So every year around this time the Philadelphia City Paper comes out with their annual “Comic Issue” and they ask readers for submissions. I try to submit at least one comic every year but sometime I lose track of the deadline and forget. This years deadline is November 15 so I had plenty of time to get a comic done. Recently I’ve been taking my “Jimmy” character and roughing him up a bit. By doing this I’ve created his evil twin appropriately named “Evil Jimmy”. Evil Jimmy is always sporting a frown and a cold menacing look in his hollow eyes. He’s got bruises on his brain, malice on his mind and he’s always looking to ruin your day.
Here is one of the first stages of “Evil Jimmy”.
Did I mention he’s a big football fan. You can always find “Evil Jimmy” rocking his fresh throwback Eagles bubble down coat and matching wool hat. He usually always has his football and army of evil snowballs by his side, waiting for that unsuspected passerby to pelt at just the right time. In this early sketch it also appears that “Evil Jimmy” was doing a little smoking, hence the coin-slot eyes.
Here is a more recent sketch I did last week in a friends book:
Here “Evil Jimmy” is a little more put together and that menacing look in his eyes returns. He’s ready to take names and whoop some ass but it appears that there’s no one around to bully. Even the one snowball is getting pissed. Perhaps it’s because they’re starting to melt.
So since I’ve been on a kick lately with this lil’ bugger I though I’d just extend him into my submission for the paper. This time I placed “Evil Jimmy” in more of a scene that he could interact with. His poor victim being “Backwards Flyer”. I finished a pencil sketch at work yesterday and inked it when I got home. Check it:
I was happy with the chaos wreaked in this scene and thought “Evil Jimmy” was right at home continuing on his hate-filled bender despite his newly chipped tooth. This dude is spilling beer, decapitating snowmen, tossing snowballs at peoples faces and he’s probably high and just stole something.
Alright, after this stage I scanned the sketch and got ready to turn it into vector, get it to the right size, and add some type. Below is the finished submission I sent the paper:
Click to view larger.
I love turning my sketches into vector files because I never really know how it’s going to look when it’s converted. I really like the randomness and lack of control involved with that. Plus the whites get whiter, the blacks get blacker, and now it can be enlarged to any size.
Overall, I’m happy with the finished product. Now I just have to wait and see if the folks over at the City Paper think it’ worthy enough to go to print. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed creating it.
Now get out there and get EVIL!!
