adamwarren
patreon
FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: 3-page preview of DIRTY PAIR: QUICK & DIRTY!
🕑 Added 2019-09-06 13:00:03 +0000 UTCFor this week's Failed-Project Friday, here's a three-page excerpt from an old 48-page Dirty Pair story that I'll begin serializing on this here Patreon at some point in the next few months. (Looking at these somewhat gray jpegs, I'll need to punch up the contrast levels in Photoshop a bit before I start the formal serialization.)
2004's Dirty Pair: Quick & Dirty is a bit of an odd duck, as it's 48-pager effectively drawn in a proto-Empowered format, but just before I figured out that I could produce comics shot directly from my penciled layout pages. (This story's scans date back to January of 2004; the first pages of what would become Empowered were drawn in July of 2004.) Yes, folks, these are theoretically layout pages, believe it or not—or at least I think so, as my reasoning from this time period remains fairly opaque to Present-Day Me.
With Quick & Dirty, I was just trying to get Dark Horse interested in doing more Dirty Pair comics, probably with other artists drawing 'em. (Maybe.) Honestly, I'm not sure if I intended this story to ever be published in this form. If we ever get clearance from the Japanese license holders to reprint my old DP work, this story will be included in that collection.
Quick & Dirty is a wacky li'l episode indeed, featuring Kei & Yuri trying to access and capture the leader of a vast conspiracy that calls itself, well, The Vast Conspiracy. Another goofy bit: The Thug-a-licious™ mass-produced goons all use "the terminal yo" at the end of their lines in a riff done, I suspect, just to further annoy dudes complaining about my use of the terminal yo in Gen13. (As I used to say, "Hey, online complainers, if the terminal yo is good enough for Jesse Pinkman and Junot Diaz, it's good enough for you, yo." )
I suppose I should warn you that this was a time of particular excess in my artwork, not that I was drawing all that much in 2004. (At that time, I was still hoping to only have to write comics full-time, not draw 'em.) Big Pouty Lips stalked the land, along with notably large racks on Kei & Yuri; you can also see early examples of what I now call the Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitch, an odd, wasp-waisted flourish of cartooniness that would loom large in early Empowered.
Anyhoo, I'm no longer sure of the details, but Dark Horse wasn't interested in whatever the hell hare-brained scheme I presented to 'em regarding more Dirty Pair projects. This wasn't an unreasonable rejection on their part, either, as we were never able to get any artists other than me approved by Studio Nue (the license holders) to draw the DP. Them's the breaks of screwing around with projects that aren't fully creator-owned, folks. Live and learn! (Which I finally did, as my first such project would kick off in the summer of 2004 with Empowered's early pages.)
Comments
babanuki
I like the uncoloured so much!
Tama
It's great to see some nostalgic pieces from you! I've always been a big fan of your particular take on the Dirty Pair! :D
Ruth and Darrin Sutherland
It'll be awesome to see these pages! 😍
Adam Warren
Can't tell ya, as I really have no idea. (Oh, well.)
Tekkaman-James
Wow! What an amazing Patreon reward this will be! I can't wait to see all the completed pages! It's a shame you weren't able to get these various DP projects approved. Did something change over at Studio Nue to cause this? They seemed okay with anything you proposed throughout the 90's. Am I wrong there? And why reject a reprint of the previously approved stories?
KranberriJam
Geez, these are layouts? You're crazy! Excited to read the story~
McClaw
I love the redesign you gave their costumes.
Adam Warren
Kinda both, as he was a semi-autonomous drone who never had any dialogue.
TF Commando
Also, I'm curious about the killer whale. Was he an intelligent drone with dialogue or just a tool?
Adam Warren
Don't really know, to be honest. More likely the former than the latter, but I can't say for sure.
TF Commando
I'm curious about the difficulty in getting other artists approved. Did Studio Neu dislike the style of the other proposed people or just think you were the one and only for the job?
Matt Penn
One can only imagine the proportions would have only increased the vaunted power of the legendary Hypno-Butt™.
