What follows is the second issue of Jazz Scarecrow, a self-published mini-comic from 1986, which was drawn in sketchbooks, photocopied and distributed to my fellow employees at National Record Mart, a music store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Each issue featured the lead story, a continuing serial adventure, plus a back-up story starring The Man From Country X, which was drawn in a sketchy, line-based style, as opposed to the more graphic black and white Jazz Scarecrow, a tale of Ronald Reagan-inspired paranoia and Orwellian conceit, plus a one-page cartoon, usually in yet another style/approach. All stories were drawn and written panel-to-panel, page-to-page, without any preliminary planning. No pencils were involved, just technical pen ink on the paper, even solid blacks were filled-in with the same technical pen, as I’d yet to attempt using a brush and ink or pen. The title lettering was created with the inimitable Letraset Brand Prestype. Spelling mistakes were not unusual.
This second issue introduced gray wash tones to the art, created using watered-down India ink. This was one of the first times I had ever attempted this technique.
Note the misuse of the term “sibling”, as used in Operation Sibling, which should have been Operation Offspring.
For those of you who like to curl up with a pillow and watch your cartoons, click here for a handy slideshow of all twenty-four pages, soundtrack not included, but I suggest The Midnight Room by Jennifer Gentle, or most anything by John Fahey.
Either way – any way – I hope you enjoy!
