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LAYOUTS FROM AN OLD SF-ADJACENT PROJECT: Chapter 6, pt. 1!
🕑 Added 2024-11-20 14:37:32 +0000 UTC[Here's a link to our previous installment in this series.]
So, yeahp, I'm serializing my insanely tight layout pages for the 2005 Marvel miniseries Iron Man: Hypervelocity, the first issue of which I wrote and laid out long before an artist had been chosen; of course, the great Brian Denham wound up tackling the art for the project, but I had already rolled with these time-consuming roughs out of, I dunno, sheer perfectionism and unhinged micro-managing.
Either that, or these layouts represented the sum total of artwork I actually wanted to produce for this project. As I've noted here before, cranking out finished artwork is the bane of my g-d existence as an artist; I like (or even occasionally love) drawing loose, relatively spontaneous comic pages like this, but bog down toute suite upon having to painstakingly render my usual tight and precise completed artwork.
Even though we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Hypervelocity's creation, I am loath to publicly acknowledge to non-Patrons that I'm serializing these layouts here, hence the "Old SF-Adjacent Project" monicker.
First off, here's my cover rough for issue #6, the concluding chapter of the miniseries:
Note that this Iron Man pose was likely derived from an unused cover rough for issue #1:
...though this version, of course, clarified that this project's iteration of Iron Man armor was, in fact, "an empty suit."
Here's the suh-weet final artwork for Hypervelocity #6's cover illo, with line art by series artist Brian Denham and color art by series colorists Guru eFX:
And now, on with our interior-page layouts as the miniseries' final act kicks off:
Yeahp, the entire narrative of issue #6 is timed out to the 3 minutes and 26 seconds of The Stooges' great "Search and Destroy." (Goofily enough, I recited all the issue's spoken dialogue and acted out the action with improvised "sound FX" to make sure it all fit into 3:28.)
(Note that the virtual dialogue between digital consciousnesses of Tony 2.0 and Absynthe is occurring at vastly accelerated "cognitive clockspeeds," so that doesn't count count towards the 3:28 elapsed timeframe.)
WHAT'S THIS?!!
Panel 7's "Asian Dawn" enemy unit is, of course, a none-too-obscure Die Hard reference ("I read about them in Time magazine."); we might've wound up cutting that reference from the final issue, given that the Asian Dawn Movement was, it seems, indeed a real-life entity.
"Real AIM", BTW, is a reference to the earlier miniseries Livewires, as sported by the mecha Cornfed in the #1 cover illo:
The unclarified idea was that "Real AIM" was a purist splinter group from AIM proper, presumably seeing themselves as the true incarnation of Advanced Idea Mechanics (as an oblique reference to real-life politics of yore).
Onward:
Might the "BLU-702 Hellcloud" dealie in that last panel prove relevant shortly? Mayhap so!
In our next installment in a few weeks, we continue the miniseries' high-speed climax with more layouts from Hypervelocity issue #6, which was far and away my favorite part of the entire project. Yay?
NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?
