Uh-oh.

Hi, Everybody!

Vark Thing!

So, the other day when I posted "COUPLA WEEKS?", Michael Grabowski asked:

I'm curious about the process for these pages. Is that detailed in the appendix? Otherwise, Matt, maybe you can ask Dave next time: Did Dave do the grid and lettering and then have Gerhard fill in the blacks?

Let's check!

It's originally from issue 273 "UH-OH."

Yeah, that one.

And, from the Latter Days commentaries (specifically pages 475 and 476,)

"Uh-Oh."

(Pages 141-160)

   I don't actually know words like "levorotatory" and "dextrorotatory". Since I was trying to come up with the most esoteric super-powers imaginable, I just looked through the dictionary until I found a nice long word I didn't know, read the meaning of it and then turned it (and its antonym which is always helpfully included with those definitions) into two different super-powers.

   Page 148- In order to really exaggerate the height from which the reader is looking down on Cerebus, each of the drawings in the bottom two panels was done (I think) twice the size on separate art boards, reduced, and then "stripped in" to place on the page itself at Preney. I had no idea if doing all that would actually emphasize the "height" depicted on the page, but looking at it with reasonably fresh eyes almost two years later, I have to say I think it worked and I pass it on here to any other storytellers who might be facing the same problem in the future.

I was like, "what the hell is Dave talking about?" Oh, that.

   The rest of the issue had, as its genesis, a particular incident in my own life when I was living in one of the penthouse apartments at 221 Queen Street South (penthouse six) and I came home one evening after having a few pints and all of the lights were out for blocks around. And I came in the back door and, sure enough, all the lights, including the auxiliary power was out in the building. And I looked up the stairwell, into the pitch blackness and I thought about going up eighteen flights of stairs in the dark. And I couldn't do it.
   And I thought, I'n just being silly. I know what the eighteen flights of stairs look like. They're identical. Every flight is the same, handrails all the way to the top. One, two, three, four, five, six, first landing. 180 degree turn . One, two three, four, five, six, second floor. 180 degree turn. One, two, three four, five, six, second landing. 180 degree turn. One, two, three, four, five, six third floor. And so on, for eighteen floors. It was not the Bataan Death March or crossing the Amazon or climbing Mount Everest.
   What was just as interesting was that everyone I told the story to - as what was (to me) a complete and total act of unreasoning cowardice- to a person, they said they couldn't have done it either, couldn't even imagine making the attempt. And I couldn't persuade anyone that that was cowardice. They just saw it as common sense. As Bugs Bunny used to say, "Don't go down dere! It's DAHK!"
   Very weird. From then on, I kept waiting for a chance to use it as a story device in Cerebus. I figured what would be going on in the character's head while he was making the climb would be very, very funny- as long as you weren't the character.
   There was a lot of "blacking in" to do, as you can see and finishing up that "blacking in" was one of the things that I was working on, on the morning of 11 September, 2001.

 So there ya go Michael, Dave did it.

Next Time: A refreshing dip into the ol' AMOC Mailbag?