Dead Duck

Hey folks! Welcome to the latest installment of “Dead Duck: Four Score and Seven Bullets Ago!” Here’s your trivia fix for this episode:

• I used to be totally opposed to running a copied panel side by side–albeit with slight variations–to tell a sequential story. Instead, I’d re-draw the entire panel by hand, as if I was proving something to somebody that I took the time to do this the old fashioned way. These days, I’m more prone to repeat the background while just re-drawing the character, for more crisp continuity. But in defense of the old fashioned way, it often takes me a hell of a lot longer to cut corners like this in Photoshop than to re-draw it.

• One of the coolest things to happen to me during production of “Dead Duck” was becoming friends with actor Doug Jones. Doug played Abe Sapien in the “Hellboy” movies, and Faun and the Pale Man in “Pan’s Labyrinth”, and he was kind enough to write the foreword in my “Dead Duck” graphic novel. I’ve since decided that if a live action “Dead Duck” movie were to get made, I’d lobby for Doug Jones to play Dean.

• Seriously, I often catch myself walking down the street or in the middle of a grocery store, saying phrases to myself like “Time to unkink the garden hose of history”. So much of the dialogue I put in my characters mouths originated in my own, which explains why friends say my characters sound like me, and why I get weird looks in the grocery store.

• I could have used an axe, a meat cleaver, a lawnmower blade, or any number of sharp implements. But I think it was my affection for Jason Voorhees (of “Friday The 13th” horror movie fame) that made me choose a machete.

• Whereas I find a scene like Abe’s beheading goofy and funny, my wife finds it more disturbing because it’s violence committed upon a cute cartoon character. Chalk it up to my misspent youth watching Ralph Bakshi films, I guess.

• I love Zombie Chick’s last line on this page. But it was a line I had to research before committing it to the script. I am not particularly a drinker (two beers in me and you’d think I drank a roofie milkshake), and I don’t know one shot of liquor from another. So I researched different types of shots online, and went with whatever sounded funniest to me.

Catch you on the next page!

–Jay

Welcome back to the next installment of “FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN BULLETS AGO!” Here’s your trivia fix for this latest page:

• I’ve mentioned it before, but you can always tell what stories I drew from 2006, because the characters’ cell phones will have antennas.

• Growing up in the middle of Michigan, the proper term for yanking a person’s underpants into his butt crack was called a “wedgie”. But having watched a good amount of “Mystery Science Theater 3000″, I noticed that show frequently used the term “snuggy” (probably a regional phrase from Minneapolis, where the show was shot). “Snuggy” forevermore took precedence for me because it sounded funnier.

•  Though it’s running as the fourth story in “Dead Duck”, this was the very first story I’d drawn featuring J.P. Yorick.

• I’d originally planned on J.P. having a bevvy of attractive female employees (albeit in various states of physical decay) running his office. As the first of this proposed staff, Estelle started off as a throw-away character that I only planned as a one-time sight gag. Once I drew her, however, something about her character gelled with me. I decided to flesh out her character (no pun intended) and soon made her the sole personnel of RIP Inc.’s home office.

• In the circular panel in the center of the page, the framed picture on the back wall was originally a small black plaque that said RIP Inc. I’ve since replaced it with the framed image of a female vampire, which I originally drew for a “Fright Night” themed commission. That seemed more interesting and just as fitting an image to decorate J.P.’s office than just a boring plaque.

• This being the first time I’d drawn her, Estelle originally looked a bit different in the circular panel than she did in other stories–she initially had a more stretched out head, shaped similarly to an upside down bowling pin. Every version I drew of Estelle since had her looking much cuter with a rounder head. So I re-drew her for this re-printing to maintain continuity.

• As originally drawn, Estelle was seen clipping J.P.’s toenails. While it seemed like a funny site gag at the time, Estelle has since grown into a stronger character than I’d initially imaged her to be, and as I write her now, she’d never be so subordinate. So that was another good excuse to re-draw her in this panel. But J.P.’s big, lumpy bare foot was too funny to cover up with a shoe, so I left it alone.

• Though Dead Duck is talking on a circa 2006 cell phone (with an antennae), because I redrew Estelle in this panel in 2011, I gave her a modern, antennae-less cell phone. As mentioned before, anachronisms run wild in the pages of “Dead Duck”.

• I don’t often break the fourth wall in my stories, but having Dead Duck smash his head into the side of the circular panel–thereby acknowledging to the reader that he knows he’s a cartoon character–was too funny a gag not to use.

• DVD players had been the standard for almost a decade when I drew this story, and Blu-Ray players were fast making headway in surpassing them. But the idea of Zombie Chick using a VCR to record her bowel movements just cracked me up. It also started the trend of Zombie Chick’s attraction to antiquated technology, which will show up more in future stories.

• I’ve always loved the idea of “cleaners”, who are typically employed by the mob to clean up crime scenes, even if it meant committing more crime in the process. I knew “Dead Duck” was going to occasionally deal with real deaths in history, so having a “cleaner” fix up historical mistakes that Dead Duck would make seemed like a great comedic device.

See you on the next page!

–Jay