Lee says goodnight and we’re left with Isaac who sits for a bit. We see a little bit more character development as he whips out a notepad and begins making notes. What is he writing? I don’t know if we ever get to find out really.
Tag: anarchist
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.
Trouble is My Business (page 7)
This is the part of the story where we get a little history on the characters and where they differ greatly from the real life Isaac and Lee. I didn’t want to make my Isaac and Lee identical to them so I started by giving them very different histories. Other than that, not a lot of the story changed. I also remember me and my then editor deciding that we needed to make the balloons come out of the panels in order to make the page look more interesting. Later on, this format would change as I went for a more traditional layout.
Trouble is My Business (page 6)
The conversation continues and I think I actually have the sad Mario on the bookcase asking me why I punished myself by setting the story in a book store. It’s a theory really. I hadn’t settled into a groove of drawing the characters yet, which led to radical changes from panel to panel. (Which is now more than a little embarrassing to look back on now)I also remember wanting to get to some action, but quickly realising that it simply wasn’t going to be that kind of story. I learned early on that Isaac and Lee were in control of the story and calling all of the shots, with me as a mere observer taking notes.
Trouble is My Business (page 5)
Ah yes, back in the days before I started striving for uniformity and also before I understood the importance of word balloon structure. I think I can safely say that these panels would not look like this today. It’s when I see pages like this one, I am sorely tempted to pull a George Lucas and redraw them entirely. If I didn’t have more stories to tell I’d probably do just that. This is also one of the pages where I wound up writing dialogue that was very similar to a conversation that the real life Isaac and Lee had. There are more of these to come.
Trouble is My Business (page 4)
I would later go on to put “Oh, the tragedy of the lowly, local bookstore owner” on many different items. I just really liked that quote. This would be the part where you begin to get a glimpse of Isaac’s penchant for drama and wise-assery (it’s a word now). Also, you can tell that I am beginning to grow tired of drawing plain bookcases and so, have been putting random items on the shelves in the background. I got the idea from this scene from the movie “Better than Chocolate” where there is a sub-plot involving problems trying to get books into the bookstore “Little Sisters” (an actual alternative bookstore in Vancouver, BC).