Explanation on the Style of This Comic

You may be wondering why the style on Stovepipe looks so much different from that of work on my portrait website or on the various book covers and illustrations I have done.

This just seemed like a story that should be drawn in a simpler fashion for best effect (I think Charlie Brown as rendered by Hal Foster would fall flat. But then, Prince Valiant in a cartoony style would be Groo.

So I drew these pages small--just a bit larger than an actual printed comic magazine page, both to help in simplifying the art and to speed the process. I'm not the fastest draw in the East or the West, and I've learned to employ tricks like that when I want to turn out a lot of material within a reasonable time.

On the other hand, I have some realistic strips which took a great deal of time because of how I thought they needed to look. I'll show those to you a little later.


Joe