This was fun. Clearly, it motors. Doing a whole heist in an issue is tricky. Doing one in five pages is harder, but necessary. I need space to show why this matters to Tony. I need space to show why it matters to Howard and Maria.
Page 1: Yet more of Dale’s background detailing. Fun!
I originally wrote Tony more silent here, but it seemed to need more.
God, Dale really is killing himself with all the detailing on 451’s armour. Man!
Page 2: Tony’s doubt makes him collude with the reader, which is useful.
Page 3: Space=meaning, once again. A very BKV-ian character beat given a page of space to sell implication.
The Mom, Dad line was added at lettering to help the segue between the two periods.
Page 4: There’s been so little of Maria in the MU that I’m especially glad we’re getting a chance to show her here. While Howard’s the one with the resources in the MU to use, making sure she’s involved was an important thing to worry about.
Page 5: Hard cuts across time on the panel break. Hand holding as shared element. This page is really sparse. Four panels. You could do this information in two panels effectively. If you were willing to rewrite, you could do in one. When I have to compress later stuff so much, you may think that it’d be a good idea to merge scenes here – like, say, with an almost-as-quiet next page.
I’d say that would be a fatal error. What’s important in your story? Give that the space. If you don’t believe in the feelings of Howard & Maria, this story entirely collapses.
Dale does a great Howard & Maria.
Page 6: That Howard is as problematic a guy as Tony is stressed here. Late night conversation, horrific in its normality. I like dale’s chosen-aspect for first panel. I’m being more restrained with the dialogue here than I normally would.
Page 7: And here comes the MU! A more elegant story would have the Greys as the sole element – but this is in the MU, and can’t be a purely elegant story. The fact the universe is a bit mental is key, not least because of the framing sequence is Tony talking to a robot in space.
I love hard-cut scenes like this. Implication of other stories for people’s imagination to fill. The cameos you may not recognise are Nathaniel Richards (Reed Richards’ Dad) in the first panel, Nathaniel Essex (aka Mister Sinister) in the second and The High Evolutionary in the fifth.
Page 8: My direction for Rollo the Alien was “Basically Fredo from the Godfather”. I love what Dale did with all his bodylanguage from here on in.
Page 9: Area 52. Area 51 + the deck of cards.
When I knew I wanted aliens involved, the question became what aliens. Since I’m playing games with the iconic nature of real Nevada, none of the pre-existing MU ones really fit the role. In which case, I thought a riff on the Greys could be interesting.
The traditional Grey explanations are basically them either as the science-ages Angels or Demons. They’re either here to mess with us or save us. There’s been a bunch of revisionist Greys of course – the “They’re just like us” approach of Paul seems pretty popular.
I thought it may be fun to just make them pretty venal. Why would an alien species be interested in Humans? Because we’re rubes.
Also this means I get to dress them all in Grey suits, which amuses me.
Page 10: When I talked about how I could have compressed earlier scenes, I’d look at this page and the previous one as an example of getting a lot more information in there.
Page 11: And the putting the team together scene. I love these. We’re using a classic Heist structure here, and he have to the putting the gang together scene. A panel and a beat to show the relationship, captions doing some of the heavy work.
Dugan, Jimmy and Thunderbolt are pre-existing Marvel characters. Nessa and The Bear (and her Shiba Inu) are new ones, designed to fit the quasi-period vibe. Nessa is primarily inspired by Eartha Kitt. I picture the Bear as an actor like Holly Hunter dressed as Jackie O.
Page 12: And a splash of the team. Clearly useful for PR purpose, but half the fun of a heist is having a cool gang.
I winced for a second when I saw the lettering when this was used for PR, before smiling at what whoever had written it was doing, in terms of being deceptive. The Bear is “THE BOMBSHELL” because she’s the explosive expert.
Page 13: Rollo’s stance in the second panel is great.
The fleshiness of the Grey boss is also great.
I’m not sure if I asked for the Grey gangster’s moll, but I’m glad it exists.
Page 14: Implication of a mission going on.
Good expression on the alien boss for the hard-cut gag on the final panel.
Page 15: Here we’re really cramming. The actual Heist was originally a little more complicated, with a couple more tricks in there, but it’s probably for the best to have lost it for clarity’s sake.
I worked out the details of the Heist on dinner date with my Wife in Brighton. We just talked nonsense for a couple of hours, and I edited down to something that worked. The Bear’s shiba inu’s is my payment to her for help.
Page 16: The heist being based on the one already-introduced bit of sci-fi is key. Hide the robot with the inducer to make it appear it’s already been stolen.
The goggles on the Shiba-inu still makes me smile.
We had some problems with the last panel, making clear it’s actually a bomb. Adding red lights and SFX seemed to do the trick.
Page 17: I hate Gin, for the record.
Page 18: I quite like how goofy 451 is in the last two panels.
Page 19: Yet more hard-cuts to sell point. I actually had a plan to make Rollo not get shot in the head, using a Life Model Decoy he’d borrowed from Nick Fury… but that’s extra Marvel Universe tech which to people who weren’t versed in the MU would come out of nowhere. A Marvel reader would be fine if we foreshadowed it with a conversation with Fury earlier… but it’d lose a lot of other people unnecessarily.
And having Rollo get shot sells the crediblity of the Greys as an opponent.
The “This Breaks My Heart” is a Godfather nod.
Page 20: And back to the present with the framing sequence. Reminder of 451’s previous crimes and motivation. Obviously a slow build in creepiness. The last panel is fun.
Page 21: Dale definitely leans into 451 being more sinister than quirky in the framing sequences. Notice the shadows in that first panel.
Gillen, Kieron (17 May 2013).
Writer’s Notes On Iron Man 10.
Kieron Gillen's Workblog. Retrieved on 9 January 2017.
