The Big Meltdown and the Return of Dr. 7

Well last week it finally happened, the thing everyone who uses a computer fears--the hard drive on my Apple 17" laptop crashed and burned. It got dumped when it took a dive--pulled by my dogs legs being tangled with the cord--i grabbed it but I guess it still hit too hard.I rushed to save what I could on my external drive as it did it's death spiral and luckily I lost only a little, so far it seems mostly music and some art which I can rescan. What I really lost was e-mail, that kinda' sucked, but that's the breaks.

A quick trip to my Mac guys and new drive was installed, a 160 gig and I then spent the next few days rebuilding my computer. Some stuff is still off, like my Microsoft office won't work, and so I am still working on the restore, but I'm mostly back up.

Things are super busy between school, work and the crash so I haven't been able to respond or post here for a spell. I finished the second Secret Agent X-9 job for King Features which will see print in the overseas X-9 mag published by Egmont. Below I posted my pencils and inks for some of the last batch of pages. I was flying by the seat of my pants and really burning along--I even had to skip a few days of school to finish this up, one of the unfortunate things that happens at times when the realities of being a pro-artist clashes with me being a student--the pro always wins. Without the moolah generated by my commercial work I wouldn't even be able to afford school-let alone eat or pay my mortgage.




I drew all of these pages directly on the board with no layouts, I didn't even do any sketches before, I just read the script and winged it as I was so pressed for time.


the only ref I had was for the plane which I googled and a few strips by Al to match Dr. 7's costume from the old strips.

After I inked and scanned each page I brought in the zip-pattern on a layer and cut or erased away what I didn't want. I have an actual old sheet of zip-a-tone scanned in just for this purpose. When I was done I'd flatten the image and away we'd go. the white zip was me selecting the zip pattern in that area and painting it white to create the old white zip you used to be able to buy.