Lucky 13! Well, not for that poor drunkard leaning against Robyn’s van. Remember today’s page class, there will be a quiz much later in the story about this! Nudge, nudge.
These pages are kicking my ass as I’m pushing myself to venture into more challenging poses and backgrounds. The exteriors will kill me for sure. Upcoming is the recording studio interior, then the interior to CBGB’s club/bar, then I have the gang lost in the streets of New York at night. Ah well, I wrote the damn thing, so I can’t blame anyone but me. If this is going to 1977’s final story, then I want to go out on a high note with a big story. I just hope my drawing hand survives all of this.
I do take advantage of reusing stuff if I can without compromising the page. Like the first and last panels are essentially the same drawing, plus I altered Lorraine from frame 1 to use in the close up of frame 6. Robyn in frame 4 is a modified drawing from an earlier page. There is a famous quote attributed to artist Wall Wood which goes “Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.” My take on the quote is if you have a deadline, do what’s necessary to meet that deadline.
My own personal philosophy is “Amatuers Copy, Professionals Steal” meaning take something but make it your own because there is nothing original anymore, it’s all been done before. Now I never trace someone else’s art, that’s just taboo for me. But I have traced over photos of my own hands in the past to learn how to draw hands.
Love UFO, especially their 1977 album “Lights Out” which I wore out playing it so much back in 1977. So I figured “Electric Phase” would fit today’s page just right. But even “Lights Out” fits as that’s what Robyn does to the drunk leaning on her van.
UFO…now there’s a band that doesn’t get the mention it deserves, the TV series by the same name was ahead of it’s time too and should have had a much longer run 🙁
Damn good band and lots of great music, and you’re right, they are practically forgotten.
And UFO, another series from the minds of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. I lost interest in Anderson’s works after “Stingray” but it was “Fireball XL5” that got me hooked on sci-fi and space exploration at the very young age of 5 when the show hit American TV sets. “Lost in Space” in 1965 cemented my science fiction nerdiness and I’ve been a sci-fi geek ever since.
And for those who’ve never heard of the show (maybe because it was set in the far future of 1980) and also because it was a British show that got more airplay up here than it did in the US, here’s a taste…catchy theme song too 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2PoXfZdYVU
It’s funny how sci-fi TV show creators really thought we’d be such an advanced technological society. Irwin Allen’s “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” released in 1964 took place in 1970. “Lost In Space” was set in 1997 with a space ship that could achieve light speed. “Land of the Giants” was set in 1983 having sub-orbital flights.
The way things are going, I doubt we’ll be anywhere near Star Fleet levels of space exploration by the year 2266. Hell, I doubt the human race will even be around in a couple hundred years the way we’re going. But I digress… 🙂
Don’t forget Space:1999 😉
It was only about 65 years from the first fledgling fifty yard powered flights to the Moon landings and space probes, there could be a breakthrough ‘eureka moment’ at any time and FTL travel might be commonplace in another 50 years, who knows ?
Yeah, but you have to watch to set it off. Fun, but it ties you down. Can it be set on automatic?
Okay, you’ve pointed out an error in my storytelling, which is a good thing. In my head, they have just arrived and she has not set the van’s alarm yet, so she’s setting it for the first time in New York. Yes, it is automatic once she sets it.
I will have to figure out a way to explain that without being too obvious I messed up the first time around. 🙂
If she hadn’t set it when they got out, by the time she got to the window there wouldn’t be anything left to set.
This IS new York after all..and not a particularly good part 😉
AND…. I fixed it. Actually balances out the 5th frame a tad better too even though it covers up Robyn’s fingers that I took like an hour to redraw over and over to get them right. That’s the life of a comic strip artist. I always place my dialog first so I avoid drawing in details that won’t be seen, but this time that plan didn’t quite work out.
Thanks for pointing that out! Now I can sleep a little bit better tonight. 🙂
Good fix. Makes sense.
The only objection I had was that Robyn’s holding a very small remote by the standards of 1977. I don’t know where she found it.
I was going to have her hold a Zenith Space Command TV remote, but I ran out of space in the page for Robyn to explain how she rigid the alarm system herself. I probably will change that out at some point as it bugs me as well. It’s too small for the late ’70s.
Try a garage door opener. They were about that size in 1977.
Excellent suggestion! Makes sense too that she would need a receiver. I remember those old Sears garage door openers. I wired a few of them in for my dad back in the day.
