So, Jack in the Box took about 1200 man hours, just to draw, which works out as 10 hours per page. Now that's cool, because it was drawn in a style that was very exacting, and with alot of line work and detail and shadow. But it's also a process akin to having one's testicles gnawed on by locusts for 50 days, and to be honest it's an experience I don't relish repeating with the artwork for the upcoming Alameda.

I drew a Daredevil the other day (below) and although it's lineart only, with colour and grey shading adding body, it still took a couple of hours just to ink, which considering the artform of comics, is actually quite ridiculous. The whole idea is to rattle off page after page and tell a compelling story, right? Surely that's the primary job of a comics artist, or in my case writer-artist? I love pretty pictures as much as the next man, and am a huge fan of artists such as Brian Bolland, and Dale Keown, and their finished pieces are breathtaking. But to be honest I'm more envious of people like Frank Miller who can dash down their stuff and create amazing stories in a fraction of the time. It may be sketchier, or less polished (if clean precise inking is your bag) but the guy's output is incredible, and at the end of the day he has a huge body of compelling STORIES behind him, that is a tremendous legacy to leave the world of comics.

Yes, you can combine the output of Miller with the exactitude of Bolland and have a body of work such as Katsuhiro Otomo's awe inspiring Akira...but I don't really fancy making myself ill over my art, thankyou very much!

I've been looking at my preliminary sketches for Alameda, and my pencils for the first page, and then at the loose open line/ wash of Moebius' latest Arzak book...at the sketchy fresh approach of Posy Simmonds' Tamara Drewe....and with 77 pages of story ahead of me my desire to go mad on the precision and detail has totally deserted me.

That's not to say that I want to be careless or sloppy, but with the story being set in an island paradise, with the subject matter being alot more naturalistic than the sci-fi horror of JITB...I can't see the point in going for style over content, when all I really want to do is draw a bloody good (hopefully) moving yarn that is less hung up on looking pretty than it is appealing to people's emotions.

To that end I've been trying to rattle off some pictures of characters I'd previous laboured agonisingly over in preliminary 'sketches'. In doing so I managed to finish one in 30 minutes as opposed to 2 hours, and to be honest I think the style would better suit the story anyway.

Well, here it is: