You've got the moves, you know the street

Just one page to go. And, at this point, LNC has taken over my entire brain. So no clever posts or witty anecdotes, unfortunately. Page 24 is going down, today most likely. My brain should clear after that.

Jimmy quit, Joey got married

There's a line from the never-aired pilot Heat Vision and Jack, starring Jack Black as an astronaut who was exposed to inappropriate levels of solar radiation and became a super-genius in daylight, where he says "The human brain is like cookie dough." It expands when baked to fill the available space. Love and Capes is like that. With only two pages left, it's almost all I can think about. In fact, as I'm wiring this, loose pencils for page 23 are already on my drawing board.

Page 22 sets up the last sequence of the book, which takes place with Abby and Charlotte in Paris. It took a shower, a drive, and a cup of coffee, but once I hit the line "theraputic shopping", I think it fell together. Let's hope so.

Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel that is the completion of issue #9. I just finished page 21, which I think has, on average, the most jokes of any page in this issue. On this page, we get to see why Mark and Abby will have a trying marriage. (Just kidding.)

From a techie point of view, I was able to use the bookstore storeroom set, which always speeds things up. There's one more sequence in here, and then some Paris scenes again. I shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel to finish the end of the book. We'll see, though. I'm never one to make things easy on myself.

And hey, the collection is in comic shops now. Have you seen it? If not, you really should.

It's a city of shadow, it's a city of crime

I found out earlier this week that reruns of the syndicated Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? are airing on the Game Show Network. Why is this important? Well, in April of 2003, I was on the show. It means that sometime, they'll be reairing my episode. I'm in reruns, baby!

Even though I was on the version with Meredith Viera, I think Regis Philbin was on my mind when I colored Mark's suit in page twenty. He's definitely wearing a Regis-inspired outfit. I haven't shown Mark working his civilian accounting job much in the run of the series (only twice, I think) so I wanted throw in a nod to the fact that Mark does work for a living. Plus, I'm experimenting with how grays print with a newly revised black-line printing technique. Anyway, I think it looks kind of cool.

Also on page twenty, Abby's new hire, Jason, shows up again. He's been dreadfully absent from the book since his introduction, and based on his first scene in this issue, I had to make sure he showed up to put a button on his mini-arc.

The stars are shining for you, and just like me I'm sure that they adore you

I just finished page nineteen, and I'm pretty happy with it. I broadened my toolbox of techniques and have done the first rainy day in Love and Capes. I worked out a technique, and I think it looks pretty good. This is my favorite panel of the page. It's a well-composed shop, the weather works well, the lightning looks great and creates some nice lighting effects, and I like dropping the sound effect into the background.

With five pages left, plus doing the cover of #10, the new ad page with new photos, and the new recap page, the book is speeding headlong to its conclusion. I think it'll come together pretty nicely.

From door to door and-a house to house

It's been a little rough getting back on the Love and Capes horse since my Dallas sojourn. Worse yet I had a little writer's block on the panel four joke. Still, I think I pulled through on it, and have done page eighteen. Six pages left!

In this one, I had to create a Hooters-type restaurant, which I did with a place called "Headlights." As you can probably guess, it was Quincy's choice of restaurant. The art on this scene really came together, and even better, I was able to repurpose the Mickey Dee's bar set from issue #5 so the page went faster than it could have.

You can windsurf into my life

This page took me the longest to finish of any page in issue #9. Not because it was hard, but because I started it before I left for WizardWorld, and didn't finish it until I got back last night. There was a lot of work to it, though, since there's a newspaper in it, and I had to create a fake newspaper with fake headlines, as well as the logo for a restaurant and Quincy's newscast.

Yes, that's right, Quincy. Deco City's third-favorite sportscaster makes a triumphant reappearance in this issue of Love and Capes! Just a little extra bonus to, as they say in Texas, "all y'all".

With the start of the back eight, it's time for an all new lyrics contest, so here we go again!

Wizard World Dallas: Day Three (In the Shadow of Jerryworld)

Day Three at Wizard World, in the Arlington Convention Center, right across from the Rangers Ballpark at Arlington and the under-construction Dallas Cowboys stadium, went pretty well. It started a little slow, but Sunday crowds are always hard to read. Some of them go on the buying frenzy that they’ve been holding back on since Day One, some of them have alread spent their money and are just going around saying “hi”.

Still, I did as well on Sunday as I did on any other day. I did a few commissions, including the Deadpool commission seen here. And I sold moreshirts and complete sets of eight books than the rest of the week. Of course, I bought a couple things too. (Can’t say, they may be Christmas presents.)

There’s always the cloud of a question of WizardWorld Texas. Will there be another? They’ve announced dates for next year, and I hope it comes through. While the show seemed slower this year, my sales were a little better, so it’s hard to get a read. I think it’s a good show and hope it sticks around.

All the leaves are brown

Page sixteen is done, which brings to a close our second lyrics quiz, too. I'll post those answers tomorrow, but I'll warn you I wasn't as good with it as I should have been.

This page came out much better than I thought it would. It was a little rockier in my head and when I drew it than when I scripted it. There were a couple of jokes that didn't make the cut, like when Mark made a goofy suggestion about the wedding. It would have gone like this:

Abby: Not my wedding.
Mark: I thought it was our wedding.
Abby: Not when you're talking crazy.

It's a cute scene, but it just didn't work for what I needed to accomplish.

With this page, I am officially on the Back Eight. Two-thirds of the way through. Time to get crazy and knock some more pages out.

I've been sent to spread the message

By my original plan, I should be on page 16 at this point. I'm not. I'm only on 15. I'm one page behind, but that's okay, especially since at the beginning of this month, I was five pages behind. I'm mildly impressed with myself that I was able to catch up even that much. November is a month fraught with busyness, including Wizard World Dallas. So it's good that I'm down to single digits by now.

I can't show much about this sequence, but I'm sure we all guessed that a scene like this was coming.

In other news, it took a lot of calls, including three hours on the phone with AT&T, but I managed to restore the internet service that was destroyed by my foolish attempt to upgrade to the AT&T uVerse package. Oh, sweet Lord did that go badly. I'll share that later, after I get through some of the work that piled up as I was handling that crisis.