The Hero Business

In this week’s “Rough Monday”, I thought I’d give you a peek into the creative process.

For last week’s “Powered Lunch” Coffee Break, I originally had a different punchline. I wanted to take the typical idea of the “rancid shared company fridge” and give it a Hero Business twist. The spin was that the leftovers could actually come to life, mixed with whatever strange stuff lurked in the super-powered refrigerator.

My process is to 1. script, 2. layout dialogue, 3. pencil and 4. ink/color…. knowing that things can evolve as we go. So here’s the original pass:

So, OK, this didn’t quite sit with me. First, I didn’t like Morgan’s pose. She didn’t seem disturbed enough by the sentient jello. She should either be freaked out or completely non-plussed (like, this sort of thing happens all the time in their world). So I went with disturbed:

OK, that’s better.

But I still wasn’t crazy about the joke. Seemed a bit “on the nose.” I wanted to punch it up. I decided jello was too mundane, so I substituted the much more interesting leftover, “Kung Pao Tofu,” because it sounded like something that would be a gross company fridge leave-behind.

Still not funny enough.

And then it hit me… another level of funny is “leftovers going bad”… and what that could mean. Suddenly, the bad-boy Tofu hitting on Morgan came to mind. And Morgan’s body language  was made to fit that joke – like some creep is hitting on her at a bar. The absurd and strange punchline that’s hopefully more unexpected for the reader. I was much happier with this approach.

And the final:

Complete with the Tofu doing one of those “centerfold” poses.

Lastly, I changed the name of the comic from the mundane “Chilly Reception” to more interesting play-on-words approach, “Powered Lunch.”

So yeah, a lot goes into these things every week to give loyal heroites the maximum of funny, just so’s ya know ; )