Johane Matte’s stories have always been a highlight for many of us whenever we’re putting together the latest volume of Flight. Her drawings — even just her initial story sketches or thumbnails — are so effortless and full of life (and frequently hilarious) that it’s hard not to be inspired by them.

Of special note is the Cat, who appeared in Flight 2’s “Mouse Trap” and then in Flight 3’s “Hunter“. He first made the briefest of appearances in Johane’s comic series Horus, appearing for only one panel — in it, he is daydreaming of being waited on by servants — but there was clearly enough there for Johane to successfully spin this character out into his own series of short stories.

Pictured below are: Johane’s original cover rough of “Hunter” on the left, and a watercolour (on Papyrus paper) for the Flight 3 gallery show on the right.

What follows is an aborted Cat story titled “Shadows”. Johane drafted the thumbnails for this story with the intent of including it in the next volume of Flight, but deciding the story was too simple, she dropped it in favour of a meatier tale (once again starring the Cat) that will see print in Flight 4. Johane adds: “this may be the last cat story for a little while. [It's] time to try something new (or else I’ll be typecast as the “cat lady”, heehee).” At any rate, she has since posted the abandoned thumbnails of “Shadows” to her blog, which you can read in its entirety here:

The complete “Shadows” thumbnails.

It’s worth mentioning that Johane draws the majority of her thumbnails in little 4×6″ sketchbooks, typically when she’s riding on the subway on her way to work. Every time she’s at a convention, it’s a pretty safe bet that there will be several of us clustered around her sketchbook, flipping through the wealth of sketches and thumbnails contained within.

As one of the artists that’s been with Flight since the very beginning, it’s been endlessly fascinating to watch Rad Sechrist grow and mature as an artist. Following his work through the various volumes of Flight, you really get the sense that he’s weaving an incredibly complex tapestry of characters and worlds.

Flight Volume 2

Rad’s story for Flight 2, “Ghost Trolley“, was intended to be the first in a series of short stories known as Wooden Rivers. Rad has since revisited these characters in occasional illustrations, as well as in two short stories for his website:

• “Tofu House“
• “Rain“

Flight Volume 3

Rad had quite a few starts and stops in developing a story for Flight 3. Knowing Rad though, these early ideas have likely been put on the backburner, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see these stories reappear in some shape or form further on down the road. At any rate, here’s a brief rundown of the stories that Rad first explored for Flight 3:

• “The Pit” – First intending to write a direct follow-up to his “Ghost Trolley” story in Flight 2, this story made it all the way up to the thumbnail stage before Rad decided to pull the plug.
• “Escape” – Rad’s next idea for Flight 3 was to do another Beneath the Leaves story, only this wasn’t the one that ended up in the book. Titled “Escape”, this was intended to be a 15-page story featuring two new characters, Jeb and Eb (presumably not the same Eb from vol. 1’s “Jump” or vol. 3’s “Lemming City”), as they attempt to make a daring prison break. He even went as far as drawing a one-page comic “to get [the character] designs down a little more,” which you can still view on his website:
  • “Pokey Break“



• “Lemming City” – While all of this was going on, Rad was still drawing and posting short little one-page comics to his website. These comics featured Timber and Eb from Rad’s story in Flight 1, as their airship crashes in Oxman Valley and they meet Tracks McPine, who decides to help the boys find their way back home to Rootport (whether this is the same Rootport mentioned in “Ghost Trolley” is anyone’s guess). Rad decided to take these stories and re-write them into what eventually became “Lemming City“. Several of these original short stories are still archived on his website, and although he has since stated that these stories are no longer part of the Beneath the Leaves storyline, it’s still interesting to see how “Lemming City” evolved from these little one-page comics into a longer narrative:
  • “Adventure“
  • “Lemmings“
  • “Music“

Flight Volume 4 and the future

Rad has just recently completed a 112-page comic adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which will be released at the end of 2006, and he’s already working on his Flight 4 story that picks up immediately after “Lemming City”. On his website, he’s posted some designs for a skater comic that he’s been tinkering with, a few new sketches of Timber and Eb, as well as a storyboard sample featuring Eb, and some pretty amazing sculptures of his Beneath the Leaves characters for reference. He’s certainly been keeping busy.

In Dave Roman’s ongoing series Astronaut Elementary, there are several characters (most notably, Calico Hopps and Ms. Bunn) that are decendants from the planet Hoppiton. Astute readers will also note that Dave’s story in Flight 3, “The Great Bunny Migration“, is set many years before the events of Astronaut Elementary, and explains how the earliest rabbits came to settle on the planet Hoppiton and become known throughout the galaxy for their incredible milkshakes.

