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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.
Hey folks! Welcome to the latest installment of “Dead Duck: Four Score and Seven Bullets Ago!” Here’s your trivia fix for this episode:
When I was still sketching out ideas for “Dead Duck” in 2006, one concept I knew I wanted in there was a history cleaner. I did a couple designs--the first one was a caricature of myself in a black hat and trench coat, which looked a lot like Boris Badenov with a goatee. The next one was a variation on my old character, "The Lotto", a vigilante I created at the same time as Dead Duck, around 1989/1990. I eventually broke away from the "covert hatchetman" angle, and decided the cleaner should be a 50's greaser...but headless. Partly inspired by one of my favorite characters in pop culture, "The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow", I was interested in creating a very expressive character, but who had no ability to speak or facially emote. I had a small list of names that I kicked around, but settled on Dean, after the late actor James Dean. On a related note, The Lotto ended up a character in "Dead Duck" after all. His story will run later this year.
I loved the idea of Dean riding a big ol' chopper with a funky skull on the front of it. After I created his story, however, I worried that the bike and his leather jacket might cause readers to compare him to Marvel's Ghostrider. In the end, I think the character and his bike are unique enough that it didn't really matter.
In my comics, I make a point to either come up with really unique onomatopoeia for my sound effects, or else if I use cliche words like "crash" and "vroom", I at least try to draw them in a unique way the represents their sound.
The logistical nightmare of trying to fit a long, horizontal chopper into a squat panel resulted in my layout of this page being much "flatter" and more comic strip-like than I would have preferred. I make up for this in the next story Dean shows up in, where I draw his bike in much more interesting angles.
I'm a big fan of Broadway musicals, and "Annie" is a childhood favorite of mine, hence the reference. I also think buffalo are the funniest sounding animals of all time.
This was the "Dead Duck" story where I decided I was either going to be tame with the deaths, or do something that could potentially offend people. I opted to go with whatever I found funny, history buffs and Titanic survivors be damned.
I think I was watching a lot of "Seinfeld" reruns when I wrote this. I like the show just fine, but in hindsight, I wish I would have referenced a less obvious show that I genuinely loved, like "Scrubs" or "Freaks and Geeks".
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.
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I based the look of Ford Theater not on the actual building, but instead on The Temple Theater, an historic movie palace from my home town of Saginaw, Michigan, where I had some of my earliest (and best) movie and theatre-going experiences.
One of the few "Dead Duck" stories where I did very little historical research. At the time, the gags were more important to me than period-accuracy. But since then, I've made a point to maintain a balance of humor with historic reference in all my Dead Duck stories.
One of the few "Dead Duck" stories that teases the finale before telling the story. I did this because I felt having Dead Duck mention "The Vagina Monologues" was a great opening gag.
I've always loved the look of masonry, and I use it frequently in "Dead Duck", especially when conveying Rigormortitropolis.
I based the performer on stage on cartoonist Harold Gray's classic comic strip character, Little Orphan Annie". This was due to my being a fan of the stage musical "Annie" when I was a little kid.
When I originally drew my "Dead Duck" graphic novel, I'd frequently include framed pictures of ships at sea as details in the background. You can still find them in many of the stories I print here, but in most cases, I've gone in and removed the boats and replaced them with artwork more related to whatever scene I've illustrated (a good example of which will be seen in part two of "Four Score and Seven Bullets Ago").
With my design of Mary Todd Lincoln, I basically drew inspiration from a familiar old cartoon stock character of the snooty high society woman with a tiara and opera glasses. In retrospect, I which I would have more accurately caricatured the actual Mary Todd.
This story is based off a gag I'd drawn back in the early 90's, which showed a cartoon wolf sitting in a car next to a woman dressed like Jackie Kennedy, and having his brains literally blown out. This was the beginning of my mixing cute cartoons with macabre themes. The image stuck with me for years and eventually mutated into a dark comedy about Lincoln's assassination.
This was originally a very hard story to write, not because of the subject matter, but because the original script was 99% weird ramblings by Zombie Chick--funny stuff, but it didn't carry the story along at all. Eventually I was able to trim down her dialogue to just the funniest bits, leaving room enough to tell the story while still helping carry the plot.
