Cross My Palm With Silver

As threatened, here's a look at the story behind the return of my character Silver....

In preparation for doing some pencil samples and after not doing any sequential stuff of my own for some time, I decided to return to Silver, who always pretty much writes himself, especially when paired with Marv. Still, I had trouble coming up with a new plot at short notice so returned to a twice abandoned older strip.

The first version was quickly abandoned in favour of what became Silver #1 (which I still think has some nice storytelling) but was printed in the back of that issue (basically as filler). At some point, I went back in and began doing a revised, improved version and I completed more pages than the first incarnation but still abandoned it after a few pages were completed.

In deciding to return to the story, I wanted to avoid lettering and try to keep to a less cluttered finishing style than Mark 2. Therefore, I chose to redraw the opening pages by using the lightbox to save the work I still liked from Mk 2. A slight rejiggering of panels (leading to a much more altered page 2 before going on to all-new work from then on), a tweak here and there and voila, new page. I'm not entirely convinced that Mark 3 is any better than its predecessor but it's more consistent with how my finishes are now. All the versions (newest at the top, oldest at the bottom) are posted here for your comparative scrutiny.

Silver started as a number of short episodes so I was used to cramming a lot into each page...Silver #1's main strip was a lot more open so I'm guessing this story predated it. As a result, I moved a panel from page 1 to 2 and from page 3, I'll be using a more open layout with less panels per page. The visuals need to breathe a bit rather than struggle to share panel space with the lettering. Anyway, if page 2 and 3 go wrong--bearing in mind I'm still unhappy with page 1--I can see me dropping this again and going straight on to more pencilled work...