For those of you interested in more of Hoppiton’s rich history, there is a flashback in this early Astronaut Elementary storyline that recounts the time that Hakata Soy saved the people of Hoppiton from the nefarious Gotcha Birds. Dave explains:

“In “The Great Bunny Migration”, actual birds are the villains that drive the bunnies off their home planet. The Gotcha Birds who exist generations later in the continuity of Astronaut Elementary are actually young punks who emulate the birds of the past — sort of like Neo Nazi skinheads. They believe that birds and bunnies are natural enemies, so they start to terrorize the citizens of Hoppiton until Hakata Soy and his heroic friends arrive to kick their butts. The Bunnies that go to Astronaut Elementary are a minority, and often misunderstood, which is why Hakata Soy is seen wearing a “Bunny Pride” shirt at one point.”

As some of you may or may not know, Reagan Lodge is someone that we added to the Flight lineup based on work that we’d only seen on the web. A couple of years ago, he had been posting sketches and illustrations to the Flight forums, and it was a sketch of his fox character that caught a lot of people’s attention. I don’t think it was very long afterwards that Kazu invited Reagan to contribute a story for Flight. Flash forward to the present day, and Reagan’s story, “Tea“, is now in the pages of Flight 3. Many of these early sketches and designs that Reagan was posting to the forum are still archived on his website, and it’s interesting to watch how his story and characters evolved naturally through these sketches.

I have attempted to organize some of these sketches and illustrations in chronological order (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) as Reagan developed these characters and his story for Flight 3. Reagan also chimes in with some comments:

• Some early sketches of Wyit
  Reagan: “That’s an oooold look for Wyit. Man, how’d I draw him so freaking tall? Anyway, that was drawn a ways back before I had a really clear idea of what I was doing for the story, back when I was playing with the idea of having Wyit be a sort of young warrior type, an idea that I later realized didn’t work for him.”
• Wyit exploring a mining town
  “Another old sketch… but somehow I still really like it to this day.”

  

• The seed of Reagan’s story from Flight 3: Sidna enjoying a cup of tea in the snow
  “Also an early version of Sidna, except this was done with gouache, a medium I haven’t used in quite a while. Eventually I might do future comics of Wyit in gouache and/or watercolors.”
• Could this be the preferred mode of transportation in Wyit’s world? Yaks and more yaks
• More sketches of Wyit and his world: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
  “Obviously some of the stuff in those pages has no relation at all to Wyit’s story, like the sailor, alien and so on. Every once in a while completely unrelated fluff creeps into what I originally intend to make ‘Wyit-only’ pages.”
• Character sheet for Wyit as he appears in “Tea”
  “NOW we’re a little more up to date! I’ve more or less stuck to this design for a year now. I think it’ll stay that way too.”

  

• A couple of illustrations of the characters from “Tea”: The Warlock and Wyit & Sidna
• A pencil sketch of the opening page from “Tea” (compare it with the final image at the bottom of this post)
• Page 2 of “Tea”, before it was decided that the story should be hand-lettered (compare it with the final page)
• Some early concepts of Borislav, one of the antagonists to appear in a future story featuring Wyit, can be seen here and here
  “Borislav’s gone through several versions. Actually, he was the first character I ever drew for the story. It was in this old image from early 2003 or something where he first appeared, though I had absolutely no idea for a story at the time.”
• And finally, a more recent design for Borislav
  “Yep, there we go. I’ve gone through a lot of designs for him, but this one’s been my favorite. In some of the older images I had his look bouncing all over various countries in their medieval times, taking him through a series of very Russian, Korean and western European-influenced designs. Finally I decided that the Japanese samurai look was appropriate for him… though probably for childhood memory reasons. I always remember being scared to death yet at the same time fascinated by the samurai armor they had on display at this Japanese restaurant my parents used to go to, so the fearsome silhouette that style of armor has really appealed to me.”

Reagan has some truly grand plans for Wyit and company, and we’re certainly happy to say that they will all be returning in future volumes of Flight!

Fans of Rodolphe Guenoden’s Flight 2 story, “The Ride“, might get a chuckle out of this image to the left, envisioning perhaps a ‘happier’ ending to the story that actually appeared in volume 2.

This is just one of Rodolphe’s many gorgeous pieces on his website, which collects a vast amount of his work. As Kazu said in a post from last year: “Not only is he one of the humblest and friendliest artists I’ve ever met, he can draw circles around just about anybody,” which is probably the most accurate statement about Rodolphe that I could ever come up with.

Also on his site is a comics section that shows off his wonderful sense of comedic timing, most of it portraying his family, or simply his hilarious struggles with CGI.

But since today is a Sunday, I thought it would be especially fitting to draw your attention to this comic about, well, “Sundays.”