Bannister has posted an abandoned comic originally created for Flight to his Livejournal. The final two pages remain unfinished, but it’s a sweet little story and a nice showcase of Bannister’s roughs.
EDIT: It turns out that Bannister’s story will in fact be appearing in the forthcoming Flight Explorer, only drawn in a completely different style! You heard it here first!
Newsarama wraps up their ‘Friends of Flight’ feature with a series of story commentaries by some of the Flight 4 creators. Joey Weiser, JP Ahonen, Azad Injejikian, Raina Telgemeier, Amy Kim Ganter and Andrea Offermann all provide commentaries for their own stories in the latest volume of Flight.
(previously: parts one and two of the Newsarama Flight 4 roundtable.)
Tony Cliff has recently posted some lovely concept sketches from his Eisner-nominated Flight 3 story, “Old Oak Trees.”
Neil Babra has been drawing and posting comics to the web since 2002. Simply titled Imitation of Life, Neil’s earliest works were autobiographical comics, and the first of those early strips were drawn in, believe it or not, MS Paint. Neil’s comics have since come a long way from those humble beginnings, and this is truly reflected in his many stories. A brief history lesson:
Cloud Factory
Prior to Flight Volume 1, and after working on his Imitation of Life strips for well over a year, circumstances arose that required Neil to put his webcomic on an extended hiatus. He turned instead to writing and drawing a weekly comic strip, Cloud Factory, for his local newspaper. While the strip didn’t last very long, it did establish a major character — Tej — who would later go on to appear in Flight volumes 1 and 2 (“Taj Mahal” and “The Golden Temple“, respectively). Neil briefly discusses the origins of Cloud Factory on his website:
“I took a break from webcomics a few years ago and created this strip for an alternative weekly newspaper. Tej gets locked out of his apartment and wanders Pittsburgh looking for his keys, while his friend Sara discovers the work of a reclusive college professor. The strip ran for about 8 weeks (sometimes in color!) before the paper folded.”
Neil would eventually post his Cloud Factory strips online to Serializer.net, and you can read these early strips here.
Imitation of Life
In 2005, Neil picked up and moved across the country, leaving Pittsburgh for San Francisco. It was here in his new surroundings that Neil returned to his autobiographical comics, Imitation of Life. He presented an autobiographical account of his first several weeks adjusting to life in the Bay Area with a short story that eventually saw publication in New Reliable Press’s anthology, You Ain’t No Dancer #1 (which can be purchased here). You can read a two-page preview of this story, “Early This Year”, at the New Reliable Press website:
Soon after “Early This Year”, Neil followed this up with another account of his time in the Valley with his story for Flight 3, “In Due Time“. Of course, the interesting thing about autobio comics is that these stories are perpetually ongoing. Neil is continuing to tell his own stories on his website, and those that have read “In Due Time” will likely recognize a few recurring themes and characters in the strips that follow it:
Read through the complete Imitation of Life archive here.
While this post doesn’t quite fall under the Supplemental Material category just yet, it will certainly make a little more sense once Flight Volume 4 is released. So for now, look at this as more of a preview of things to come for Flight 4.
Those of you who have been following Flight will probably recognize Ben Hatke‘s name. Contributing stories to Flight 2 (“The Plank“) and Flight 3 (“The Edge“), Ben will be returning in Flight 4 with the character that first caught everyone’s attention in the first place — Zita the Spacegirl. Currently in Italy with his family, Ben took a moment to discuss and guide us though Zita’s origins:
“The dark secret of Zita the Spacegirl is that she was actually created by my wife.
“About 6 years ago, when we were dating, Anna brought me some of the Zita strips that she had drawn in high school. I loved the name ‘Zita the Spacegirl’ and the little bob haircut that Zita had and so I asked Anna if I could start developing Zita. I gave her the little ‘Z’ outfit (which originally had a cape), and the big boots and gloves. She also had an old-timey ray gun.
“The early Zita character designs and stories were much different than what I’m doing today. Zita was taller and a little more pugnacious. She had two sidekicks who were sort of washed up superheroes. It was a lot like Flash Gordon meets The Tick.” (some early designs of Zita can be seen here and here.)
“As time went on, Zita started to become more childlike, lost her ray gun, and generally began to take shape. When I saw what Kazu was doing with his Copper stories, I thought it might help me with my storytelling if I tried a similar experiment with Zita — holding myself to 2-3 page stories.” (click here for the full Zita the Spacegirl archives.)
“Through writing the short stories, Zita’s world started to take shape and, with the 16 page story I drew for Flight 4, I feel like I finally hit stride with Zita and her friends.” (the following is an excerpt from Ben’s Flight 4 story, “If Wishes were Socks.”)
“‘Zita’ is also a family name of sorts. My wife’s family is allegedly related to Saint Zita, a medieval Italian woman who lived and worked in Luca. She was born only a few miles from Gravagna -the little village where my father-in-law was born, so it’s not inconceivable that we could have family ties. For a medieval saint, Zita was very unique in that she was a lay-person — meaning she was not a priest, monk, or nun. She was just a maid who worked for a wealthy family, took care of the poor people she met, and baked really good bread.”
So there you have it. It might be worth your while to check out these Zita comic strips, notable for the first appearance of “One”, one of Zita’s robot companions (along with Robot Randy) that will be appearing in Ben’s Flight 4 story. I’d also recommend you take a leisurely look around the Zita the Spacegirl website, and especially the comic archives.
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:
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:
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:
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.”
With Flight 3 now out in bookstores, there has been quite a bit more attention being given to Michel Gagné‘s opening stories in volumes 2 and 3 of Flight (“Inner Sanctum” and “Underworld“, respectively), and especially to the hero of these stories, Rex. It’s worth noting that Michel has plans to eventually compile a 160-page graphic novel of all the Saga of Rex stories that are currently being serialized in the pages of Flight, which is exciting news indeed.
What’s interesting is that Rex has been around for almost a decade, first appearing in Michel’s storybook (and a personal favourite of mine), A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex. The entire story is available to be read on the web, so if you want to read more about the adventures of this brave little fox, this will definitely be something you’ll want to check out.
Read (or purchase) A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex here.
