Making of "Assemble!"

Every year I worry I might have run out of superhero ideas -or rather, DOABLE ideas!  I have plenty of epic storylines I could do with my super-team, but cutting it down to fit in a manageable comic is where the real super-power lies! 

This year I thought I'd just keep it simple!  I have the characters established already, lets just tell a quick joke with them!  Yeeeeahh... that didn't really go as planned! 

I had this idea about how hard it would be for a family superhero team to get out the door.  I thought maybe I could keep it simple with lots of close ups and dialogue.  The issue (that I realized too late!) was it had to have a certain amount of back and fourths to get across the chaos that is leaving the house as a family!  The comic kept growing and growing, but by then it was making me laugh, so I had to keep going!

I wrote a list of things I wanted to happen, Coop needs changing, Vince rebranding, packing diaper bag etc, and rearranged them until I had a good flow, sketching it out really rough to check it was working.

Then I started mining the previous Supercats comics for linework.  The more I could recycle, the more chance I could get this done in time!  While looking over the previous installments I remembered that Joel had black/blue shadow arms that came out of his cloak.  This made things a lot easier, because his arms could just stretch to fit!

My 8yo has been declaring a lot of things my 6yo likes as "childish" recently, so I imagined Vincent might do the same.  It's funny when they're so little but think they're so old! :)  8yo also has a habit on picking the absolute worst possible time to start on a craft project -so last minute superhero rebranding was perfect!  I tried to think of non-rude, dumb things kids like and came up with bacon, tacos and moustaches.  The latter led me to the bonus panel joke and I loved the idea that he'd delayed everyone so he could just stick a stupid moustache on! 

After I'd decided all of this, 8yo came up and asked if Butt-Boy could be changed because it was too childish.  I laughed and said I thought he might think that and he was getting a rebrand!  Unfortunately 8yo was not at all happy about the moustache idea!  He thought people would think it was HIS dumb idea!  So let me be clear here, it was not his, but MY dumb idea!  I felt bad for him, but reassured him people wouldn't think that -it was awkward, because I obviously couldn't explain the Moustache Rider joke! 😅  Hopefully he'll find it funny and forgive me one day!  

Putting it all together went surprisingly smoothly for such a long comic.  I tweaked some of the words as I went, trimming down where I could, although I added some for panel 3 to make it a dad joke.

I took some time figuring out panel 7, where Joel is looming over Vincent.  I liked the juxtaposition of him trying to stay calm with the scary Batman vibes, but ended up wanting him more obviously frustrated.  In the end I made the joke that Vince is completely obvious to the danger behind him.

Coloring the Supercats comics is always the most fun -I get to use a few brighter colors and some silly dramatic shadows!  I tried to use the background colors to dial up and down the drama -using classic comic book colors for some and then the normal household colors when Joel's been snapped back to reality. 

I was really happy how this one turned out and pleasantly surprised how quickly I put it together.  It still took much longer than a normal comic, but considering the multi-character complexities, it really wasn't so bad!