“Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.” - Wally Wood.

Nice work, Rick! You keep getting better and better.

Keeping in mind I've been charging 200 bucks to color something like Byrne's multi-character commissions (price which wasn't set by me, really) and the same for a big black and white montage how much should I charge for this? Or a cover like the AON piece where I'm doing all drawing and coloring?



Original is roughly 14x16 but since I work so detailed it will probably print at twice that size. I don't expect anyone to pay me $400 for that. Or should I? Some sort of discount to make it more reasonable?

I guess whatever the market will bear or whatever you feel your time spent working is worth.

Well I have no idea what the market will bear. And I can never charge by time. It would be outrageous.

Charging for artwork is a strange thing - Any of us who do art at a reasonable capacity eventually have a conversation like this:

Person: "Wow! That's really good! You're an incredible artist! "
You: "Thanks, you're very kind"
Person: " NO REALLY, YOU'RE AMAZING! You should sell your stuff!!!"
You "Yeah?"
Person "YEAH! Heck, I'd love to buy that piece off you. How much would it cost?"
You: Well, it was around 60 hours work, let's say... $600?
Person "SIX HUNDRED BUCKS?!?!?!?!? ARE YOU CRAZY? I was thinking maybe throwing you $10"
You "Yeah, but unskilled minimum wage labor would be $10 an hour, so I thought.."
Person: "BUT YOU ENJOY THIS! Why charge soooo much?"

Or some variation of the above...

Right. That's why it's best to just draw for yourself unless you find someone that respects the work put in, like Don or Gerry.

It's hard to charge a lot for almost any drawings without having a reputation that precedes you. If any of us drew just a short run on say Amazing Spider-Man, we could double or triple what we can charge.

I usually don't charge for my drawings. It's the erasing that isn't cheap. And I do a LOT of it.

Man! What a lot of work for something you can take in in about 12 seconds.

Y'all realize, superhero origins being what they are, that Tyler's life is hanging by a thread now.

That panel at the top is awfully big just to show a guy running. On the second tier, where are those dogs and where did they come from?

Yes, probably, but it emphasizes how alone he is. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

You didn't get that the "Listen" instruction in panel 3 is to listen for the dogs in the neighborhood barking and that's how they can tell which way our heroes went? Those are the neighborhood dogs Skyler and Tyler are running past?

Jeez, that sucks if that's not readily understood. Maybe I presumed too much cause that's how I could tell where people were when we played similar games in the 'burbs at night. I didn't want to have to draw them actually running past.

Could be the fault is mine. I often miss things like that. I do feel more space should have been given to the dogs, though.

I understood it all and think it looks terrific, Rick. Your progress is amazing.

I think it looks great but I too was confused by the dogs. I thought the dogs were chasing them. I think it was because of the last dog, who appeared to be about to clear the fence.

I had a Doberman come up at me on a fence just like that after a running start. I thought the sunavabitch was coming out of there. Bastard. But he stopped right at that point. Some scary shit.

I'm probably not changing that sequence. The words in panel 3 and then 7 should explain what's going on. And I'm too tired at this point to rework it.

I estimate (now that I can see the end) that, counting the splash page, there's 10 pages left. And I'm having a hard enough time lately getting ANYTHING done.

Will also need the montage to round it out to an even number of pages.

But at last, FINALLY, we get Skyler into that park.

Um...

Not sure what happened that I ended up with different weights for these panels. I may have to go back and do something to fix it.

In Panel 6 the colorist will make sure that we're seeing spilled blood by the light of the cell phone.

We see Tyler no more in this issue. He's gets clean away.

When this was first conceived he didn't come out so well. But I thought it were better to keep him around.

He can consider himself lucky.