The name of the game is problem solving.
The script, as I found it-- because my brain is broken, yes, I literally found a script in a drawer --is very minimal. I assume the minimalism was the point. There are no stage directions. The text is internal monologue, and from it I must infer the location, the sets, the wardrobe & the action.
Easy enough, right?
Chapter Zero-- because I always start things off with a Page Zero, or a Chapter None --is three quarters of a page. Terse dialogue, very clippy stuff. I guess the chapter is set on a boat. I guess Cray is airdropping into water, then boarding the boat.
So then the task becomes drawing it. Cray's in full gear-- no visible face, no exposed skin. Weapons? No. I don't want to draw guns in general, much less on page one. So he's empty handed until he gets in the water. The first page should be a full-page splash, because Comix! And I figure it should be action. Get those blank page jitters out of the way.
So begins the problem solving. What pose should I use? The reference stack of comix on the desk is all Image drek, early years: Deathblow 0, 1 & 2 by Jim Lee, Team 7 #1-4 by Aron Wiesenfeld, and the Deathblow / Barbarian story from Wildstorm! 1 & 2 by Aron Wiesenfeld.. The Team 7 stuff has all the best figurework, so I start scanning those. Pages 1, 2 & 3 all have good figurework on Cray, so those wind up being the basis for the first two pages of my riff. There's a deceptive amount of choreography in Wiesenfeld's layouts; I say deceptive because it's all smartly done, but gets obscured by the OCD detail bullshit. My mission becomes, then, freeing the figures from the web of fiddly inking.
All the 90s pouches & bandoliers have to fucking go.
The tactical gear is crap, so I throw together my own. It doesn't have to be full-on detail because the art should be superheavy on shadow. The scenario is easy: Cray jumps out of a helicopter, the huey banks and draws fire away, Cray dives into the water, latches onto the hull, sets up a charge. That's the first three pages. Page one is a fullpage splash, so one panel, no borders: that should transition smoothly to page two, which is a montage of shots with no defined borders. We go from looking up into the air to panning down to the water, to level with the ship. Nice and smooth. The only boxiness on these pages should be dialogue boxes, which is a conversation I need to have with myself shortly...
Jim Lee's Deathblow couldn't make up its mind on text boxes or dialogue format. Issue #1 has lowercase font in the narration, slightly italicized, which doesn't match up with issue #0 or issue #2. Both 0 & 2 are all caps block lettering. None of which feels very appropriate. And the boxes themselves have hand-drawn borders; for the italic lowercase font the borders are all nib-thin, whereas the other issues do the narrative boxes with thick lines.
Who fucking cares. I'll come back to the text boxes. My main goal is placement, at the moment. I scribble everything out to make sure it fits cleanly. Briefly consider doing the boxes as wholly separate from the text, the way FM often does in Sin City, off in a column of its own. But I want all the real estate I can take, so no separate column. Not for this chapter. Maybe I'll do that in later chapters.
The first two pages resolved, I move from air to water. Cray beneath the waves, affixing a charge to the boat hull. That's the third page, three panels. I start to separate the panels with borders, by the base of the page, so as to carry the border style over onto pages 4 & on. Everything is nice and sharp, and the action is quick. I decide to skip showing how Cray climbs up, because Action is the point here.
Page four gives me some pause. If I'm skipping showing how Cray climbs up, maybe I should be even more elliptical with the action. Part of the point of these pages is establishing character-- and how better to establish the character of your badass than by showing what Kind of badass he is? So instead of a bunch of little panels establishing details I decide the entire scenario can be done in two. Setup two guards looking at pooled water on the deck, completely unprepared for Cray, who's leaping to attack from behind: a nice frozen moment, action in media res. Cut to panel two, a view from just off the ship's bow, knees-down of Cray as he tosses the ragdoll bodies of the guards over.
Boom. Four pages, and I'm halfway through the text for chapter one, in layouts.
I go back to the beginning and start working out spotting blacks.
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