Process: Border Worlds Number Nine
The new chapter for the 2017 Dover collection
This is a quick post. When the late Drew Ford (1974-2022) contacted me in 2015 about including a Border Worlds collection in the graphic novel line he was launching with Dover Publications Inc., I was all in. I probably have more books in my library from Dover than any other—ranging from architecture to philosophy to music to Frank Willard’s Moon Mullins—literally scores.
Denis Kitchen—yes, that Denis Kitchen—negotiated the deal, which wasn’t for a huge amount of cash, and even loaned out copies of Megaton Man and Border Worlds to be scanned for the project. Drew wanted to include the color back-ups as well as the eight black-and-white comics collected into one hardbound volume.
Full disclosure, the extant material represents a little more than half of the story material I originally had in mind. Drew’s only stipulation was he felt the material needed some sort of climax—at least a resolution of some sort to give readers some closure.
I had a sequence in my sketchbook in writing pen dating from about 1998 in which Jenny, following the events of Border Worlds: Marooned (the long delayed issue #8), tries to get back to the hanger—with certain mishaps. I proceeded to scan these and print out. I used tracing paper to refine the roughs, which were already fairly tight, then used Clearprint vellum to ink the final art. I’ve selected just one finished page and related roughs below.
I also had to create additional material, and some of the thumbs for that I created on graph paper using colored pencil, below. I completed some thirty new pages of art—the equivalent of a full comic book issue—over the holidays and into 2016. At the time, I was still working on completing the art for Megaton Man: Megatropolis, from a tight script I had completed in summer 2015. After I finished “Border Worlds #9,” I resumed work on Megatropolis.
I never met Drew Ford, and when I finally spoke to him, early in 2016, he called me to discuss a few final details, such as dustjacket design. Our call was interrupted when he was called away to an impromptu meeting; when he returned some twenty minutes later, he was shaken. He reported that Dover had just axed the graphic novel line and he was out of a job.
Peter Lenz came on board to complete Border Worlds, which would be the last Dover graphic novel to appear the following year. Drew went on to found It’s Alive!, a comics imprint, introducing the world to Nick Cagnetti’s Pink Lemonade. Drew tapped me for a four-page back-up feature for Pink Lemonade #2.
Sadly, in 2002, Drew succumbed to Covid—I never got to meet him. But I consider the 2017 Dover Border Worlds collection—replete with a scholarly afterword by Stephen R. Bissette—an important milestone in my career, and vindication for an early work that may have been a commercial failure but was an important learning experience in my development as a comic book storyteller. It is also part of trend of seeing my work collected into bookshelf format that I hope continues.
I have more from this sequence to post at a later date, but for now, enjoy the process.
