LEFT BEHIND page 2

Just finished listening to the amazing NO DOMINION by Charlie Huston read by the incredible Scott Brick. Boy, what a fun, fun book. It's the perfect thing to listen to while drawing: smart, funny, dark and... vampires. Scott Brick does such a great job. I highly recommend this and it's predecessor ALREADY DEAD. Thanks to JAn for sowing the seeds and of course Peter Marshall for helping me get my hands on this copy.

I think I'm gonna head back to listening to the ORIGINAL RED SOX podcast. Heather's a huge Red Sox fan, and I'm trying to not look like a poser and catch up on what's been going on. I started at the start of the 2005 season and I'm currently in June 2006. I'm getting there. But there's only so much baseball you can listen to. No really. There is.

Enough with Jason's recommendations. This isn't a critic's choice thing ("with a two snaps up and a round the twist"), this is an artblog.

Ollie's script didn't indicate the shadow of the guy nor his gun in the first panel, just West and Abby taking out said guard in the second panel. I decided to add these elements to help us get to the second panel. Otherwise you'd be wondering a bit where he came from. It's not a huge leap to guess that guards are probably wandering around, but I don't like making people take leaps of faith and intuition to read my comics.

Ollie and I brainstormed a whole bunch of things that Abby, Sparrow and West could team up and do in terms of power combinations and stunts. In the old Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying game (and Jason ushers in his total nerdiness with those 4 simple words) any unconventional use of a power is called a "power stunt". For example, Sparrow's rock slide is a power stunt. Ollie came up with the West/Abby battering ram and it's such a great idea. I'd to show some of the others.

Boy it was fun drawing Peter here. I think it's this panel that really ties this comic into the show. I really dig that. People complained that this story is such an afterthought. I would counter that it's such a brilliant extrapolation of events. It's a testament to Ollie's storytelling skills that he can not only weave a great story, but weave that story into the episodes and events that we've already seen. It's a fantastic piece of storytelling that fleshes out events and enriches the HEROES experience. As fas as I'm concerned, it's stories like these that tie in between the episodes that the comics were made for.

Once again, Paul Caggegi steped in to lend an enormous hand. I stared at the enormous task of having to draw the Human Resources room in Building 26. Frankly I just had no idea how I could do it justice. Enter Paul Caggegi and his amazing 3d modeling. He built the room and one person on one gurney, copied and pasted it and made me a Human Resources room! He made the impossible, possible.

His invaluable assistance meant I could concentrate on storytelling and rendering all those stupid foam lumps on the briefcase in the last panel rather than spending days on perspective lines, grids and foreshortening of the human figure. This panel took a full day to draw instead of several days. Thanks so much, Paul!

Now, here's an incredible treat. Paul has created a dynamic video of how we worked together on the last story 138. Check out the awesomeness:

http://www.vimeo.com/4957527

He's got a bunch of cool stuff there, so feel free to get distracted.

UPCOMING: My cousin has approached me about writing and drawing a story to tie into a line of action figures he's produced. More details as that gets closer to the wire. Right now I'm nutting out a story. I've come up with something good... but I think I have the time to make it great.

NEXT: More of Paul's awesomeness and some thoughts on the last panel story.