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.
I just loved Hunter. That girl rock. I immediatly started thinking that this short and so funny comic should be in an animation. It’d be so cool!!