That’s the pencils from this week’s installment. Dan himself has said he prefers the pencilled panel 3 to the finish product, so we thought we’d take you backstage and let you see the inner workings. Here’s the script I gave Dan:

PAGE 12
PANEL 1: SULLY’s yelling again at JONAS, but this time NANCY is in the way and bears the brunt of it. SULLY’s trying to explain why he’s so mad, but doing it rather heatedly. JONAS isn’t even in view, we’re just seeing SULLY going off with NANCY being in the verbal line of fire.
SULLY: Don’t defend him, Nancy. He broke the guitar.

Everyone saw it. Everyone heard it.

NANCY: But exploding like this isn’t going to help anyone.

SULLY: JONAS has never been a help to anyone.

Ever.

…Why is he even here?

PANEL 2: SULLY turns his back on the group; you see him in the bottom right corner with the group on the left. Not a big gap, but almost noticeable. NANCY is still talking at him and in his direction. She’s angry, but restrained. Her arms are straightened at her sides with her fists clenched.
NANCY: Take a minute and think about what you were about to do, SULLY.

OWEN: What are we going to do about tonight?

PANEL 3: A sideview shot. On the left is a silhouette of the van and the group standing outside it. ON the right is SULLY, separate and walking off. I’d like someway to highlight SULLY leaving; maybe a coloring trick or something? What do you think?
SULLY: … I’ll figure it out.

PANEL 4: Originally this was two panels, but I merged them. If you think they should be separate, go ahead. NANCY’s looking off to panel right to SULLY walking away (off screen), with JONAS back near the van being consoled by OWEN and SYLVIA looking on. OWEN’s got his arm on JONAS’ shoulder and SYLVIA is looking concerned. NANCY’s got her hands on her hips; not mad at SULLY, but kind of disappointed.
OWEN:Can he borrow a guitar from someone at the sheds?

SYLVIA: For tonight? No one gets there until late, and the show at Beers & Steers is too soon.

NANCY: It’ll work out.

OWEN: No amount of reverb is going to fix this.

PANEL 5: This panel switches to a new scene, of SULLY wandering in the night. He’s in a non-urban area, like a nearby park. The caption is NANCY’s words from the previous scene segueing to this one; to better identify that, I was thinking to do a floating head of NANCY to on the left-side of the caption. Sort of like an IM icon, but not really. Just a floating head. In the next page we’ll have more than one person doing a voice-over, so identifying the people like this will be important and be part of the visual vocabulary we’re developing for the book (like the “My Name Is” stickers).

NANCY (voiceover caption): …It’ll work out.

New to the comic? Read the story so far

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner

New to the comic? Read the story so far

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner

So… what are you listening to?

New to the comic? Read the story so far

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner

New to the comic? Read the story so far

NEXT WEEK: Things take a turn for the worse…

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner

New to the comic? Need a refresher course? Read the story so far

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and performed by Dan Warner

Wondering what the mix tape was that Sully mentioned in the closing moments of Chapter 1? Wonder no longer. 10 songs selected by myself and Daniel Warner, for your enjoyment. Some can make their own mix tape based on this, or if you’re one of the first 5 people to reply to this message then we’ll make one and send it out to you. Include your email address and preference of mixtape or MixCD!

This week is the first “Skip Week” in the webrelease of 1 Way Ticket; consider it a breather between chapters as we expand the horizons of the webcomic with some extras. Next week Chapter 2 begins, but this week we’ve got a couple things to serve up to you: a 1-on-1 interview with me and Dan and production sketches by Dan himself.

Before we dig in, let me give a nod of the head to Tony Simmons at the Panama City (Fl.) based newspaper The News Herald, for mentioning us in his blog. Check It Out!

Now on to the Q&A!

ARRANT: Why the hell did you agree to work on 1 Way Ticket with me?

WARNER: It’s all about RUM - Rising Unstoppable Momentum! I had been thinking about collaboration, and digitally delivered comics for about a year when you approached me and I saw this as a good opportunity to jump in and start pulling levers and pressing buttons.

