Page Fourteen

I think this marks the first gunfire in Love and Capes. There's a weapon fired in #9, but you haven't seen that yet. (It should be soon, I think they're done printing it, so it'll be in stores soon.) But that's more a sci-fi thing.

I've always wondered why people shoot at Superman. I mean, you have to know he's invulnerable, right? Maybe it's just tradition. Afriend told me the next scene should be someone throwing the empty gun at Abby, too, in full Adventures of Superman tradition.

I made sure to draw all the bullets bouncing downward, and Mark catching the one stray. There's no crowd behind him, but still, you can't have stray bullets flying around a city. Mark's nothing if not responsible.

I'm down to ten pages now. It'll be a couple of days before I can get to the next one and down into single digits. Still, this one is going pretty quickly, and that's a good thing.

Another Year, Another Page

The first new page of the new year is page thirteen. It's an okay page, but it's by far not my favorite.

It's one of the few pages I've ever done that I rewrote/redrew a joke after it was done. The joke was funny, but the replacement joke was funnier.

I think some of the frustration came about because this sequence features a Plot Joke. To my mind, there are two types of jokes in Love and Capes, Plot Jokes and Joke Jokes. The latter are jokes that are just funny on their face, and the funny is written first. To use issue eight as an example, Mark and Abby going to a comic book convention, that's a joke joke. The situation is set and the jokes pour out of it.

The other type is a Plot Joke, which serves to advance the story or rearrange characters on the stage first. I can cover a lot with caption boxes, but sometimes you need to show Mark flying Abby to Paris or something along the same lines. In issue eight, the bit where Crusader is set up to fight Psi-Clone is a Plot Joke. I have to introduce Psi-Clone, introduce his powers and have him change into the Crusader. There's a lot of business there to cover. On top of that, I throw a joke in it.

Page thirteen starts with a Plot Joke. Abby's co-worker Jason has to walk into the bookstore. That's very much moving characters on the stage. He needs to be introduced, have a joke, and leave. For four panels, that's a lot to do.And it woks fine, it just doesn't sing the way some of the other jokes have.

Oh well, ever forward. I have to go write another page now, which will feature a couple of Joke Jokes. But they also advance the plot. The lines, they are a blurring.

Happy 2009!

Happy New Year, everyone. Whatever last year was to you, I hope 2009 is everything you could wish for. It's a brilliant, fantastic world with endless possibilities. Go out and make it your best year ever!

Mission Half Accomplished!

Yes, I am all about the schedule, baby! Page twelve is done!

I really like the panel shown here. The body language and cartooning works really well. I like how Mark is using his chin to balance the stack of books. Abby's turn is pretty natural, and she looks very cute.

I'm sure in six months I'll hate it, but for now, it's kind of cool.

I think I even have pages thirteen and fourteen planned out. We'll see how they break…in the New Year!

Limit Not My Comics

Over at Comics Unlimited, Johanna Draper Carlson reviews the Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret trade.

In Love and Capes, Thomas Zahler does a perfect job combining romantic comedy with superheroics.…The book is structured as a series of comic strips, with two punchlines per page (made up of eight panels). Zahler's cartoon-influenced style is appealing and well-suited for both action and comedy. There's a lot of humor to be had in daily life with a superhero. (Presents are never secrets with x-ray vision, for example.) Also entertaining are Mark's relationship with his best friend, hero of the night Darkblade, and Abby's interaction with her observant younger sister Charlotte.

Read the full review here.

Page Eleven

My New Year's Resolution? To have only twelve pages to do on issue #10 in the New Year. One page shy of that, and a day and a half left to make it happen.

Here, Abby asks Mark how he came up with the name "Crusader." His story is actually based on a chapter of my life: He says that it was the name of his grade school's mascot. I'm a proud graduate of Immaculate Conception Grade School, and we were the I.C. Raiders. I did a strip in grade school called Laser Raiders (based heavily on Dynamite Magazine's Dynamite Duo) and then later a little book called Raider.

