You Caught Me!

OK, you caught me! I'm a thief! To my immediate left is page one of The Box, a strip I recently found the artwork for while cleaning out my office. I wrote and drew this strip in high school, lo those many, many years ago. And yeah, I stole like crazy!

First, the design of the page and the asteroid are stolen from a Richard Corben fanzine story that came out around this time. I saw an ad for the fanzine and swiped the whole thing. Corben had an alien of some sort in his side-panels, but I went for a different story. I was intrigued by the asteroid; Corben did his with an airbrush of course, not brushed wash as I used.

BTW, these things are real old and my lettering was horrid, so I have relettered all of these in the digital files, just to make it easier to read and to spare me some of the embarrassment really old work often carries.

I don't think I stole the two figures on this page, but I see a lot of Gil Kane and even some early Jim Aparo in these two, so who knows. Maybe we can just call these influenced panels rather than pure swipes.

As for the story, I made it up as I drew each page. I had no idea where it was going. Duh!

On page two I remember that the figure in the first panel is a swipe, but I don't know who I was swiping (I'm thinking it might be from an anatomy book rather than a comic). I do a poor job regardless of who it was. Man, did I ever like to violate the panel border!

I liked the second panel a lot. I thought the time-lapse opening of the cargo panel on the ship was pretty cool. I still like it all these years later.

As with a lot of my artwork, I drew in little arrows to make sure you read the panels in the correct order. I was always worrying about that apparently.

If I get them cleaned up tonight, I will show you pages three and four tomorrow.

See you then!