Book 1, Page 177

Barry and I had an "oh shit" moment on the previous page. Remember when Captain Turtle was trying to start the motor on his shell backpack? The script originally had a caption about Captain Turtle looking for a clear path between the power lines and telephone wires. But I realized I'd been drawing the street with zero wires for several pages, and it would have been hard to go back and add in a bunch of telephone poles. So Barry needed to find another way to delay Captain Turtle's flight. I made sure to draw some power lines and streetcar lines on this page.

Artists like Paul Madonna and Mateusz Urbanowicz embrace the criss-cross of power lines in their street scenes, but I usually leave power lines out. It's too much pressure to draw a graceful, steady arc over buildings that I've already drawn! Too much opportunity to make a big annoying error when I'm 95% done with the page. Are there a different number of wires in some parts of panel 1 than others? Yes. Have I already cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop? Also yes. Will I fix that any further before Issue 7 goes to print? Unsure.

It's easy to get sucked into more of a research-hole than is necessary for a comic background, but I regret nothing. I got a kick out of this 1937 video about traffic lights. Who knew that the color-changing mechanism for old traffic lights worked something like a music box! The most bananas thing I learned was that at some point, before the invention of left turn lanes, the process for making a left turn was:

1. enter the intersection, then pull over to the right

2. wait there while the other cars go through

3. turn left during the yellow light (which was often accompanied by a buzzer)

Does that sound stressful and dangerous, or what?!

This traffic signal has a Depression-era design. The visors were curved in a way that one hollow metal cylinder could be cut into two visors with no wasted metal. (This was my favorite fun fact.)

I had traffic lights on the brain, so it took me a minute to be sure I wasn't hallucinating this one last night:

Was it a sign? Should I have drawn a standing traffic signal in the middle of the intersection, or--? JUST KIDDING! Also, if you like beer, John's Marketplace on SE Powell is a wonderland of selections, with a patio and adjacent food cart pod.

As always, I hope you enjoyed a peek behind the scenes! Note: If you like this sort of thing, you might enjoy The Office Ladies podcast. I'm not a superfan of the TV show, but I very much enjoy Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey getting excited about how a TV crew recreated a strip of Pennsylvania Turnpike in Southern California, or how to properly care for a live bat on set.

Thanks, as always, for supporting me on Patreon!