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DIRTY PAIR: QUICK & DIRTY, part 4 (a 2003 layout-page-only story)!
🕑 Added 2020-03-26 13:01:01 +0000 UTC(You can check out the previous installment of this story here.)
Folks, here are (layout) pages 19 through 23 of an unpublished, 48-page story titled Dirty Pair: Quick & Dirty that I wrote and drew back in late 2003.
Below, I'll cut & paste my notes from the initial installment of the story:
My reasons for creating this story—and for drawing it in this rather odd, proto-Empowered "tight layout page" format—now seem hazy and unclear to me. At a time when my (ahem) "career" in comics was not going well at all and I was flailing around desperately for work—as opposed to nowadays, when I'm still flailing around desperately for work!—I believe that I was trying to interest Dark Horse in doing more Dirty Pair comics, around the time that the DP license was about to expire, or possibly already had.
Ah, but did I intend to have Quick and Dirty eventually published in some more finished form? Almost certainly not, as I'd abandoned any attempts at creating comics in a conventional comics format after 1999-2000's miniseries Dirty Pair: Run from the Future. My godawful work technique back then—loose roughs, extraordinarily tight layout pages like the ones above, then recopied and even tighter pencils on Bristol board, then finished inks, then color guides for a separate colorist—had become so maddeningly slow and repetitive that I swore off drawing comics after Run from the Future's miserable work experience.
I think my intention was to show Dark Horse that this was the sort of Dirty Pair story I would write for other artists to draw, but nothing came of this admittedly rather puzzling effort, as I'm fairly sure I just couldn't get any other artists approved by the Japanese license-holders to draw these (theoretical) books.
I wound up paying dearly for not investing in myself and creating wholly creator-owned comics earlier in my career, folks; let this be a lesson to all and sundry! Work-for-hire at handsome mainstream page rates is one thing (which I'm still interested in doing, from time to time), but investing decades of my life on a pseudo-creator-owned property that, importantly, I didn't actually own was an incredibly foolish choice on my part.
What does seem clear to me now is that I still wanted to write and draw comics, but without the stifling repetition of my old work approach. After Quick and Dirty, I began to realize that, hey, maybe a comic's art could be reproduced from tight layout pages along these lines—and by the summer of the next year, I started scribbling the first stories that would eventually evolve into Empowered, my (still-)ongoing, creator-owned "sexy superhero comedy" series.
I'll never draw another published Dirty Pair project, though in theory I wouldn't mind writing one. In reality, that's really not likely to happen, as Dark Horse hasn't been able to get approval to reprint my old DP work, let alone get new projects rolling. I do hope to write and even draw new SF-oriented comics down the road, though.
Tomorrow on this here Patreon: Time for another bunch of Vintage Con Sketches from the days of yore, folks!
Comments
Adam Warren
You're welcome!
Adam Warren
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that assumption, and that would indeed have been quite the convo. (Though, more likely, Kei had already prepped the sim without Yuri's input.)
Steven Ng
Love seeing these pages. Hard to think you've had them stashed away all these years.
Burninator
C'mon, have some heart. Being a goon/minion/thug/jabroni/expendable meat/etc when the Lovely Angels show up leaves one with only marginally better prospects than being Willy Pete's latest "love interest". At least let them have some cheap thrills before the end comes.
Strypgia
Boy, it must have been a fun conversation to see, when Kei came up with this idea and had to convince Yuri. You _know_ this had to be Kei's idea, too. 80/20, anyhow. Maaaaybe post-FbNS Yuri could have, but this still feels like a Kei Idea.
Ruth and Darrin Sutherland
Really loving seeing these pages. Thank you.
A Patreon of the Ahts
The takeaway on this is 'Make sure EVERYONE in the crew has libido suppression software, not just the boss...'
A Patreon of the Ahts
And they say there's no God....
