#9 - you're hired! (01-97) 



'possums are citizens of the world.' this is indeed true, and i'm glad nips tells us this. but where is otto's? nowhere, that's where.

built, conceptually if not literally, on the ashes of the briefly great restaurant shop lucille's, otto's malt shop was one of my favorite hangouts for several years, indisputably the best malts and the best burgers in kansas city, otto's is no more. i know a little of the story, but there's no point in telling it. it was built in an old garage at 39th and wyoming, next to boomerage nd revue, two thrift/specialty stores. note in the establishing shot (and from this point on, establishing shots become very common with me,) the neon sign over the garage doors; the doors would go up on warm days and all summer long. god, otto's rocked. the general scribbling before the door is meant to be snow and a puddle on the lot. the people who see other than the main characters were all staff there, of course.

otto's was fond of the press i gave them and was a dropoff for sparrow's fall for a long time. i even designed and created their menus for them. i miss the place a lot. its replacements, an outpost of joe's burger joint, and now rumí (a mediterranean restaurant who's food i can't say i like at all,) don't hold a candle to it.

all things must come to an end, i suppose. but here christopher is having a beginning. he has just been hired at a copy shop. you think he'd be happy to finally have a job, but he seems pretty depressed to me, and he already has a few horror stories. (he'll have plenty more as time goes by.) his troubles are of no real interest to the animals, of course, and after dismissing the shop as incompetent, they begin arguing about nips' new sideline: managing a mexican wrestling team. luche libre was a little less well known then than it is now, and i had just watched a special about it on tv. the idea captivated me, so i showed off my new knowledge here in sparrow's fall. nips kept this up for quite a while, managing los hermanos armadillos; i think that los hermanos do most of their own managing now, because they seldom get mentioned anymore.

in technical details, i really think that in most panels, this is almost the best i have ever drawn chirp, even today. nips hasn't achieved his more modern puffy cheeks; however, you can already see the stronger definition i'm giving the snout fur as opposed to the face fur. the wash has become quite even: i was beginning to understand how to spread and use it before it soaked into the page. wash is a difficult beast: you can't have too much water or it becomes blotchy and ugly; you can't use too much ink or it lays down too dark and you lose control over shading and detail and areas of contrast. you have to use the widest nib you can handle, and load it up as heavily as you can--but not too heavily, or you'll dribble it where you don't want it as you transport the pen over the paper, or you'll make a huge pool where you don't want one right as you hit the page. tricky, tricky.

a last note: in the view of the troost copy shop--and this is the new troost, not the old troost shop where i began working in 1991, there is written in the windows soon abandoning an inner city near you. this was daring. the place is unfond of criticism of any type, and the fact i was pointing out that the troost store was pulling up stakes and moving to state line could have gotten me in a lot of trouble. however, i didn't get in trouble, and i didn't get fired: although i eventually did leave the job, years later.






 

Posted: Mon - April 5, 2004 at 06:09 AM             |

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