Air Raid Robertson

Author notes

The Undiscovered Self Page 9

Air Raid Robertson

on Jan. 27, 2012

What you see before you is an Air Raid Robertson first, but it's not something that I'm particularly proud of. You see, I'm generally not the kind of artist who abandons a piece of work and starts all over again when a mistake is made. I typically try to fix it in some way since that often leads to the image taking on interesting new dimensions that weren't originally envisioned. Sure, I have had to scrap a few pages here and there when a screw-up is irredeemable. But, more often than not, I take a sort of Bob Ross approach to making art.

On this page, however, I made some awful mistakes with panels one and four. I tried to cover them up, but it didn't take. I scanned the page in thinking that I could do something with Adobe Illustrator, but the panels were simply beyond help. I then considered just posting the page as is with the impression that it wasn't a big deal. With that notion in mind I then thought "Would Norman Rockwell settle for a move like that? Would Jaime Hernandez allow an anatomical mistake to go to the printer? Would Salvador Dali decide that he was too damn lazy to start over?"


Well, maybe Dali would've let it slide if we're talking about his post-60's period. However, a resounding "Hell no!" would be applied to all the other examples.


Not wanting to scrap the page entirely, I redrew panels one and four on another sheet of paper. I then cut them out and scotch-taped them over the offending portions of the page. I admit that it's a pretty low-tech solution to my problem, but it worked well enough. I feel like some guy putting together a zine in the early 90's.


As for the story itself, I think the goings-on here are largely self explanatory. There is one aspect of this page that will influence how I construct the ending to this storyline though. I think it's pretty obvious, but in case you can't see it I will refrain from spoiling it for you.