Trouble is My Business Part 4 (Page 5)

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This was a combination of me showing “A Day in the Life of Lee” and an homage to “Clerks”.

When I first started this comic, there were a lot of homages while  I struggled to get a feel for the characters. Once I was comfortable with the characters and the story, the homages happened more incidentally.

Trouble is My Business Part 4 (Page 1) – The Recap

IsaacandLeeissue4-2

 

Because the actual comic took so long to come out (I move slowly, what can I say?) I put a recap page in the comic. However, now that it’s online, there isn’t a gap between updates like there was when it originally came out. Which is why I threw this in as an extra rather than having this as an official update (which would be lame). If this is your first time to the site, this is a good a page as any to start on. If it isn’t, don’t worry, next week there will be a real update, with a real comic strip…. I promise!

Trouble is My Business (page 14)

We finally come to the end of the first issue and the beginning of the adventure. I remember having such a time with trying to figure out the logistics of turning on car lights effectively. At the time, I was planning on printing everything off on my home printer. This was right before the advent of POD. I hadn’t heard of Ka-Blam or any of those places, so when I was drawing stories, I had to take into account the amount of ink that I’d be using in the printing process of the book. The art suffered accordingly. It’s pages like this that make me want to revise the series.

Trouble is My Business (page 12)

 

 

Wheee! Did I say that the conversation was wrapped up in the last page? Oh no, not yet. As per Isaac and Lee, they go over the top with everything, including weird philosophical debates. Well, this whole first story was only supposed to introduce the characters and to go for a short walk in their world. Looking back over this, I would definitely reign them in a bit here.

Trouble is My Business (page 11)

Not much to say here that hasn’t already been mentioned. Wrapping up the conversation basically.

I understand director’s commentary tracks so much more now. Sometimes you just don’t have a lot to say about a scene.

Trouble is My Business (page 10)

 

 

As one can soon find out with Isaac & Lee, the story isn’t plot driven. It’s character-driven and the characters are chatty. Very chatty. They occasionally like to go off on random topics like this one. In as much as the audience was getting to know the characters, so was I. Another note? At the time, I was unsure as to how to represent a black t-shirt without loosing the line work so I used a weird technique involving inverse colouring. Way overcomplicated now that I look back at it.

Trouble is My Business (page 9)

 

Clyde’s Coffee Emporium is an amalgamation of every coffee shop we’ve ever been to, as well as the barista. Their comment on him depicts the beginnings of their friendship. It’s a small but important scene. As you can see in the background I may have an addiction to bookcases and have gone into withdrawal from not drawing them that I had to put an arbitrary one in there somewhere.

Trouble is My Business (page 8)

 

Hooray! We finally leave the bookstore so I can finally stop drawing bookcases! I look at these panels now and I think about how minimalist they were. One of many things I’d change if I had the chance. I still can’t get over the way I used to draw comics compared to the way I do now.