Process: Megatropolis
From Full Script to Layout to Ink to Color
In early 2016, I was striving to complete the art and story for something I was then calling Return to Megatropolis and now simply Megaton Man: Megatropolis. A 160-page graphic novel, it began as a sequel storyline to The Megaton Man Weekly Serial, an online strip that ran from 1996 to 2000.
This three-page sequence involving Kozmik Kat, the Megaton Mice, and the Bronx Bombers offers a pretty good example of my working method at the time—full script to art to coloring.
Considering where I started—an aspiring high-school penciler visiting Keith Pollard who subsequently taught myself inking and lettering and then only wrote dialogue by default—backing into the auteur theory—writing a full script first before even doodling thumbnail roughs represented a polar-opposite working method.
This sequence seems to have been among several last-minute inserts into the story. The page numbers and panels as they appear in the script need some explanation. Mostly, I was working in half-page tiers, following a format I’d established all the way back in Megaton Man #0 (a.k.a. Bizarre Heroes #17—my last self-published print comic) in 1996.
Originally, I followed the Serial numbering (there had been 208 serial episodes, so early art for Megatropolis continued with 209, etc.). Later, I began thinking in terms of separate issues and adopted a different schema: for example, 5-07A refers to the top tier of page 7 of what I was then calling All-New Megaton Man #5. Currently, the pages appear simply as 137-139 in the publication layout.
(When one has been working on a project off-and-on for a quarter century, one is bound to change one’s minds on pagination, working titles, and a great many other things.)
The second step was penciling the tiers on 9” x 12” layout bond paper. First, I used light blue Col-Erase pencil, then graphite pencil, with some ink writing pen. I found that the lettering had to be tightly penciled as well for the final step. Having a final script, I also tended to put the lettering down on paper first and then draw within the remaining space. This is more efficient that penciling an entire panel and then having to erase or cover over art with text.
Finally, I inked the tiers using Clearprint vellum, a semi-opaque tracing paper. Because it was a separate sheet, I didn’t need to erase the pencils—which could have faded the ink, necessitating retouching. Scanning vellum or tracing paper can be tricky—lines can cast shadows, thickening them in unwanted ways. But once you make your determination for optimal parameters, it is easy to live within certain tolerances.
The penciled and inked tiers also show the date of completion. I never used to date my work back in the 1980s and 1990s; it never would have occurred to me. The date of publication of the printed comics were record enough. But in the twenty-first century, I have found it useful to date my scripts and art, since I have so often been forced to set projects aside to deal with other obligations.
I work much the same way now in terms of scripting first—as can be seen, my scripts include an insane degree of notation and instruction concerning not only dialogue but visual composition, the emotions and psychology of the characters, what I’m anticipating the reader will be thinking, etc.
The difference is mostly in whether I pencil straight onto Bristol board or make tiny thumbnail roughs, then blow up and light-table (trace). I’ve tried just about every method I can think of, from improvisation to tight scripts, and each offers certain advantages and disadvantages.
