PLATYPUS OF ALL TRADES

Like every cartoonist that ever lived, I thought it would be great to start a daily comic strip.  My brilliant idea, something I hadn't seen before, was to feature a duck-billed platypus as the main character (this was before the invasion of Australian talent here in the US).  With the comic strip friendly name of "Scooter", my paneled protagonist 's thing was that he worked lots of different jobs, hence the name of the strip "SCOOTER FOR HIRE".

In about ten minutes I scribbled thirty two vocations my guy could try out.  You will note that some are not truly paying jobs ('ski bum', 'victim' or, arguably, 'writer') but it I had this stream of consciousness thing going...

COMPARING PROTO AND GOTHAM RATMAN IN A 21ST CENTURY CONTEXT

 

I drew RATMAN number one when I was twelve or so, rendered with a trusty ballpoint pen.  I loved the outrageous,absurdist idea that Commissioner Gordon would replace Batman with the super-powerless, inept Ratman and considered the comic book to be my finest work -- a project I began that I actually finished.

Years and years later, Tom Spezialy gave me The R. Crumb Coffee Table Book wherein Crumb reprinted a comic he'd done when he was a kid -- and the version he re-drew as an adult.  So I did the same thing.  When I was living in Manhattan working on a Glen Gordon Caron show, I spent my evenings redrawing RATMAN number one, replete with the exact dialogue, sound effects and exclamations  ("Yeeooo!") and, for the most part, the same panel composition.

 

Two comparative pages are posted above (guess which were the originals...) 

WOW...A PAGE FROM 12 o'CLOCK SOMEWHERE!!

At long last, a complete page from the opus.  But jeez, putting a comic together via computer IS NOT easy. 

When I was a kid, I'd grab typing paper (or buy some -- my mom charged me half a penny for each sheet as we had plenty of scratch paper and typing paper cost money)and off I'd go, careful not to use markers that bled through the page.  

Flash forward to now and, hey, computers are fun to do comics with but there is lots of grunt work involved.  For this single page, I drew the pictures and colored them (the fun part) and then I used Word to size 'em and add the word balloons and dialogue.  THEN I had to save the panels individually as PDFs so that I could use Photoshop Elements to collect and arrange each of the panels on a page, drop in a black background and publish it.

Whew.

I admit I am not the most computer savvy, especially in using my PC for this sorta thing, so if you have any tips as how I can remove a step or two from the above process, your advice would be greatly appreciated.