Page 33
I throw a bunch of little things in Love and Capes to keep myself interested. Things like throwing Richard Castle references into the bookstore. One of the other things I do is draw people into the background every now and then. Here, I drew someone into the foreground. I went to Immaculate Conception church in Willoughby, and when I was in grade school, one of our priests was Father Jerry. I was lucky that Immaculate had a pretty good assortment of priests, and Fr. Jerry was one of my favorites. In thinking about it, his use of humor in homilies probably influenced a lot of my own public speaking style.
So, Mark and Abby are getting married, and I needed a priest, so guess who I put into the book?
Starbucks That Don't Involve Coffee
I've been doing commissions as I knock out pages of Love and Capes #12. I've had a few pile up as I've been trying to get to a particular mile marker in the book.
One of them is this Starbuck illustration. The client wanted that hard drinking, gambling, smoking first season version of the character. I had a lot of fun doing it,and think I got the pose and the attitude down pretty well. Frak yeah!
Careless Whispers
I haven't posted one of these in a while: a realpanel from the new issue. Here's a scene from the wedding itself, where Charlotte and Quincy (Maid of Honor and Best Man, respectively) are coming down the aisle. You can see Doc Karma and Blurstreak out of their uniforms, as well as a nondescript extra sitting next to them. Blurstreak's real name is Michael, and he was named after Mike Wieringo. I didn't know Mike as well as I would have liked, but he was a great guy and we were friends. So when I had a super speedster character and he needed to have a first name, it had to be Ringo's.
Also in this scene is something that's driving me nuts: whispering. I don't think the dashed-line thing when I'm doing the transparent balloons. So I fade out the words themselves to a 75% gray so it gives the same effect, hopefully. Especially since, being at the wedding, there's a lot of whispering going on.
I'm at 13 pages to go, but two of those are a double-page spread, so that's like 12, right? And that means I'm at the halfway point… if this were a 24 page story.
This Scene Does NOT Appear in This (or any other) Issue
Yeah, I can guarantee that this scene won't be in issue #12. I mean, it's clear that Charlotte's pregnant with Mark's kid. Oh, wait, that's not going to happen either.
My gush of pages stops with this one. I know what happens on the next two, but I have to figure out how to tell that part of the story. I need to take a breather and figure those out.
Picture Alec Baldwin and Kevin Bacon
Page thirty! Whew, another milestone.
Seriously, if I could, I'd just punch through the rest of the issue. I think I've got one more page left in this burst of Speed Force, and after that I have to think about what happens on page 32 and 33. 34-35 should be a cakewalk though.
The Ref(erence)
I'm almost ready to hit another odometer-turning milestone on Love and Capes. This is page twenty-nine, so my next page will have a three in it. Yay!
Lots of referencing here, too. Amazonia is wearing an outfit based on a Rachel Pally design. (Yeah, that's right, I have to pay attention to those kinds of places while I'm working on this book.) It's way too daring for a 
wedding, of course, but that's the kind of thing Amazonia would pick thinking it was more appropriate. There's even a big reason why she picked that particular blue, but I'll leave that for the story itself, if I get to it. If it doesn't come up in the text, I'll reveal the reasoning later.
The Church pictured is very clearly based on my home parish of Immaculate Conception. It's a great classic-looking Church, so it was a no-brainer of a choice for the scene.
Lots of plot to get to in these next pages, too. Wish me luck.
At Least It's Not a Tycho IV Cloud Creature
Regular readers of the blog know that I'm pretty close to obsessed with The Process, both mine and other people's. From work flow to idea capture, I can't get enough of it. It's one of the things I think that attracts me to so much Aaron Sorkin stuff. SportsNight, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip were all behind-the-scenes stuff.
So, I'm curious to know how this issue of Love and Capes will go. Usually around page 20 or so I get so obsessed with the ending and the book being done, I start pumping out pages to the exclusion of all else. It really does become an Ahab-like obsession. And I can tell I'm at that point on Love and Capes now. I can usually tell when I can bust out a page in a day or less, rather than spread it over two.
The thing is, there's at least 14 pages or so left. If I'm at maximum now, what's going to happen next? Will I get faster? More obsessed? Will I burn up like the doomed singers in Once More Again With Feeling? I dunno.
It'll be kind of fun to find out, though, won't it?
Quick Like a Bunny
Wowzers! Here's another page of Love and Capes #12. Usually after traveling I lose a step and it takes some effort to get back into the swing of things. It almost seems like the back-to-back cons energized me. I've had three full workdays since I got home, and I've done almost as many pages. Heck, if I could do a page a day from here on out, I'd be done early.
However, I can assure you that such a thing will not be happening. I can already a twinge in my hand and the smell of burning wires coming from my brain indicating that I need to take a breath pretty soon.
Baltimore Randomness Continued
Got to talk to Scott Asdit a few times. He's on 30 Rock, and he's big with the funny. He was very nice to my Mom, and I think I may be able to get him to write a blurb for the next Love and Capes trade. Here's hoping.
As I teased, why I'm jealous of Lora Innes: she got a cosplayer, Sarah Gillig. Someone was a fan of her book and dressed up as the lead. But does anyone ever come dressed as the Crusader, Doc Karma or better yet Amazonia? No.
I got to do some fun commissions, including this one of Poison Ivy growing flowers. It's probably the best freehand drawn hand I've ever done.
An iPhone and an auxilary jack are great things to have. When Mom and I were driving back from Baltimore, I used the phone and the iHeartRadio app to tune into Lanigan and Malone from 300 miles away. Kind of cool.
Two For the Price of One
Despite my travel schedule, I managed to get two more pages of Love and Capes #12 done. I didn't post page 25 sooner because it tied directly with page 26. You really need to have the two of them together. Now, I haven't bothered to post enough for you to know why I think that, it was more of a "my own brainspace" kind of thing.
One of the panels I can't post is a big half-page dramatic scene. You'll know it when you read the finished issue, and I'm a little proud of it. It's rare that the finished piece matches the vision in your head, and this one certainly did. I can even hear the soundtrack playing everytime I see that panel.
It's Lifehouse, by the way. First Time