This was purely a character development moment for both Rich and Lee. Namely, how they refuse to let a “dame” get in the way of their plans.
Isaac & Lee
The Digital Edition
Isaac & Lee
The Digital Edition
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.
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.
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.