When you and Vito were pulling this idea out of your combined heads, was there ever any talk of a revenue model? If so, what happened to it?

ARRANT: I was brought into the loop fairly early on, but I don’t remember us even considering a payment system. Our main goal was to get these comics in front of as many people as possible, and putting a door charge on it would limit the number of people able to read it, and work against our main goals.

Looking at other popular webcomics, the main revenue source seems not to be micro-payments (sorry Scott McCloud), but by selling advertising and merchandising. We’re far from that point, but it’s something to consider.

WARNER: There is sort of a COMICS-MANGA-WEBCOMICS nexus happening with 1 Way Ticket. It’s not intentional on my part, was this part of your design?

ARRANT: Far from it. I really haven’t had time to separate myself from the work enough to get a good perspective on it, but I would say that I’ve been reading equal amounts of comics, manga and webcomics lately. The story itself was formulated in 2005, but I didn’t start nailing down the ideas and pulling them taut until the summer of ‘06.

My primary influence on this was my time spent in dead-end bands and my life-long obsession with music. When I came to realize that the subject of music is one that’s not that prominent in comics, it provided the impetus to start throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what stuck.

WARNER: Who is Nancy based on? Name names. Was her name inspired by Sid Vicious’ Nancy?

ARRANT: A tiny, tiny bit. The Sid & Nancy connection didn’t come about until after I had settled on a name, but it made it impossible for me to go with anything else. For me, Nancy’s one of those names that is so un-modern it’s rustic, but it’s names like that that the right person can reclaim from history and recalibrate to their own times.

Your work on 1 Way Ticket has been quite different that your style on Cocopiazo. Can you tell us what queues led you to doing what you’re doing with 1WT?

WARNER: I’m just trying not to over think it. The images are coming from an authentic place, and I just want to blurt it all out onto the page. WIth Cocopiazo I tried to avoid looking like my biggest influences (Paul Pope, Goseki Kojima, Todd McFarlane, Berni Wrightson, Dave Mazzuchelli, Bruce Timm, and Mike Allred in case you couldn’t tell :). That was mostly in reaction to a bunch of reviews that seemed to go out of there way to compare me to other artists. These days I don’t give a shit about any of that. This is the kind of stuff that turns me on, so I’m doing it. The hard lesson about style that I’m just starting to learn is that it comes more from the limitations you put on yourself than about what you are fully capable of.

ARRANT: How about your own music experience; can you tell us about that?

WARNER: I was in RAWK bands all through high school and college, I can play the guitar and sing. I’m definitely drawing on those experiences when defining the atmosphere of 1WT. For a few years after college I roomed with a kid who had two Techniques decks, a mixer and some loud ass speakers. I amassed a huge collection of records and through some cringe-worthy experiences learned how to rock a party. I left that stuff behind for the most part when drawing took over my life. Listening to music is, of course, still a HUGE part of what makes me tick. And now I have Garage Band on my laptop which is like being a fat guy on free donut day.

NEXT WEEK: 1 Way Ticket Chapter 2 beginnings with the threat (and promise) of band groupies, and two friends go head-to-head.

New to 1 Way Ticket? Start from the beginning with Page 1

END CHAPTER 1: Continue to Chapter 2 (Page 8)
This ends chapter 1 of Dan and I’s guitar epic. The characters have taken their places, and the stage is being set-up. The band and the extended family known as the Special Effects will be put through the paces in the coming weeks and months, and we hope you’ll stay with us for the adventures.

Next week we’ll be taking a break from the comics to talk about the comics via an interview as conversation between Dan and I. We’ll also show off some production sketches for the series. Chapter 2 begins in 2 weeks. But next week is one not to be missed!

New to 1 Way Ticket? Start from the beginning: Page 1>

Continue on to Page 7
1 Way Ticket is Chris Arrant / Daniel Warner

New to 1 Way Ticket Start from the beginning: Page 1,
Continue on to Page 6
1 Way Ticket is Chris Arrant / Daniel Warner