#5 - the square root of seventeen (12-96) 



whoa! what the hell is this? aliens? UFOs? the X-files? this is a nod, again, to calyx, that most dreadful of comics. i had intended to do a little more--perhaps make the aliens a regular appearance. i intended a lot of things: indeed, i had composed, quite early on, a list of things i wanted to do and people i wanted to introduce as characters; one, interestingly, was bob dole, whom i wanted to have as a homeless person bumming around kansas city after we spent a few episodes mentioning how bob dole had mysteriously vanished--this of course was mid december 1996, after the elections. but alas, bob dole started shilling viagra, and everyone knew then what was going on with bob dole, if you know what i mean, and i think you do. so the list was pretty much abandoned, but early ghosts of it appear in the first half of the first year of sparrow's fall.

this comic is different than some of the other early ones in that it abandons wash on the first page for almost wholly pure black ink and crosshatching. i guess i thought this would give the impression of nighttime better, and considering that the material i was using, 90 pound cardstock, couldn't take but a little wash before it started sagging and tearing, i was probably right. at the time i was using dip pens and black cat ink--i do not recommend dick blick because it isn't dark enough. the scratchy irregular look of the lettering is a consequence of using the narrowest points and this very rough, fibrous material; so are the occasional spatters that can be seen defiling the surface. the nibs simply catch on the fibres, and throw their load as far as they please. imagine doing all that cross-hatching that way. worse, putting down thick areas of black like you see on the first page takes a whole long time to dry on any surface, and you always wonder if it will eat through the cardstock. on calyx, i had used bristol board, and sometimes i would be carrying literally twenty pounds of it around me in little pieces. god, that was heavy. as well as being expensive, it was hard to tote, and i got tired of it, so being relatively ignorant in art materials, i downgraded just about as far as i could go, to the free stuff i grabbed at work. however, i have to say, the materials wouldn't have made a significant difference in the art, and wash dries pretty slow on bristol, too.

you'll note that the stars and the UFO--and i am proud of the UFO, even now--appear to be done in a different media, and you would be right--it is generic brand wite-out. a couple other things i note--nips is wearing his dressing-gown again; he does this less and less from here on out--as in, i don't recall when he might wear it again at all; i guess we'll find out together. i hope that the cigarette ashes aren't falling in his popcorn. christopher's nose is repellent altogether, and we need to see less of him in his underwear; i promise, however, you eventually see him naked. additionally, there's a stereo set next to the tv. writing this, i realize that i don't think it ever appeared there again. presenting the tv dialogue in two different ways is kind of odd; the second way doesn't work at all. i am also proud of my aliens, and would draw them the same way today.

all in all, it isn't a high point in indy comics, or even in sparrow's fall. it was fulfilling a preplanned mission instead of doing what the story really wanted to do, and it shows. but it did achieve that goal, with a satisfactory punchline, and i guess at this point, with hardly a hundred copies of sparrow's fall that had been read by any human on earth, that's about all i could hope for.

 







 

Posted: Thu - April 1, 2004 at 06:22 AM             |

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