My way-too-tight layouts for "Unnamed Robot Comic" #1, pt.2! (Patreon)

Behold, my next few pages of layouts for 2004's Marvel mecha-team miniseries Livewires, titled here as "Unnamed Robot Comic" as I'm more than a tad dubious about identifying this series of posts publicly. Keep this to yourselves, won't you? (The joke of using the title "Unnamed Robot Comic", by the way, is that Livewires' mecha protagonists consider the term "robot" to be an offensive slur.)

This set of layouts introduces the mecha Social Butterfly, who wound up being a sort of prototype version of Emp from Empowered, who was first created while I was still midway through working on this miniseries. In Livewires issue #3, you'll see the slightly variant, longer-haired iteration of Social Butterfly that was the direct inspiration for Emp's physical appearance; oddly enough, only in recent years of Empowered has Emp grown more like Social in terms of characterization, as early in the series Emp was far too insecure and anxiety-prone to be the warm, nurturing presence that her mecha predecessor represented all along.

The final art on the series was done by my old bud Rick Mays, but as you can see I cranked out insanely tight, fully dialogued, Sharpie-and-pencils layout pages for the series ahead of time; not only was this approach a faaaar from cost-effective use of my worktime, but in retrospect I feel that these layouts constricted Rick from drawing the beautiful faces and figure work he produced for other books. (Oh, well.)

Anyhoo, stand by for more Unnamed Robot Comic layouts shortly, okay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: The new "M/W/F+" posting schedule has kicked in with a non-fixed selection of posts, so who knows what the heck I might post next? (Alas, you have to be subscribed to the $5+ Patron tiers to get the full M/W/F treatment every week of the month.)