The reason he has to specify grade school is that it's established that Mark went to my High School here in Ohio, Lake Catholic. There, we were the Cougars.

As for how I came up with "Crusader" for the hero of my strip? Two factors: The main inspiration is that frequent Batman sobriquet "Caped Crusader." The other was a legal and financial reason: The Crusader is a name is common usage, and as such, not really copyrightable. You can name a car "The Nova" but you can't copyright the name "Nova." And, while I'm sure there have been characters named The Crusader, there's nothing to stop me from using it, too.

Now, there might be issues with naming the book "The Crusader", but you'll notice that none of the character's names appear on the book. It's called Love and Capes, and I did do my trademark and copyright search on that.

It also means that should LnC ever become a sitcom or movie, and there's some other legal reason to change a character's name, it wouldn't affect the title of the show. See, always thinkin'.

Page Ten

What? Who's talking to Darkblade? Is it Mark? Or is it someone else?

With this page, I've run out of paved road. I had the issue planned out until this point, and now I'm left with vague "write something funny" guideposts. I've got the ending pretty tight, which is normal. I always have the ending in mind when I start the story, so that I have a target to aim for. Some of the staging is a little sketchy at this point, but I know how it's going to wrap.

If I can do two more pages this month (and yes, I know I'm running out of month) I'll be exactly on schedule for where I should be on this issue. That's all the more impressive when you realize I have a month less to get this one done than I do on most issues. We'll see if I can keep up that pace.

Ho Ho Ho

Santa stopped by Zahlerdu yesterday bringing presents to all the good girls and boys. Oddly, none for me. I knew I shouldn't have tried to sell my Council Seat on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

I love Christmas Eve. It's one of the few times my house is full of people. It's fun having that kind of energy, and especially the sounds of kids running and playing. Uncle Thom's place seems to be a pretty cool place for them, too. After all, I've got a ton of toys and Superman stuff and comics. This year I made coloring books for everyone, too. I just wish I had remembered to put my Spider-Man Web-Shooter up a little higher. There was a bit of a silly string incident.

Oh well, that's what it's all about.

More Christmas festivities on tap for today. But I just wanted to take a minute and say Merry Christmas to everybody out there!

Color My World

I've wanted to do this for a while.

For Christmas Eve every year, I have my relatives over. Timberlake's got an arrangement with Santa so that he comes to the houses in the Village before his yearly rounds and drops off a present or two. So my house is popular with my nephews and neices and Goddaughter. And, of course, waiting for Santa is always a trial for them. I remember it was for me.

So I got the idea that I should do a coloring book for them. This desire was increased by the new Brave and the Bold series on Cartoon Network. It's a fun show, but it's also just so frakkin' pretty. The character designs are just gorgeous (thanks in large part to artist Mike Manley) and I'm trying to figure out the way those characters are built. I decided to put the two of them together and try to do some Brave and the Bold-esque coloring book illustrations.

Some of them came out really well and are shown here. The actual coloring book breakdown includes Firestorm, Aquaman, Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Doctor Doom, Thor, Iron Man, Black Lightning, Hawkgirl and more. I did more the clean-shaven Jim Aparo Aquaman for the cover instead of the design they did for the actual cartoon. I still think it looks pretty cool.

If there's any interest, maybe I'll post the PDF so you can print your own for those of you who have kids who might enjoy it.

Click on any image to embiggen.

Clipping Mask

Look, it's page nine. And, it's a silent panel. I worry that I rely too much on dialogue, so I like when I can work silent panels in.

Plus, this one was had a difficulty level to it. Trying to get Mark's hands to make the shape of a mask, given how cartoony his hands and face proportions are, took some work. I even played fast and loose with the shadows. Technically, Mark's eyes should be in shadow too, but they're not, since I wanted the contrast between his hands and eyes to make things clearer to read.

I knocked it out quickly for the cover, but I do really like Abby's superhero outfit. I feels like a retro-Lois Lane-gets super powers outfit, which works well for this storyline.