:::COMMENTARY TRACK:::
Page 1 panel 1: This is one of the very very few full-color comics I've attempted -- I don't particularly like most approaches to full color, just because at some point making that chair in the background brown or that bit of sky in the corner of the panel blue starts becoming a rote choice and not a considered one. For that reason I wanted to limit the palette some, so all the "outside" panels are gray and all the "train" panels are blue or orange. The "Epee Du Bois" graffiti in the background is a band I like. I wanted there to still be words in this comic even though it's mostly silent, and graffiti seemed like a good solution.
1.2: The silver metal bars are all drawn with iridescent paint pens that they sold me at the art store when I wanted something totally different. For awhile I figured I had just wasted my money, but then Jonny Negron made a pretty convincing case for them to me and I've been digging on 'em pretty hard ever since. I'm messing with them a lot on my tumblr.
1.3: "NO BLK LINES IN BG'S". I write process notes directly on the page in pencil while I'm working up my comics, and in this case I thought they were another nice verbal addition to a silent comic, so I beefed them up with ink and color the way I did with everything else I'd put on the board. And yeah, there's not any black lines in the backgrounds -- the NYC subways are kind of these overwhelming color spaces anyway, so it made sense to emphasize that aspect of them and grab a little extra graphic simplicity while I was at it.
1.5: My favorite pretty girl drawing in this comic is on the right side of this panel.
1.6: And here we see a face (and Pictureplane t-shirt) that'll be familiar to readers of my graphic novel, Affected.
2.1: This is my one real embrace of the full color spectrum in this comic, the bright flood of loveliness that flows between the L and the G train in Williamsburg. Oh yeah, did I mention every panel in this comic represents one train stop on my commute from Bushwick into Park Slope for work? Here's the Metropolitan Ave transfer, which contains at least this many pretty girls at any given time. The "keep this lettering in final version" note in the upper left corner is me telling myself not to erase my own notes -- a note about the notes! It gets pretty deep with me, you guys.
2.2-2.5: Here we run up against the age-old question of realism versus graphic effect. The G train is a really ugly orange color inside, and I went back and forth between wanting to faithfully replicate it and not wanting to mimic something I don't like looking at on real life. I ended up deciding that people would at least recognize that tone even if the panels I colored with it didn't look as pretty as they could have.
3.1-3.3: I was going for some kind of "comic timing" with the words on the first three panels of this page; the really small, quiet "green glasses", a beat of silence, and then screaming some twee disco band's name at the top of my lungs as a kind of "punchline". I dunno, I'm the first to admit my sense of humor is appealing to nobody but myself. (I can show ya a few thousand pissy Grant Morrison fans who agree!) I ended up whiting out some text that said "Suicide Joe" with an arrow pointing to the girl in the middle's magazine in the second panel to get that silent beat, so I'm glad I can use this commentary to let everyone know that she's passing her commute by reading Peter Kielland's existentialist comics masterpiece.
3.4-3.5: And there you go: why I love taking the subway to work. Hope you guys liked this one.
