Delta Snake Review: Sept. 16, 2026
Topic: Quitturz webcomic prep
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The first dozen or so panels, about four weeks worth, will be a chapter one (I call a grouping of panels a chapter, others might have different nomenclature) that will depict scenes from the first book that cover Nym and Hydie’s early gigs with the Quitturz and their evolution into touring lineup as a trio (a book 2 episode).
The key thread is the friendship between Nym, the main character and Hydie, the drummer who starts off as a bossy older sister type, becomes the manager of the group and is only constant in an up and down decade. Their relationship has a comical side that many musicians might recognize as a familial dynamic in a new group that evolves into a deeper bond as the events of the decade unfold.
Since the webcomic will open with a group of strips, that allows me to open with a deeper exposition and then the story will settle into three four-panel strips a week (which will be more episodic).
These little posters are good for promo and are part of my preparation. In this case, I needed a slightly younger Nym for the 1977 episodes. These images are going to have cover style detail like with traditional comic books. If you look closely at the faces in this and the previous drawings, you’ll see that I’m using “sketch” type pencil and ink lines, which I’ll start to smooth out (but not too much).
I’m a fan of 18th century book illustrations and like the rougher lines, plus in this new age of AI, I don’t want too much “polish.” In 1977 punk poster art, there was a lot of longhand and cut and paste, so that’s the look I want to refine into a simpler “longhand” that’ll enable me to draw the same faces a couple hundred of times without burning out.
I’m about one generation of “face studies” away from freezing the facial features and level of detail and starting work on the panels. The main concession to the times is that the panel lines and text (from the book) will often be added by an app but other than the cleaning up that scanning the drawing will do, I’ll always hand draw the characters and backgrounds (which are simpler in panels).
My exact process is I start with the eyes; I’ll discard the drawing if the eyes aren’t lifelike. You can create the most detailed professional drawing in the world but if the eyes are off, the whole drawing will look stiff with no sense of life.
In the case of the image with this blog entry, a sketch was done in pencil, then inked and any unnecessary pencil lines erased. In the 70s, when preparing a “print ready” illustration for offset printing, I’d have erased almost all of the pencil and used old school hatching and dot work for shading or did that on a separate sheet (layer) of tracing paper.
Modern paint programs are really just a digital version of that old school process of making print ready work so describing that process should be an interesting blog entry in the near future.
I’m enjoying the process of creating Book 2; it’s a pleasure to tell a story without having to fight autocorrect, etc. It’s just pen to paper like the old days.
Al Handa
Sept. 17
#punk #webcomic #sanfransisco #manga #graphicnovel