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I’m a big Beatles fan. But rather than doing an all Beatles-themed “Dead Duck” story, I wanted to have them be an element rather than the total focus. Little touches, like my opening prologue to this story that compared Punch and Judy shows to Beatlemania, and setting the story in their hometown of Liverpool seemed to do the job. But for my finale, I had to go balls out and recreate the Abbey Road album in a medieval setting with Dead Duck and Zombie Chick.
I was loosely inspired by The Beatles Renaissance Minstrels poster drawn by Fabio Traverso, which recreated the Beatles in period clothing. But for my designs, I tried to do 17th century recreations of the clothes they wore on the "Abbey Road" album. I paid particular attention to leave Paul barefooted.
Turning a Volkswagen Bug into a hay wagon is tiny source of pride for me.
This is one of the few times you actually see Dead Duck and Zombie Chick taking the dead back to RIP Inc., albeit with a brief pit stop for breakfast.
I'll assume any Beatles fans will get the song references on this page. Anyone who doesn't get it, drop whatever you're doing and head to your nearest vinyl dealer now. Otherwise, your musical soul may pay the forfeit of your negligence.
There were so many stupid names for bands in the 90's, and Color Me Badd just topped the list for me, making it a perfect group for Zombie Chick to mistake for the far superior Beatles.
My biggest challenge in creating this page was spelling omelette. I researched it online, and no two spellings are the same. I've just changed the spelling on the comic page to omelette, but even now, spellcheck is telling me I'm stupid.
See you here for the next "Dead Duck" episode, "FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN BULLETS AGO"!
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You have to write a few stories before you really understand your characters and their world. I needed to write a few more before this one.
I mentioned last time how I felt the woodchipper gag was almost TOO anachronistic for “Dead Duck”. On top of that, I made Zombie Chick a little too coherent in her exchange with Judy in the second panel. Zombie Chick might have moments of clarity, but they should always be punctuated with a totally weird, confused statement.
Again, because I wrote this story before really understanding Dead Duck's relationship to J.P. Yorick, there are inconsistencies here with how I'd write the characters now. Dead Duck would never refer to his boss as "Death" (always J.P.). And he wouldn't be so naive to believe J.P. could die (he is dead, after all). It was a case of my letting gags shape a story rather than the characters, which you shouldn't do. The one gag that still fits, however, is J.P. getting Dead Duck to drink embalming fluid. They still have that one-sided, brotherly abusive relationship.
"It's okay, Ducky. I still think you smell like cookies" may be my favorite line I've ever written for Zombie Chick, because it sums her up to well. It's totally senseless and genuinely sweet, just like her.
These three puppets have always been regular stock players in Punch and Judy shows, and as in this story, they are frequently killed by Punch.
I think having Dead Duck and Zombie Chick make anachronistic remarks makes perfect sense. But Judy's lines here, insinuating she knows these 20th century puppet characters despite her being in the 17th century, just seems ill fitting. I think even with anachronism, there needs to be some ground rules. I've figured them out since, but here I was still getting the hang of it.
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I reveled in the opportunity to have Judy get revenge on Punch, after centuries of his abuse of her in the name of comedy. I'm not sure if I'm the first artist to allow her the upper hand, but I've never seen her come out on top before I drew this story.
This was one of the few times that I censored myself. In the top panel, I'd originally written an entirely different exchange between Punch and Judy, and Zombie Chick's response to it was different as well. It was a joke that I eventually considered too offensive, and I changed it just before the book went to print. In the end it was for the best, as I wound up writing a much funnier and more inventive joke than the previous one.
For those unfamiliar with author J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan", clapping your hands and saying your believe will bring a dead fairy back to life. And Puck, from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's dream", was a fairy, as well as a model for Barrie's Peter Pan. Kind of a six degrees of separation for classic literature.
This was the most anachronistic I ever got in a Dead Duck story, and I think I may have gone too far in this case. The woodchipper is a funny gag, but it almost takes you out of the time period, which is way more important than the gag.
