About Hell's Corners: Canto I

Hell's Corners' first Canto is the only book (so far) in the series rendered entirely in black and white, which is probably a major contributor tothe fact that it is also the only book in the series on which I was able to maintain a semi-regular update schedule.

Where more and more webcomics are inked digitally, Hell's Corners has always been inked old school. This particular Canto, I'm pretty sure, was my first brush with Faber Castell's PITT artist pens, which are basically cheapo disposable tech pens. Primitive as this may seem by the standards of snobbish tablet jockeys everywhere, it's nothing compared with Hell's Corner's first draft, which was inked entirely with my good old Speedball crow quill. To the uninitiated, a goddamn dip pen.

Additionally, the original lacks the flat grey digital fills that defined the backgrounds in this version. A very specific complaint from Dan Vado of SLG (who rejected the rough draft) was that there was so much black all over the place it was impossible to tell what was going on. He had a very real point -- a lot of the environments in the first one looked like I just dumped out my ink bottle.

Because this second version was also intended to be shopped around for print publication, I addressed the problems people had with the first and did some stuff like reimagine Azzy, but stuck with black and white because color was a harder sell, I figured, to a small publisher due to the compartively astronomical cost of color.

Ironically it was never resubmitted to SLG or anyone in the end as I then started to imagine myself some kind of super-indie comix martyr.

©2004 Erin Mehlos (So don't try any of your shit.)
www.hellscorners.com