21. Once Upon a Time in Western Helsinki

Air Raid Robertson on Sept. 5, 2009

The other day I was thinking about how I haven't drawn any Western stuff in a long while. I then thought of putting a cowboy shootout gag in Capital of Helsinki, but I couldn't think of a punchline.

But then, well, this one just sorta came to me.

Naturally, my standard three panel layout wouldn't work for a gag that's very dependent on a protracted staredown sequence. I briefly considered extending the length of this scene to maybe two or three pages. That might've been overkill though, and I don't really want to do any Capital of Helsinki strips that are more than one page long anyways.

I do believe that my linework for this one was ultimately pretty good. (The coloring I'm not too happy with) The Clint Eastwood-type figure in the foreground of the first panel was done with a brush. The Eli Wallach-type figure in the background was done with a standard nib.

This was the first time I tried to use line width in a manner to convey distance. I'm pretty proud of the result.

I'd also like to note that I played around with the shading here. Eastwood and Wallach are lit in opposing directions for most of the strip. However, in the last panel they're lit from the same direction. I was hoping it'd subtly convey that the two suddenly saw eye to eye in the end.