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My affection for pop culture references knows no bounds. This time I had Zombie Chick refer to Punchy, the mascot for Hawaiian Punch, who'd ask some poor sap if he wanted a punch, then he'd wallop him. The connection to Mr. Punch is obviously the name, and the penchant for violence.
Punch's use of "eighty-sixed" is a term I borrowed from one of my favorite movie musicals, "The Wiz" (1978), when Miss one is referring to a dead witch. The phrase means to remove or do away with, and originated in restaurants when an item was taken off a menu. But in mob terms, it meant someone got killed.
The swazzle is another example of researching for my stories. As I learned about the device, I wondered how the "Professors" (as Punch and Judy puppeteers were referred) didn't choke on them. Thus, I figured out my means of disposal for Signor Bologna.
Mac Tonight was an old McDonald's characters that's never used anymore. His head was a giant crescent moon with Billy Joel sunglasses. Hence, the comparison to Punch and his similarly shaped dome.
When I wrote this story, I hadn't yet written J.P. Yorick into the comics. So I hadn't quite figured out Dead Duck's relationship with him, and hadn't decided how Dead Duck would refer to him: Death, chief, boss, or just J.P. (which I eventually settled on). So with this page and the following, there's a degree of concern that Dead Duck has for J.P. which would be a bit uncharacteristic in more recent stories.
The idea of an executive washroom was another concept that wouldn't fly in more recent "Dead Duck" stories. I'd originally envisioned RIP Inc. as a huge, fancy corporation. But after the first few stories, I figured out it was more of run down business with a big client base. Kind of like an afterlife carwash.
For those who don't already know, Charles Lindbergh was a famous pilot who flew a single passenger plane from New York to Paris in the 1920's. That's all I was referencing when I wrote the gag (albeit a dark one) about Punch throwing his baby out the window, which was a common occurrence in Punch and Judy shows. What I didn't consider until after this story saw print was that, in the early 30's, Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped and eventually found dead. So there's a darker connection to this bit than I ever intended to make.
While I often add color to the boxes that give narration to the story, I rarely add color to my word balloons. In the case of this last panel, I did it to break up all the white that resulted from having no background.
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I was very inspired by the cartooning style of Jim Borgman (editorial cartoonist and artist on the syndicated strip "Zits") in my design of Signor Bologna.
The comedy term "slapstick" originated with Punch and Judy, from the loud two-piece device he'd hit other puppets with. The term now refers to an abusive style of comedy, which I admit is a big component of most "Dead Duck" stories (as should be evident here).
Creating different facial expressions for Dead Duck is always a challenge, since he has that huge bill and no pupils. But with this story, I began to feel like I was working through those design obstacles and getting a good range of emotion from him.
Zombie Chick's plea to Punch is in reference to "Pinocchio", whom she's obviously confusing him for. Similar to Pinocchio, Punch also originated in Italy, over 400 years before the adventures of Pinocchio appeared as a newspaper feature.
This may be the only time I have someone refer to Zombie Chick's breasts as "tits". It was early in "Dead Duck's" development, and my original influences were the underground comics from the 60's and 70's, so pointing out her "tits" seemed natural. it's not something I would say in a story today, however. I guess I just have more respect and affection for the character after eight years of drawing her.
While in college, I drew a comic strip for my school paper called "Mother's Goofs" which lampooned classic folktales, fairytales and nursery rhymes. One episode involved the head of the Fairytaleland mob putting a hit on Moony, the cow who jumped over the moon. The mob boss was Don Gepetto, Pinocchio's dad, a concept I created a couple years before I knew Bill Willingham had the same idea in his comic "Fables" (Vertigo). Because Gepetto built puppets, I drew his consigliere (or right hand man) as Punch. I liked the idea of this little legless puppet hopping around and being malicious, so I used the concept and design of the character for this "Dead Duck" story.
Up until this story, I'd planned on Dead Duck only picking up characters that could conceivably die. Giving the Punch puppet a life of his own opened up a world of funny possibilities, and because of that, future "Dead Duck" stories were written with far less reliance on rational possibility. Anything goes was forevermore the rule of the day.