Long John

As expressed in the notes a few pages ago, this scene was a bit tough to script out if only because important stuff needed to happen in it, at which point I clam up.

Mostly it’s a problem of “voice”; Long John returns after a year off and, admittedly, I had to find John’s voice again as well as find Jonny Mono’s along the way. The way I ultimately approached these two is that they respect each other in a professional capacity––Long John doesn’t get too close to anybody and Jonny Mono, being an intrinsic “outsider” to the white man’s world, keeps a safe distance from everyone he meets––and yet it is these two that have the strongest emotional bond between the three “Johns” (Long John, Juan John, and Jonny Mono). As two taciturn survivors who are extremely good at their utilitarian jobs, Jonny Mono and Long John actually have a pretty deep relationship despite not having a lot to say.

As for the “voice” of Jonny Mono, I again relied on the pop culture inspiration of Solid Snake from the Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid series of video games. The games themselves are political espionage action thriller games, with a hefty amount of absurdity mixed in, and as stoic and “Eastwoodian” as the drawings of the protagonist may seem, he’s quite verbose.

I mention that because my natural tendency is to pull back on dialogue, especially with a character that has more information than Long John, or the reader, has. So, I tried to invert that paradigm and in this page (and the next one), I try to keep Jonny Mono talking. He doesn’t want to hold anything back from Long John, he just doesn’t want to get hurt in the process (naturally).

There is video of me inking this page, which was very nerve-wracking, but people seemed to like it and I’ll share it again here: