Jack of Fables Issue #4 Pencils&Breakdowns

Is this getting too predictable? I hope that this is still interesting to you; seeing these scribbles even though you hold the glorious finished product in your hands. By now, I'm feeling fairly comfortable (my Grandmother used to pronounce that as "comfort-tahble") in having Bill and Matts' ideas spill onto the very, very blank page in front of me. Trust me, without the breakdown process I would have folded months ago. Plus, Shelly Bonds' preference for straightforward panel layout is something that I appreciate as it allows me to concentrate on what's INSIDE the panels rather than spending bandwidth on clever panel layout (I started a gaming company, I can legitimately use "bandwidth").
Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this entry. I'm fairly sure(Bill) that there aren't any spoilers lurking in the margins. The breakdown for Page 6 is duped for some reason without and significant changes (due to batching?)
Note the change that occurred on Page 18. Just because you hand an issue in doesn't mean you're done with it. I expect calls from Shelly with changes to panels in the hours prior to printing. I don't mind, truly.
Enjoy!

















Happily I got to exploit the views of the Mr. T. in these panels. The "Sturginghams" requested the racing number but I just HAD to add the mudflaps (almost went with Yosemite Sam saying "Back Off!")



Yes, that IS Bruce Lees' fighting stance, thank you.

JoF 4 Breakdowns follow below...
I really work to squeeze the art in around the dialog; it's very important that the balloons track easily.

OZ Park

Each morning as I survey my kingdumb, I generally look over to the west to watch dogs getting run in a nearby park.
On some days the park serves as a rehearsal area for the Lincoln Park High School Marching Band.
On weekends there are the usual games of softball and frisbee.
These things happen in Oz Park. You would think that I would have written about this before considering my association with FABLES.
There are actually sculptures in the park representing several of the more important inhabitants of OZ. I'll get photos and post them later.
In my Fabletown.com profile I list my location as just South of the Oz Gateway; Bill places the portal from OZ far up in Canada.
In truth Baum wrote the original stories on Michigan Avenue, about 3.4 miles south of my building. That puts me NORTH of the point of origin, I guess.

Interlude: and the Nobel Prize goes to...

Here's my good friend and former intern Caitlin Drake McKay. This was last year at WizardSquirrel'd Chicago. She thought the guy in the suit was actually a Halo commando; he died seconds later when the sticky grenade she's placing on his back detonated.
Caitlin rocks.
She is presently the High Priestess of internet sales at Devil's Due Publishing. Go, GO buy lots of shit from her.
She is ALSO the punkie/arty muse for the Cottingley Fairies.



You can thank Steven Speilberg and Tom "I'm WAY Undermedicated" Cruise for not being able to see what this sketch
is associated with.


TWO words




...Weaponized Fudge.

My Breakdowns for Jack#3

Cindy M. of Fabletown.com axed a very good question. Which I'm going to dodge and simply post these breakdowns as explanation. All I'll say is this; word balloons and captions come FIRST> Why have the reader guess at what he/she has to read next (the way that your about to chase this blog entry for coherence, sorry; it loaded not good). I guess in "posterized" comics, where every panel is a money-shot that's not important. For me and your friends at Vertigo, it is.

Now That I Have Your Attention...

Every Catholic Schoolboy has a fond remembrance of a favorite nun. BTW, There's a NEW post AFTER/BELOW the JoF#3 pencils. It was a draft and when I published it, it retained the draft date. So go, look! If you dare.
h.e.

Jack of Fables Issue #3 Pencils

Hey, everybody. Just got back from seeing "FLYBOYS". If you've followed my blog, then you know that there was NO WAY that I could not see this film. The story was not that great, and the action didn't seem to truly capture the tactics used during the period. There were a coupled of shots that could have been lifted directly from a past blog entry here. This made me happy. Yes there's TOO many red Fokker Tri-planes (DR 1). A later modelm of the SPAD is shown too early in the film. The Neuports flown by the hero squadron has some, if not all, of the fighters equipped with a wing-mounted Lewis to fire above the propellar arc AND a Vickers air-cooled mounted in front of the pilot. That can't be right.
Sigh.
Well, it was a nice try...

Here's some pencils.






















This page changed a bit. That's right! The last two panels were FLOPPED!
Congrats!

From the Tomb of Hope

So to anyone who may have thought to themselves, "Ha! I bet Tony Atkins never thought he would be drawing a bunch of storybook characters as part of his professional future! Idiot...*snort*"
Well, to you I say this...
First, it's AKINS, not ATkins.
Second, I had drawn storybook favorites YEARS before I landed JoF, or even the FABLES fill-ins.
I can't recall who the writer was, I do recall being on the phone with Harlan Ellison around the same time. Plus Grant Morrison *clunk* and I just finished a short story for PETA...so there's that. I believe that all this art was for the "ASYLUM" publication or publishers. Can't remember which was which. The story is about a father who falls asleep while reading a bedtime story to his cute daughter; he dreams of nightmarish things spawned from the pages of the fairytale volume in his lap. Fortunately he wakes up and everything is OK.
Anyway... This version of Humpty creeps me a bit. Plus this is one of the first times I was able to ink my own work. The things I was allowed to get away with...
h.e.





LOL, yep. That's his heart in his throat.

Jack of Fables#3 Review Thread

Whahoo!

JoF#3...Just Got My Copy! (Copies!)

I'm veryvery excited. Issue three has one of my FAVORITE Jack panels in it. The issue looks really good, too. It's coming together. The cover by James Jean has grown on me even more. I really think the girls are going to be a favorite with a lot of people.

Fred Schiller

Follow this link (above or to the right in my links column).
My pal and blog buddy Fred Schiller and I have not seen each other in many a year. It's a feeble punishment wrought by jealous gods who could not abide our awesomeness as a creative team in the late 1980's.
The collaborative body of out work together is meager, but mighty.
Once you've read "RUST", well...Archie and Daffy Duck are all you're going to be able to stomach for some while afterwards.
A blogger of note put the title (the entry was "Whatever Happened To Fred Schiller" I think) on his one-hundred coolest things about comics. No lie.