The Black Io Chronicles.

Drugs & Wires, our weekly webcomic of terrible, cyberpunk-flavored life decisions in post-Soviet urbia, turns one today. But instead of wheeling out the cake, we figured we’d celebrate by going a bit into what makes the comic tick, and how we go about actually producing the damned thing.

We don’t get invited to many parties. 

The Idea.

As I like telling people, what powers 90% of D&W is our mutual fascination with terrible, terrible things. Whether it’s crappy tech, crummy architecture, or creepy humans, there’s very little we can’t (or won’t) repurpose for the comic. Just over the first two chapters, we’ve touched on Moscow’s subway dogs, delivery drivers who simply don’t give two shits about your property, Warrax, Bain Capital, ancient Russian memes, and the eye-searing excellence of ‘90s raver fashion. 

So whenever one of us finds something suitably D&W-esque while cruising the ol’ Information Superhighway, it usually results in a conversation like this:  

-at which point we decide that this officially NEEDS TO BE A THING and contrive a way to stick it into the current storyline. 

The Script.

When inspiration strikes, we usually write it up fairly quickly and dump it into an appropriate Google doc. (Good collaborative tools are essential when you live and work one time zone apart!) How this new scene connects to the rest of the story is worked out after the fact; some of the stuff we’ve come up with over the past year won’t actually be drawn up until 2017 or later, while other scenes are just kind of hovering in limbo until we figure out how to fold them into the narrative. Fortunately, our structure makes that pretty easy: D&W follows an overarching plot, but one with plenty of blank spaces to stick random goings-on if the mood strikes. 

Who actually does the writing - that’s something that varies from page to page. The first chapter was largely Claire’s work, Chapter 2 mostly mine (except for that marvelous car scene), and future installments will continue to have bits and pieces from both of us. 

Honest-to-goodness comic pros would find our scripts in general just a little sloppier than the “real thing”, as things like framing and panel breakdowns are largely left to Claire’s discretion. Here’s an example: 

Of course, just writing a script’s not the end of it: each page goes through a couple sets of revisions before Claire puts nib to tablet, usually to either tighten up the dialogue or beef up a punchline.

Layout and Roughs.

Once a page is written, it’s time to visualize it. Because we create with print in mind - a lesson learned from the headaches of Dreamspace: Analogue Edition - there’s a hard limit to how much real estate we have to work with. So, to ensure that all of the written dialogue actually fits, Claire drops in the text almost immediately, then builds the art around the speech so the final bubbles will obscure as little detail as possible - much, much easier than having to go back and adjust the artwork during the lettering phase.

Penciling

When she’s done with the basic layout and panel design, Claire does her first pass on the artwork, or what’s generally called the ‘penciling’ phase. This stage is usually livestreamed via Twitch, giving fans a chance to see the new page take shape. (If you’re wondering, the blue lines make it easier to separate things during the inking stage - see below.) 

Inking

After that first art pass comes the cleanup phase, or ‘Inking’. Here, Claire goes over the ‘pencils’, improving linework and adding fine details as needed. As you can see, it’s not uncommon for poses and other elements to be tweaked during this stage, either.

Colors, Effects, and Typesetting

With linework done, colors are next on the docket. Each new location has its own particular color scheme - partially to make shifts in scene clearer to the reader, but mostly to help Claire stave off boredom. (Artists are a notoriously fickle folk, people.) 

(Fun fact: D&W nearly ended up being published in Xerox-friendly black and white, and early reader feedback actually suggested people preferred the ‘noir’ look. Just think of all of the eye-watering neons we could have missed out on!)

In the early days of D&W, Claire played up the gritty, zine-y aspect of the comic by applying an additional layer of scratches to the finished product to make it look more like something fished out of the dumpster at your local punk club. As fans have probably noticed, though, that’s something we toned down a lot as the comic progressed, and eliminated entirely for the print edition.

Once the colors are wrapped, the last step is to insert the dialogue, various computer interfaces and other effects (typically done in Photoshop - the only part of the comic that isn’t handled exclusively in Clip Studio Paint). That’s usually done outside of our livestreams to avoid spoilers, and at this point the comic is technically complete, except for…

Dialogue Tweaks

I generally don’t have access to the completed artwork until typesetting is done, so there’ll occasionally be situations where I see a “finished” page and decide that the dialogue needs a little last-minute TLC. Sometimes it’s because a panel is bigger (or smaller) than expected; sometimes it’s because the dialogue simply doesn’t “look” right on the finished art, or because the final art suggests actions/interactions that weren’t in the original script. The first meeting between Dan and Shitparade is one example. Here’s the original take:

And here’s the version that actually saw the light of day: 

Of course, any changes mean that Claire’s now stuck redoing all the (hand-drawn) word balloons, and given how often I request tweaks, the fact that she hasn’t killed me yet ranks as a minor miracle.

So, that’s a little whistle-stop tour through our creative process. Thanks for indulging us, and thanks for making D&W a blast to work on, week-in, week-out. Here’s to another great year!