identical to Mike’s solution. So I feel like I’m starting to learn the “language of comics”, which is exciting.
Monster Mike Blu-Ray Commentary
We had just had the storm of the century in my neck of the woods, so my boss sent me home before the roads got too bad to travel. Just before I left for home, I checked my internet and lo-and-behold, Fox finally decided to give a little promotion to their new Josh Trank – rebooted FF flick. While driving home, in 30% visibility, I found myself thinking about what we could do to get on top of this as far as some nice, juicy satire…
…I came up with the seed of an idea that I fired off to Ryan as soon as I landed at home. At this point, though, I wasn’t sure if he was going to get my e-mail in a timely fashion and even if he did, would he be already too busy to lay anything down. Unable to shake the idea I had, I just started doing roughs of the characters in my sketchbook. Before I knew it, I had the strip in my mind fully committed to paper and 90% of it inked on the board.
That was the point that I checked my e-mail and Ryan had sent me not one, but two great scripts. Luckily, we were able to work my images into his initial gag with a few minor changes. In his script, it was Suki ordering the drinks from Stanley. A far more progressive plot twist than I had come up with.
My biggest take-away from this experience was just how quick we can turn one of these around. It also, to my estimation, is one of our better looking strips and it showcases the drastic difference between how I began drawing this thing and where I’m at now. After next week, barring any other ridiculous pop culture happenings (Jimmy Olsen what now?), we will revert to our original schedule and I think you will notice a slight step back in the evolution of the ‘look’ of Superpub. Not to worry, though, we are working hard at making this the best thing it can be.
I roll out of bed around noon and I’ve got multiple emails from Mike. He says the FF is trending, he’s home for the day, and if I can get him a script toot sweet he can fire off a strip that has us directly on top of current events. Would I like to try and flesh out his springboard of an idea? (Stanley doesn’t recognize the Fantastic Four in their movie-morphic forms)
Challenge accepted, sir! Before I even put pants on, I’ve got a really unwieldy script worked out. I learned very early that unwieldy scripts are a blessing, not a curse. It usually means I’ve actually got two strips in my head, and I just need to break them apart. (I often end up sending Mike pairs of scripts where the one follows right on the heels of the other)
The “problem” is that when I dash the pair of scripts off to Mike, he’s already got the roughs done for his own springboard! Because Mike is a Machine and you can’t possibly stop him! And this thing had Sue Storm with a beard, and I’m here to tell you, if that never sees print it’s a crime because it’s one of the most deliciously absurd things you’ll see all year! Those movie execs do like to toy with our toys, don’t they?
Long story longer, the finished product ended up as a hybrid of our two ideas, and this strip has to be the most purely collaborative piece we’ve done yet. My favorite part is Happy Benjamin, because it looks like Bender from Futurama crawled into a Thing suit, and that tickles me to no end. If you look closely, you’ll notice that Happy has a ridiculous smile painted on his face. That’s going to play a role in the strip very soon.
The other “important” thing that came out of the exercise was that my layout solution for cramming all those characters into a very limited space ended up being almost identical to Mike’s solution. So I feel like I’m starting to learn the “language of comics”, which is exciting.
Monster Mike Blu-Ray Commentary
We had just had the storm of the century in my neck of the woods, so my boss sent me home before the roads got too bad to travel. Just before I left for home, I checked my internet and lo-and-behold, Fox finally decided to give a little promotion to their new Josh Trank – rebooted FF flick. While driving home, in 30% visibility, I found myself thinking about what we could do to get on top of this as far as some nice, juicy satire…
…I came up with the seed of an idea that I fired off to Ryan as soon as I landed at home. At this point, though, I wasn’t sure if he was going to get my e-mail in a timely fashion and even if he did, would he be already too busy to lay anything down. Unable to shake the idea I had, I just started doing roughs of the characters in my sketchbook. Before I knew it, I had the strip in my mind fully committed to paper and 90% of it inked on the board.
That was the point that I checked my e-mail and Ryan had sent me not one, but two great scripts. Luckily, we were able to work my images into his initial gag with a few minor changes. In his script, it was Suki ordering the drinks from Stanley. A far more progressive plot twist than I had come up with.
My biggest take-away from this experience was just how quick we can turn one of these around. It also, to my estimation, is one of our better looking strips and it showcases the drastic difference between how I began drawing this thing and where I’m at now. After next week, barring any other ridiculous pop culture happenings (Jimmy Olsen what now?), we will revert to our original schedule and I think you will notice a slight step back in the evolution of the ‘look’ of Superpub. Not to worry, though, we are working hard at making this the best thing it can be.