Race War Part 1
Co-Written by Nicole G

So it seems Ben spoiled you all with all that color and everyone’s been asking if I plan to keep the color going. Well, I wasn’t, but by popular demand here it is. SJ is now in color. And what a perfect story to make the switch. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of RED!

Good to be back. Thanks again to Ben, Julie and (most of all) Kevin. You guys rocked. For the record, the story continues from where I left off. The last month of guest strips were great but this is MY show dammit! Chris’ life is in MY hands! Now, lets have ourselves a good old fashioned race war.

Let’s give a final thanks to Ben, Julie and most of all Kevin. You guys pulled out all the stops.

Man, Kevin sure is the best.

This is more than just the end of the guest strips, but a new beginning. Not for Chris Wnuk Secret Jew, but for Chris Wnuk The Living Human Being. He is in fact leaving us for a trip to Asia ultimately ending with him taking up new residence in New Zealand. Crazy stuff.

Enjoy your new life amongst the sheep, Chris. Take solace in knowing your secret Jewish life will continue on. Next week we continue CWSJ’s adventures in prison.

So long, Chris.

But seriously, though. Kevin, right? Yeah… Kevin rules.

Thanks again to Ben, Kevin and Julie

Thanks to Ben, Julie and most of all Kevin. Cuz Kevin’s the best.

Things are pretty crazy leading up to the debut of my next print comic, Operation Pajama Pants/Sidekicked. Makes getting the weekly strip done a little difficult, but I didn’t want to leave you guys hanging without your weekly jewish goodness. So I’ve enlisted the infamous Ben Spierenburg to take over for the next few weeks. excited to see where he takes it as you are.

Enjoy.

First, obviously, is the penciling phase. This is page 1 and the pages 2 & 3 double page spread of Operation Pajama Pants:

This is all pretty self-explanatory. First things first I pencil everything out. For OPP I like to to pencil pretty tightly. Since OPP is inked with brush I like to have a pretty clear idea of the lines. And speaking of inks…

So these are the raw inked pages. These pages are inked with mostly brush, with a few Micron lines sprinkled in. You’ll notice on both pages there are a few big white areas with X’s in them. these are areas that I plan to be all black, but didn’t want to spend the time or ink brushing it in on the paper.There’s also a couple of things to notice that have changed from pencil to ink on both these pages. In page one, you’ll notice I didn’t ink the background that was drawn into it. The reason is I wanted to add a little more motion to the tiger jumping so I decided to go with speed lines (to be added later) instead of the background. In pages 2 & 3, I screwed up in the pencils and gave Chet rolled up sleeves on his shirt. Luckily I realized the mistake and was able to fix them when inking. (For the record, Chet does have rolled up sleeves in OPP #1 and then short sleeves in issue 2. But I declare this not a mistake, rather Chet used his new magic Pants Power to change his sleeves from long to short between issues. Go ahead, prove me wrong.)

The final step is the computer work. Here, first and foremost, I fill in those big black areas. Then I do any additional line work that I didn’t on the paper, in this case the speed lines on page 1. Then I add in the gray tones. For OPP I like to keep the grays very simple. I generally only use 3 levels of gray, 10%, 30% and 50%. Also I don’t do and extensive rendering or shading with it. I want to give the effect of using the old Zip-A-Tone. I even go in and transform the flat grays to a dot pattern, as shown in this detail:

There you have it. There’s a first look at pages 1-3 of the upcoming Operation Pajama Pants #3, debuting August 28 at the Baltimore Comicon. And just to round things out, here are the first 3 pages of the flip-side, Sidekicked! #4:

If you don’t get this one, you should read more Groo.

Jail Part 8

Co-Written by Nicole G

As I did with the cover to Sidekicked! #4, I’m presenting to you here the cover to the comic’s flip-side, Operation Pajama Pants #3. Now with even more punched babies!