Air Raid Robertson

Author notes

Real Estate Nightmare Part 3

Air Raid Robertson

on Oct. 14, 2010

Panel four's silhouette of Count Orlok is swiped directly from a shot in Nosferatu. It's possibly the most famous image from the film. If you do a google image search on Nosferatu you will certainly see the silhouette frame more than once.

Panel three's dialogue has a nerdy shout-out to the 70's horror comics that I cited earlier as a springboard for this story. I put that phrase in there on impulse while I was filling in the word balloons on Adobe Illustrator.

It's actually a little surprising how many phrases in Air Raid Robertson are thought up at the last minute. I used to write a script for my comics page before I drew it, but I always ended up deviating from it radically after the page was drawn. At some point I just abandoned scripting altogether and I now just draw the page and fill in the words after. I usually have a vague notion of what the characters will be saying in each panel, but I don't have it down precisely until well after the art is drawn.

Often some dialogue that I improvise on the spot will be later stated by a commentator as their favorite line on the page. Because of this, I often decide to just trust my instincts.