COPRA #16
(W/A) Michel Fiffe
"I’ll admit that this was one of the most difficult issues to produce. I basically knew what the story was, what the dialogue lines and general staging would be, but… I didn’t really know until I started to actually work on it. It was very odd. The process probably didn’t help: I wanted to invoke a little bit of Jack Kirby in this chapter (being that Guthie is based on one of his creations). I’ve been running on a Kirby influence in a spontaneous, gut level, get-it-done kind of way, but this time I wanted to try it a little differently.
I’ve heard of Jack drawing a page by starting at the top left hand corner and continuing down to the lower right hand corner until the page was complete. The drawing sounded like it was more stream of consciousness and less obviously calculated. The planning was all in Jack’s head.
So in the spirit of that anecdote, I decided to forego any layouts whatsoever. I also didn’t break up the stages into workload batches the way I usually do. This meant that I woke up with two blank pages staring at me, equipped with only a vague notion of what I wanted to do. By the end of the day, my aim was to have two complete pages, fully colored and ready to scan.
Wake up, coffee, write, lay out, podcast, pencil, lunch, ink, coffee, walk dog, more ink, more podcasts, dinner, question life choices, stretch legs, more ink, color, pass out, repeat next day.
Sometimes I nailed it, sometimes I was too wiped out to even erase a page. This issue kicked my ass, but I’m really happy with the results. You’ll like it.
And of course, it’s about Guthie, whom last we saw crashing and falling through a window in some far off world. Looks like she survived and when you read the issue, you’ll know how."
--FIFFE!
