Credits
There are always people I'd like to thank. Inspiration comes from many places. Sometimes MORE than inspiration comes from some.Most Special Thanks
...to my friend Wuff who wrote the comic handling script, created the warning page, and the bones of this site. If he has a link to his own page he'd like to put here, then its sure welcome. Good dog!
...all the people who have put up with seeing the strips in advance as I began drawing the first story months back. Thank you for your feed back and attention. You helped streamline things. Ferret whom I love, mutt whom I trust, coon whom emotes, moot who is honest, otter who is supportive, and others, thank you.
...to David Hopkins of Jack for having me draw three pages of Jack. If I hadn't have done that and saw that it came out okay, I probably wouldn't have attempted a comic of my own. Thanks for the plug too!
Specifc Story Notes
The Dry Run
Dry Run was never really meant to see the light of day. It was to be a short, practice peice. However, the story expanded and I wasn't very ashamed of the art.Page 1: This wasn't the original page 1. It was in image that came to mind that disturbed me...so I drew it with the intention that it might end up the cover once it were coloured. Once drawn, I couldn't resist adding a few words. Before I knew what I'd done, alternate page 1 was born. It starts the story in a very different place.
Page 2: Its the original page 1 in all its glory. Done from the first person horror movie POV...at least that was my attempt. Make the viewers wait for page 3.
Page 3: Other than a distorted reflection, this is the first time the readers get to see our protagonist. Other characters make an appearance.
Page 4: When I drew this page, someone sort of snuck in. Well, it -might- be someone familiar to some readers. Maybe. Can you spot the the Star Trek prop hidden on the page? Its a bottle in frame 4. Technically, its a George Dickel special edition commemorative bottle but some prop guy thought they looked alien and futuristic and so they ended up on the original Star Trek show. Yay for geek trivia! Oh and that Setups thing...I've seen this a lot in Texas but not much elsewhere. Some bars can sell beer or wine, but not hard liquor. So they let you bring in your own bottle and then charge you some small fee to mix drinks for you. If you ever drive by say a club that says "Setups" on the sign, now you know what that is.
Page 5: Special thanks to Buster Charlie for being Travis's stunt body. Well, really BC just took some pictures of himself brandishing a box cutter while wearing the right clothing. That helped draw this page a great deal. In Frame 2...well I guess that sorta turned into a cameo. Wave to the blue critter.
Page 6: Special thanks to Skrenos Fox for being the Coronado's stunt double. He made such a great reference picture for me with his shot gun. It looks a little like the bartender has crunched the barrel inways, but that's me drawing the optical illusion caused by the barrels being thicker walled and at the hammer and then tapering a little as they head towards the end. The bartender calling the dogmorph by the name of 'blackmouth' is a bit of a racial epithet. See the Slopedia for more info.
Page 7: Special thanks to RosenOtter from providng a shotgun ref picture for this page. Yes, the bartender does have the shotgun awkwardly behind his horns. This is what happens when you start using ink before you're done with the sketch. The deer especially in the last panel is sorta based on COurtney Love in terms of her looks. Go fig. Yes, she IS reaching into Mulefoot's pocket but for the sake of the storyline not getting to complicated, I decided to cut out the subplot revolving around what she took from the pig. I'll put it back if I decide to do a dead tree edition of the comic and want to give the consumers something for their money aside from a comic they've already seen.
Page 8: A creepy little look into the pig's ugly mind. The freeform of the imagined and then back to the reality of the story in the framed panels is a little artistic device I borrowed from Dave Hopkins.
Page 9: This is the secret cameo. Who is the insignificant fox? The world may never know! I tried to turn on the cutness with Marian, the coyote gal. Did it work?
Page 10: Pissed on his tires? Well dog's like to piss on tires! I figured this would be an amusing thing for an angry drunk dog to do. How did he know its Mulefoot's truck? By nose.
