No flair for drama
Originally published 4 May 2001

When the storyline you're working on more or less requires a strip that's little more than an establishing shot, one way to handle it is to make a joke out of the fact that basically nothing is happening. Oh, and you can also move the "camera angle" around in various dramatic-looking ways.

Another challenge presented by this strip was making the stairway look sufficiently darkened and ominous. This would be easier if I allowed myself to use gray. I never have. Anything I can't do by hand, with ink lines, doesn't happen in the day-to-day run of Ozy and Millie.

It's not that I'm trying to be a snob about that. It's just, when it comes to technique, for me there's Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes," and then there's everybody else. And Watterson didn't use gray, so I never worked it into my own style. In strips like this, I find other ways to create shadow.

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