Chapter 2: Deadline

SteveMyers22 on July 19, 2007

This is the story of the movie's villain, Sonny King. It was an even bigger pain to put out, because it had more rewrites than the Buddy Colt comic. I can't tell you how crazy it gets when you have dozens and dozens of thumbnails for just 10 comic pages. I think I had more trouble with this one for a few reasons … 1- I liked one of the earlier versions of the story better than the final product … 2- I was miffed that my initial design of the reporter character got shot down by the writer. He wanted a really chesty, almost porno star looking blonde. Since I worked in newspapers for over a decade and never met a reporter that fit his description I went with a more normal looking woman. He didn't like that. We argued a bit and compromised on a woman that is based on Tina Fey. A few weeks after this came out, Brian Michael Bendis introduced a new reporter at the Daily Bugle who looked exactly like … you guessed it … Tina Fey. 3- The writer really kills my art on some of the pages with the text. This is a product of too many rewrites. I ended up with more narration than I had planned because of all the changes. I did my best with what I had, but I'd have liked to have stretched this story out over another 2 to 3 pages.

Ah well, such is life.

The things I liked most about this part of the project were:
The cover of the chapter. I designed the entire newspaper page that's on the cover. A lot of it's covered up because of the crop. There's a whole story in there about Jeff Blake, the Saints quarterback at the time. And another sidebar news story totally obscured. But I know they're there! Flexing my news design skills!
I also liked drawing the villains. More on that later.