I remember the zeniths, the one I saw was more like a ‘clacker’ you pushed one of the two big buttons down until it ‘snapped’ wit a little ping, it worked on ultrasonic not infrared and we later found out that jingling a charm bracelet worked just as well and you didn’t have to get up and find it 🙂
Perrhaps she found it here in Alt/1977. Not Time Travelers, we promise! https://www.behance.net/gallery/545221/ALT1977-WE-ARE-NOT-TIME-TRAVELERS
The only minor objection I have is that they got all the way up to the room and the stuff lashed to the roof is still there, alarm or no alarm 🙂
The last time I was in New York, the USN arranged a bus tour through the city for us.
I don’t mean anything by it but that’s where this happened.
We stopped so the girl giving the tour could tell us all about the murals anfd things on the walls but my attention was drawn elsewhere.
Three guys pulled up in a small pickup with a hoisting frame in the back, backed up to the front of a very nice car, then crowbarred the hood open, cut all the lines and wires, had the mounts undone and pulled the engine out, and were gone in less than a minute.
She was just saying “…this area isn’t like it used to be, people here have jobs…”
Of course I had to reply “yes, there go three itinerant auto mechanics right now”
But the best part was when we stopped at Central Park and I said “lock and load” as I folded a beer can back and forth for a sfx…I thought she was going to get off right then and there.
Silly girl, you don’t need to work the slide on a revolver 😉
I missed adding “…at Harlem…” for the car incident…
We also drove under the Brooklyn Bridge, I still have the pictures I took…
…of the burned out police cruiser off to the side.
What if they are more attempts either to wear out the battery, slide under the car to disconnect or cut it the circuit. Soak the van by us of water truck to drown the circuit maybe just buy (despite strict gun control New York was awash with them) David Burkawiz’s son of Sam .38 snub noise and shot the van or overload the circuit. New York had serous crime in the 1970s they’ll be lucky if the van isn’t looted and turned to a burning hulk. At least Robyn isn’t striped naked shaved bald and forced to do the Curly shuffle. The had a alternate history hub what if Richard Nixon wasn’t president Cleveland Ohio would have the burning river, Lake Eire would have mass blooms, America would still lose the Vietnam war, the Apollo program would end. Skylab would crash, cities would have white flight, the oil recession and stagflation would ruin the economy. So the masses would escape to hedonistic discos, see Star Wars and Grease, while watching happy days and going to Kiss concerts . Meanwhile Richard Nixon declared drugs public enemy number 1 starting the war on drugs you couldn’t enjoy pot without fear of the Nixon mohahahaha. But you can take the advice of the Village People and join the navy serving aboard a Virginia nuclear cruiser, fly the then new F 14 tomcat or Los Angeles class nuclear submarine food best in the navy. Alternate history had Robert Kennedy spared of his 1968 assassination as president instead. But under the circumstances he’d be remember as a lesser Kennedy and even if he won the 1972 re election Ronald Reagan would president in 1976 instead of Jimmy Carter. Since the decade was hardly the best Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford who wasn’t even elected and Jimmy Carter with has dumb redneck brother Billy. So plan 9 are brave to face New York city in the 1970s but hid in CBGB or studio 54.
You have put way more thought into this than I have. The summer of 1977 was a rough summer, and I’m getting to that in a few pages. What I’ve drawn here, but in my haste to compress this event into one page instead of two, I have not mentioned that the van is in a private lot behind the flophouse/studio. Essentially where trucks would come to deliver shit and the like.
One of my weaknesses as a writer is knowing what to leave in and what to leave out. In this case, I have obviously left way too much out and should have done this gag in two pages instead of one as there are way too many questions and plot holes in this page.
This is why I like drawing the pages as I go along, this way I can modify stuff or outright change things as readers point out issues.
The ‘Son of Sam’ used a .44 Spl 😉 and needed practice.
Well, I’m not going to be featuring that sick bastard in this story even though he did grip New York women in terror that summer. Being a comedy comic, I try to keep things light.
it’s an alternate usiverse, you could set him up as an incompetent stumblebum who never did anything except shoot himself in the foot and get arrested for aggravated stupidity before anyone else got hurt 😉
Oh…. I am a bit thick sometimes. It’s my English heritage. 🙂
Sorry about that. Yeah, you were talking about alternative universes above. And this comic definitely takes place in an alternate reality to our own. Carry on.
I was originally just mentioning that he used a .44 Spl not a .38 they also called him the ‘.44 killer’ the alternate universe popped into my head later and rattled around (since there’s not much left to stop it) until I pondered that other famous or infamoud figures of the time, political, entertainment or other, wouldn’t necessarily have had the same impact in this universe…maybe
Elvis might not have died, Gary Powers might not have gotten shot down, Ed Koch might have been running a deli the gang stops at and had no interest in politics…