Metal Gear Crossing
made together with Mariel
first published 2005 in The Gamer's Quarter, issue 4
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I originally didn't intend on doing a comic for the fourth issue because mid-terms were coming and I wanted to focus on finishing work for that. However, Mariel kept harassing me to make a comic because she wanted to work on something so the weekend before the deadline, we buckled down and finished this monster in less than 48 hours. I really like the dynamic pairing of Otacon and Snake and the work they do in their UN funded anti-terrorist group Philantrophy. They have such interesting chemistry to work with that I thought it'd be fun to do a story with them. For a while I also wanted to do an Animal Crossing story but I didn't know from what angle to approach it with. In the end, I put the two together and it worked out wonderfully. I had originally intended for the story to be about 10 pages or so and dwell more about how Snake gets settled into village life by taking over the identity of the girl he killed, and the way he changes from fearing all the villagers and threatening to kill them to enjoying himself thoroughly and becoming a fashion expert/interior decorator. There wasn't any time or energy to go that far into developing Snake's character, so the story just ended up being about the murderous exploits of Snake. In order to get the comic done fast, I was laying out pages the second the ideas came to my head. After I finished a rough layout for a page, I'd immediately hand them off to Mariel who'd then go in and pencil it in with her sexy style. She really draws characters well and by working together, we were able to get from pencilling to inking pretty fast, giving us enough time to tone everything. It was my first time working like that so I was initially bothered that the finished version didn't look like something I'd have drawn, but it worked out in the end since we were finished in time. |
