LAYOUTS FROM AN OLD SF-ADJACENT PROJECT: Chapter 3, pt. 2! (Patreon)

[Here's a link to our previous installment in this series.]

So, yeahp, I'm serializing my insanely tight layout pages for the 2005 Marvel miniseries Iron Man: Hypervelocity, the first issue of which I wrote and laid out long before an artist had been chosen;  of course, the great Brian Denham wound up tackling the art for the project, but I had already rolled with these time-consuming roughs out of, I dunno, sheer perfectionism and unhinged micro-managing.

Either that, or these layouts represented the sum total of artwork I actually wanted to produce for this project. As I've noted here before, cranking out finished artwork is the bane of my g-d existence as an artist; I like (or even occasionally love) drawing loose, relatively spontaneous comic pages like this, but bog down toute suite upon having to painstakingly render my usual tight and precise completed artwork.

Even though we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Hypervelocity's creation, I am loath to publicly acknowledge to non-Patrons that I'm serializing these layouts here, hence the "Old SF-Adjacent Project" monicker.

Anyhoo, onward to Hypervelocity issue #3's pages 6 through 11:

When I look back at Hypervelocity, the one thing I absolutely should've handled differently was this mercilessly expository issue. A frickin' horrific call on my part, TBH.

In theory this sequence is setting up a reveal about the opponents Tony 2.0 is facing, but this was not the way to handle things, IMHO.

Oddly enough, the "technotaku" bit in the last panel above was repurposed from a concept brought up in a truly bizarre pitch I had worked up 5-10 years earlier for an Aliens vs. Predator miniseries that, not surprisingly, went nowhere. (Looking back, I suspect the concept was strongly influenced by the "Focus" riff in Vernor Vinge's great SF novel A Deepness in the Sky.)

 Oddly, I'm not quite as bothered by these SHIELD asset lists, though I'd still likely scrap 'em along with Tony's exposition to rework issue #3 into a less "talky" approach.

The carrier's Samuel Sawyer name is a Marvel continuity reference I can no longer recall; editor Tom Brevoort came up with that one on request. (Pity I missed out on SHIELD personnel nicknaming it as "Sam-Saw.")

Major Tom—holy crap, the Bowie reference was, I think, unintentional—is using some language that would, ah, not quite pass muster nowadays. ("That Quicksilver pansy"-- Lordy loo!) Then again, the idea was that his speech patterns were supposed to be quite abrasive if not downright unpleasant; however, our next Hypervelocity installment will introduce a character whose speech patterns are considerably more abrasive and unpleasant, to the point that I suspect I must have watered 'em down a tad for the published version.

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?