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FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: James D. Hudnall's DANGEROUS AFFAIRS, pt.1
🕑 Added 2019-09-13 13:37:10 +0000 UTCBehold, the earliest artwork of mine that anyone online has ever seen! Gasp! Also, the only comic pages of mine that I drew but did not also write! Gasp, again!
This 4-page story was a preview for the superhero comedy Dangerous Affairs, created and scripted by my late friend James D. Hudnall, writer of comics such as ESPers, Strike Force Morituri, Psycho, Sinking, and Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography. Midway through my second year at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art circa '86 or '87, my classmate (and eventual Dirty Pair, Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone, and Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal colorist) Joe Rosas had put me in contact with Jim, and we briefly collaborated on this comics pitch.
Dangerous Affairs was a "cape comedy" about a normal schmo (Randy) sucked onto the world of "supes" after he starts dating a superheroine (Rae). Ah, but what's funnier about it is that, if you look closely enough in later story pages, you can see that it's arguably Urusei Yatsura with capes, which would've been a great idea—Rae is kind of the Lum figure, Psycho-Chick above seems influenced by Benten, and the later character Ice Queen stands in for Oyuki. (Jim was a serious anime aficionado long before I'd ever even heard of the stuff.)
I drew this 4-page preview story, then did another 10 pages of what was supposed to be the first issue; I'll serialize those here in the next few Fridays. Gotta say, this first story's not just badly drawn, but it was oddly inept even for the time; most of my work from this era wasn't quite this crappy. Maybe this was because I was cranking these pages out between Kubert School classes, or because I was disheartened that I wasn't writing the story as well; hard to say, really. The 10 Dangerous Affairs pages that follow were a bit better, at least.
Jim might've pitched this series somewhere with my art, but I'm not sure. I discontinued work on the series, however, once a more promising comic project arose; you see, not long after I finished these pages, Jim in turn put me in contact with Toren Smith, and I began work on the portfolio of Dirty Pair artwork and comics that would eventually land us the rights to do an American comic version of the DP. Yay!
Comments
KranberriJam
I like the premise of ordinary guy with capes. I'm looking forward to the next set of pages. And while it's not your favorite work, I do think it's all steps on the ladder to where you are today.
Adam Warren
Probably about two or three years, as I think DP:DA was drawn in '89. The hair design was something I had kicking around for a while; in fact, if I had done the DIRTY PAIR ripoff I was once considering, the heroines would've looked like Shasti and Cory Emerson.
Otaku Twenty-Four Seven
I'm getting a Shasti-type vibe from Jackie here... How much time passed between this and Dangerous Acquaintences?