Page 11: Sucks getting old, doens't it? Some people might think Mulefoot ought to be a bad ass. In some ways he is...but he's a big guy and not as quick as some. He is kinda tough. You might wonder how he handles a pipe to the face so well. I base this sort of thing off of tales I've heard from boar hunters...where they shot the boar in the head at close range with a heavy calibre pistol, only to have the round bounce off. This leaves behind a very pissed off piggy.
Page 12: I'm starting to experiment with black. Lots of black. Notice the bobbling of the hula girl? And Travis ain't dead back there...just tied...and there's a rag with something on it near his face. I kind of like my little side mirror view plot device.
Page 13: I went to all that trouble to include the Hula Girl for a reason.
Page 14: More experiments with black...and Yenaburger! Cappyburgers are made from yummy capybara...a very large South American rodent. Turnip mangles are the low carb alternative to mangle beets. Its hard to read but the name tag on that coon in Hyzen. That's a lil cameo.
Page 15: This is where the comic gets a bit strange.
Page 16: Poor Marian. Her mother used to beat her. Called her an evil dirty pig a lot too. That's why she's partly biased against Mulefoot and partly...mesmerized. You can see the Slop universe is set up sorta like the US.
Page 17: I went for making Travis goofy cute in panel 3. That trucker bear is character I created a while back called Weldy. He's in at least two pornogrpaphic pictures I've drawn. He's the kind of driver that exacts a price from hitchhikers.
Page 18: Originally I was going for something completely different on this page but after it was drawn, the dialogue didn't quite fit. It came out quite humorous to me, so I went with the silliness in my head. I still got to communicate that Marian is driven partially by instinct though.
Page 19: Dupont is named after Edmund Dupont.
Page 20: Awwww. Its such a sweet thing he's imagining. I experimented with his thoughts slowly cracking. The dark pig has no eyes because he cannot see anything but what's inside of himself.
Page 21: Its Marian looking slutty! Yay! The thoughts slowly un-crack on this one until its all clear to him. Hopefully he came across as a little pathetic.
Page 22: I like this panel. The bottom panel with Marian's face for some reason reminds me of The Bride from Kill Bill Vol 2. Not sure why.
Page 23: Oh look, its our skanky deer whore again! I wonder who was in the bathroom.
Page 24: I based this bus stop off of a picture of an old Greyhound station out of somewhere in Texas. Marian looks greedy to me.
Page 25: Lonely country roads and the introduction of a ferret morph species I call the Fitch.
Page 26: I can't even begin to explain how much I like this page. I don't know how Travis got untied, but it could be trouble.
Page 27: A little bit of experimental action. Some people have wondered why Travis didn't attack Mulefoot more. I don't think he had the strength. Imagine how he must already have a few broken rubs and a concussion from that ass kicking he received earlier.
Page 28: Poor Travis. Why does he ask about Marian? It has nothing to do with caring where she is. Its is last attempt at control. Its a show of his possesiveness towards the girl.
Page 29: Such a hopeful piggy. I wonder if he's at all right. Will Marian be a good girl? The photographer in this picture was meant to be an otter type critter. Travis Jr. has semi floppy ears...the kind you might expect if your mother had coyote ears and your father had floppy dog ears. Least that's my theory.
Page 30: Welcome to Slopstyle predator emasculation. Travis loses his sharp teeth and then his balls. I think I can credit the "Ironic" line to Buster from a discussion we had about the coming story events. Welcome to the truth about Mulefoot. Some people foolishly clung to the idea that Mulefoot was some kind of twisted and tragic hero. No. He's a killer. Maybe even a delusional one.
Page 31: To the victor goes the spoils. I felt quite screwed up as I drew this scene. It was cathartic. By the end I was tired and sad.
Page 32: Some of you no doubt thought maybe that was Marian and she never got on the bus. Nope. Its Hyzen from Yenaburger. Odds are she survived. Mulefoot was probably quite satiated. However, I bet she made him feel more alone.