A number of weeks ago Larry Hancock and I chatted with by John Swinimer, the host of the True North Country Comics Podcast to promote our appearance at this year’s now cancelled Toronto Comics Arts Festival. We had planned to launch the newly-released Abductions, Book Three of The Silent Invasion series at TCAF 2020.
Tune in and enjoy our conversation with John here.
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And remember to Watch the Skies!
This time around, here’s a tour of the tiny space where The Silent Invasion is drawn, erased, redrawn, lettered and inked.
And now some photos:
Top row; the approach to the studio: bottom; the ink-stained desk, surrounded by some treasured and well-read favourite comics and other bric-a-brac.
The artist’s materials, including his trusty blue pencils, numbers 4 and 5 Winsor & Newton Series 7 watercolour brushes, and jars of India ink.
The bookshelves beside and behind my drawing table, and three very dusty 1/72-scale plastic airplane models built in the wayback time when I was in high school. The aircraft are a Hawker Tempest (in front), Grumman Bearcat (rear left) and a Grumman Hellcat.
Until next time, watch the skies, and stay safe and healthy.
Way back in the distant past (remember those days?), we created this 7-page tale telling the story of Dick Mallet’s last case. If you recall, it was Dick Mallet’s mysterious disappearance at the beginning The Great Fear that was the catalyst to get this wild goose chase going. Presented here for the first time in many years, is the story that explains how poor old Dick Mallet ended up on a lonely road somewhere in America back in the halcyon days of 1952.
Click here for more information about The Silent Invasion.
As we get closer to the release of Abductions, the excitement is almost unbearable!
No forget that…
Let’s talk about floating anxiety. I’m sure most people perusing this blog have it. I have it. How can we relieve that sense of uncertainty?
I know! Read something light and fluffy—not stuffy—like The Silent Invasion! Books One and Two are now available from NBM. Abductions, Book Three of the series will be released shortly. The art is a little quirky, and the story will take you down rabbit holes with no exits. And as I like to say, The Silent Invasion is a comic/graphic novel for people who LIKE to READ comics.
Before closing for today, here’s a look at some pages from Chapter Two of Dark Matter, Book Four of The Silent Invasion, coming next year from NBM. These images are not scans. They were photographed with my phone camera. So here they are, warts and all.
Next—a visit to the artist’s lair.
Until tomorrow… Watch the skies! Stay safe and healthy! And read The Silent Invasion (and all those other comics)!
Yes, Abductions, Book Three of The Silent Invasion will be released very shortly. Our challenge this week will be to post something every day.
Today, I’m going to give you a peek at some work from Book Four which will be released next year.
Here is the evolution of one page from Chapter Two of Book Four.
The initial rough of said page drawn with a big fat marker:
Here is the first version of the pencils:
Then after much thought the page was re-pencilled to this:
Below is the inked version. Some background details are missing in panel 4. And we are still waiting for the wordsmith to provide words to the page. Of course when Larry sees this blog post that will the first time he’s seen the almost finished page.
All of these images were shot with a phone camera in my kitchen under bad lighting.
Tomorrow: the artist’s secret sanctum; or pages from an alternate world Silent Invasion?
Remember, watch the skies! And stay healthy!
Presented in glorious black and white, Abductions is an escapist, fun-filled, paranoia-filled romp through 1965-era Union City in which private detective Phil Housley searches for Matt Sinkage—the man he thought he killed six years earlier (see Books One and Two of our series for more conspiracy-riddled tales from America’s fictional heartland).
Here’s a short sequence from Chapter Two of Abductions:
And then Phil Housley is mesmerized by the 25-yard end zones while watching a Canadian Football League game between the British Columbia Lions and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats:
For more previews click here.
And remember to watch the skies while you stay at home.
Abductions, Book Three of The Silent Invasion is coming in May! For those who don’t know, Abductions is a fun-filled paranoia-fuelled escapist romp through a warped 1960s America, a small antidote for these anxiety-inducing times.
And remember:
Look up! Look out! and Watch the skies while you stay at home!
While searching through the disorganized archives of The Silent Invasion we found this Christmas-themed cover from the sixth-issue of the Caliber reprints, published in a far distant past—a past that today almost feels like it was an alternate reality.
Watch the skies! They ARE coming for you! And look out behind you! You don’t want to end up like old Matt Sinkage here—nursing a bunch of beers in a lonely Ontario bar…
Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! And all the best in 2020 from the Gang of Two that bring you The Silent Invasion.
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Abductions, the third volume in our series The Silent Invasion will be released this coming May. As we’ve been preparing book three, we’ve actually been harder at work on book four which, when complete, will be our first all-new Silent Invasion story in 20-plus years.
Here’s a sneak peak at the first six pages of book four, showing the evolution of these pages from raw layouts to final art.
Larry and I will get together and regale each other with ideas for a story. In between story ideas, he talks about baseball (the Blue Jays) and I talk about hockey (the Oshawa Generals and Whitby Dunlops). We are clearly not listening to one another. And as with hockey, bench clearing brawls often break out. After the first set of fisticuffs, I go away and roughly lay out the scenes as we think we’ve discussed them. The layouts are drawn with a ball point pen or felt pen in small notebooks.
The layouts then go back to Larry and he says, “this scene is too long,” and I say “we don’t have the space limitation anymore. It doesn’t matter. Let’s keep it.” He then says, “The book will go on forever. We’ll never finish it.” Naturally there is a second set of blows—but no game misconduct yet. Pencils are then completed the old fashioned way—with non-repro blue pencils. Rough scripting is indicated on tracing paper. Scenes have been shortened, others moved or added. Then the pencils are photographed with a crappy phone camera and go back to Larry.
Larry edits the scripting even more and after one final donnybrook, I make more changes to the art. Pages are redrawn and redrawn—and after much gnashing of teeth edited again and again. And then finally lettered and inked. The art is then scanned, cleaned up and grey tones added in Photoshop. And there you have it the final art as it stands now. I expect as we move further along in the story I will go back and make more adjustments to the art.
And you thought this post was going to be about (ice) hockey.
Next time: Remembering the Baltimore Stallions—winners of the Grey Cup in 1995 (and the only American-based team to win the CFL championship).
Watch the skies remember—all U.S. presidents since 1980 have been aliens from space!!! The radio in my fillings told me so.
Abductions! is coming from NBM May.
And to get you all feverish with anticipation, here’s a look at four of the covers from Secret Messages—the long-lost floppy comic—in which Abductions! was first serialized.
Next week: more lost art… plus answers to the following burning questions about Canadian football: Why are there two 50-yard lines? How can the entire backfield be in motion without confusing both the offensive and defensive teams? And why are the end zones so big?
Keep watching the skies, even though it’s already too late! The aliens are here and stealing your precious bodily fluids!
