LEGIONNAIRES #7

October 1993

I’m stuck on the current phase of my project so I decided to talk about a good comic book.

Last Sunday I picked up Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder: Five Crazy Women and like every volume of this series that I read, it was outstanding. It’s exceptionally good science fiction where it seems like a very familiar world, but there’s just enough advanced technology there when it applies. The science bits don’t need to be explained, they just need to be there to add to the fiction. I think that’s what helps make Finder such good sci-fi, is that it starts with a good story and doesn’t let the elements get in the way.

The thing I really like about Finder are the annotations in the back. These give readers a peek into the creative process. You’ll find similar notes at the back of From Hell, but Carla Speed McNeil’s notes are much less formidable and much more personable. I’m going to try to duplicate that in the notes that go with each strip posted, and with every strip I hope that someday I can make as good a sci-fi comic as Carla Speed McNeil.

To get caught up on Finder, go to this web site.

Thursday and Friday saw my drawing time go into a redraw of a previous strip.  There’s no lettering in the original strip, and I’m really thinking that adding captions would be counter-productive. I’ll research a little about captions, especially in the context of sci-fi comics, but right now, the impulse is to leave the strip captionless. The Science Fiction comics of the 50s, especially the really great EC comics made heavy use of captions, but they were building upon the prose science fiction of pulp novels. So far, I’ve not used captions in this story, aside from the “elsewhere” blurbs, and I really feel like captions in this setting would be useless and be telling things that I can show.

Also, I’m aware that some may be using larger monitor settings to view the Internet, so if you’re having trouble reading the lettering, here’s a tip, if you’re using Windows XP. While pressing “Ctrl”, slowly roll the scroll wheel on your mouse away from you. This’ll enlarge the page and rolling it back will return it to the larger resolution.

Okay, I really wanted to post the next strip before the move, but It’s just not going to happen. Moving to a new city is leaving me too little time to finish the little bit of inking that I have left and then scan and correct it.

Today was my last day at work in Savannah, and it was a little anti-climatic. The going away dinner we planned didn’t happen as we’d liked, either, but it was a nice farewell. That being done, I came home, and reread the latest issue of World of New Krypton and really enjoyed it for the sci-fi story it truly is.

I wish I had more to talk about than that, but it’s getting late, and I’m beginning to feel the pangs of sleep riding on my shoulders, and I need to pack just a little more before bed. I’ll open up after the move.

In last week’s strip I casually mentioned that I would eventually be re-drawing Flight of the Virginia Dare. I’ve planned to re-draw it for some time, if for no reason than I just don’t like a majority of the artwork that I did 8-9 years ago. I also don’t like the way the romance between Jenny and Officer Duett just kind of happens. In the revision, we’ll get a tour of the Virginia Dare and a real sense of why a conventional bomb in the ballroom will damage the ship past the point where it would be space worthy, since it’s a BIG ship.

There’s also a bit of science that needs to be cleared up. The effort with Jet-Pack Jenny, despite the absurd name she goes by, is that the science fiction is supposed to be scientifically accurate. It’s just something that really irks me when science fiction gets science wrong. Of course, it’s one thing if the science fiction is from an era and the science that’s wrong simply wasn’t known, yet. Getting the atmosphere of Venus as habitable is fine if you’re writing a story in 1952. but it’s bad science if you’re writing it in 2002. Ignorance doesn’t count, either. That’s why I’m redrawing the story.