The Adventures of the S-Team!

The comics from this week were some of the most involved I’ve ever done using special effects. Every single panel required multiple layers from the beautiful background shot I found in my clipart to the characters in the foreground to (as you’ll see) some very cool effects. Some of the strips you’re about to see took almost an hour each to produce, which is a very long time.

Typically, it takes me five to ten minutes to write a script (after thinking about it sometimes for days), and I generally write a minimum of one week’s worth at a time. If I don’t have to build a new set, I can shoot an entire week’s worth of strips in about half an hour. Sometimes it takes an hour or more to build a new set. I try and hold onto ones I intend to reuse, like the S-Team’s Conference Room, the Hallway (which has appeared more than any other set), or Science Guy’s Lab (which is the Hallway with some extra garbage strewn about). Post production takes anywhere from ten minutes (for a complete strip with only word balloons and no special effects) to an hour (like the ones this week). So…a typical week’s worth of strips takes about two and a half to three hours to produce from beginning to end. And I think it’s worth it. Do you?

Some superheroes and supervillains have names that might sound really cool at first, but then you dig into them and realize just how lame they are. I didn’t realize Tetsu Kochou sounded like “Testicle chew” until I said it aloud. It made me chuckle so I put it into the strip. Iron Butterfly sounds like a nifty name until you remember the guy singing “In a gadda davida”. One hit wonder.

A lot of comic book villains are traditionally pretty stupid and can’t see the forest for the trees, which is how the heroes normally deal with them. In recent years, that’s changed and the villains are now as well-developed personalities as the heroes. In the S-Team, though, most of them fall into the former category.