I’ve been working on this short story off and on since getting back to work after finishing up my run inking the Books Of Magic for DC/Black Label and it’s slowly starting to take shape.

It’s another older piece of sorts. 

Back in 2007 I was nominated for a Harvey Award for my work on The Chelation Kid (with Robert Tinnell) and made a last minute decision to attend the Baltimore Comic Con for the Awards ceremony. At the time I was inking the daily Mighty Motor Sapiens and producing a page a week of Wahoo Morris. I was looking for more comics work and wanted something a little more mainstream for my portfolio so I came up with this idea, did a bunch of rough thumbnail concept sketches, then managed to rough out three pages tightening up one before deadlines got to me.

The story sat without anymore work until many years later after I had switched to working digitally. At some point in time I scanned in the 3 pages and the thumbnails and cut them up into a 7 page Manga Studio file. 

It again sat untouched until 2018 when I finished up Wahoo Morris and started finishing up old pin-ups and then the 4 page Lady Of The Lake story. I imported the file into Clip Studio, then re-cut the sketches into a 12 page file, then had to drop it again as I started another year long run storyboarding.

I did pick away at tightening up the pencils on a few pages while whiling away time at conventions, and was intending to dive back into it when the storyboarding gig ended, but the the Books Of Magic inking gig fell into my lap and it got put on hold again. I did manage to solidify the layouts and letter the story (which also involved finally writing a script) during brief downtime this spring and summer. 

Anyway, I’m back to mostly working full time on my own comics for the time being, and I should be finishing this up in the next week or two. It’s taking a ridiculously long time, but I blame the penciller (Me) for leaving so much work for the inker to do.

Once it is done it will be the lead story in an expanded (48 pages) print version of my sci-fi anthology Vistas Unknown.

Here’s an overview of the work in progress.