Q: What's the origin of the title "Dragons on the Red Line"?
A: It's a tribute to the story "Dragons in Manhattan" by Francesca Lia Block, which can be found in her collection Girl Goddess #9. The "dragons" in that story are the self-made and fabulous creatures that can exist somewhere, even if they aren't found in nature... and my dragons here are on the Red Line because they live in Cambridge, near Porter Square, just like I do.Q: How do you do this? How long does it take?
I draw it in pencil, then trace over that with ink and scan that as line art. Once the image is scanned I color each panel in Adobe Photoshop. I add the word balloons either to the individual panels or later in the final document, depending on whether they span the panel borders. Finally, I put them all into one image, flatten, save as a gif and post.Q: You use a lot of big words! I've already had to look up skerry, amenities and tsetse, not to mention cruciverbalists.I'm not very fast, and the interaction between the words and pictures continues to boggle my mind, so each strip takes me several hours. Practice will probably help.
A: I'm not doing it on purpose, but I'm not likely to stop either, so keep your dictionary within reach.Q: What have the major influences been on this so far?
A: Something Positive, Jim's Journal, and Scott McCloud's excellent book Understanding Comics.