Comic Series
Sundry Comix
Da Boids -1 Page
Nora Talbot -3 Pages
Larry Lagoon's
Fanzine Blues
Larry Lagoon's
Comic Dreams
Larry Lagoon's
Funny Pages
Suzy
by Richard O'Brien &
Bob Vojtko
Low Budget Funnies
by Bob Vojtko
Samurai Nun
by Bob Vojtko
Stovepipe
by Joe Wehrle, Jr.
Backstory
I struggled with the opening panel for Horse Opera over several days.
I tried close-ups, long shots, and several other approaches until I finally came up with one that I liked.
Here's an early version of the Weed Ross character -
a sketch done with a black felt-tipped pen.
I always the loved the illustrations in Buz Sawyer by Roy Crane. He was one of only a few comic strip creators that used a double-tone technique to give his work extra depth. It took me quite a while to track down a source for this special bristol that I used for the Horse Opera story.
When I first began cartooning I always inked directly over the pencils. After a few years, I kept the pencil artwork and inked on a separate bristol board. I used a light table to see the pencils through the bristol. The pencils were drawn on bond or tracing paper. This technique also allowed me to easily make adjustments in the placement of characters, balloons, and lettering within the panels.
Weed Ross is such a chain smoker, no one even remembers his real name.
Unfortunately, even his horse always seems to have a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
Cimarron Rose was named after the Cimarron River that runs through Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. In Spanish, Cimarron means wild and unruly - an apt name for this Pony Express rider.
I enjoyed creating the Horse Opera comix for the first issue of my self-published mini, Funny Paper. You don't see a lot of humorous stories set in the old West. Of course, one of my favorites is Tumbleweeds by the great TK Ryan.