Super Lunas, Preliminary Work
2023
The Super Lunas had been on my mind for over a decade. I’d actually written about 200 pages of this story in novel format in 2013. A lot of what exists today in comic form started then.
After my long hiatus from drawing, I was itching for something new. The world was getting darker and darker and I wanted to do something light. Fun. Colorful. The Lunas name has been on my mind for a while, and I’ve used in a few different ways across different projects, but you’ll recognize it from The Dark Lunas work I did in 2018. Are The Dark Lunas and Super Lunas connected? Yes, I actually think they are. There’s the name, obviously, but as you’ll see if you scroll through the images below, Jake wears a cloak that bears a remarkable resemblance to that worn by The Wanderer in The Dark Lunas. Why? Not sure. But a connection exists somehow.
The first illustration below is the first drawing I made of Jake and his little brother Ben. This would lead to my favorite work yet, and the series I’m working on now.
This is the preliminary work for Super Lunas.
These first images are my attempts at figuring things out. As I’ve mentioned before, I generally hate drawing in my sketchbook and prefer to work ideas out on a page, even if it’s a preliminary sort of thing, which these are.
I wanted to switch things up and develop a series that incorporated cartoony looking characters, but wouldn’t necessarily be a kids’ series. When I was younger, Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts, and the other Sunday comics occupied the same exact place in my head as Jim Lee’s X-Men, Thundercats, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, The Hardy Boys books, The Goonies, and action movies I snuck viewings of when I definitely wasn’t allowed.
I wanted Super Lunas to be that. An expression of all of the things that had brought me joy as a kid. Not in a cheap, 80s/90s nostalgia knock-off way that’s currently prevalent in too many things, but in a way that’s personal to me. This is me, as an adult, possessing the skill to now bring my childhood bedroom action figure play to life via comics.
I’m missing a sense of fun from the current comic book offering, and I’d like Super Lunas to help change that—even if only by a smidge.
Working digitally has changed a lot of things for me, chief among them is the ability to work a bit faster, from anywhere. I sneak in many drawing sessions from the parked car while my son is in basketball practice. Or from the couch while I chat with my wife and watch TV.
Another way it’s improved my work is that it feels more energetic. I sketch pages in a sketchbook, as you can see in the images above. But I can do them haphazardly, without much thought. They have a looseness that I love when working this way. Then, I photograph those sketches with my ipad, drop the photos into Procreate, get them into a workable arrangement of panels, and get to work inking.
The pages below are a testament to this method.
It’s a pitch I worked on—then reworked for this site (and for Image Comics)—a little later, but there’s a ton here that I love.
I think this version is a little funnier, and I might like the ending a bit better, but who can say for sure? It’s just the way these things go.
