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Comics are hard work. Once upon a time, I worked in comic books, in the days before the internet, and before digital tools. To illustrate how things were done in the old days of Postage, and traditional tools, I am presenting work done in preparation for a comic book. Hopefully, this will make clear, some of the planning and processes necessary to make a successful comic book, even if the tools have changed to Dropbox, Photoshop and Manga Studio. even with those tools, things still need to be planned, written, and then drawn.

The above are layouts for an unpublished issue of the Graph-X-Press title, "Equine the Uncivilized". after meeting it's editor,Jim Groat at a Baycon, in the mid 1980's, I was encouraged to submit work to the company in hopes of getting work. At the time I was an illustrator for table top games, and i was looking for work in comics. These layouts were my "Audition". I have done other comics in some 'zines, but this was a full book, and I had to manage the pace in a longer form work. Not knowing the process, I reached out for help by contacting Mark "Sir William Blackfox" Wallace, and he graciously advised me. You will see a couple of alternate pages with the same page number, that he suggested I redraw, often off of his layouts. Sadly Mark's work is not well known today as most of it was published before the internet became huge, and he passed away just as his situation was turning around. Thank you for the help in any case, Mark.

The gag is that Irina never gets a word balloon. and yes there was some intention of Tumansky's magic user garb to be reflecting Russian Orthodox vestments.