Clark-Gibson 3rd Year Anniversary

Three years already! It's been fairly eventful since last year. There's been a jailbreak, an origin story, Clark cloned himself, Shogi got beat up twice, and we reached the 100 comic milestone!
Anyways, for the 3-year anniversary, along with Clark-Gibson Month, I'm just going to do something similar to last year's article. I really enjoyed making that one, and I wouldn't mind making this a tradition.
Without further ado, let's begin..

More Concept Art Found!

If you recall from last year, I talked about the Jupiter RPG, a video game idea that would eventually evolve into Clark-Gibson. In that article, I had to recreate the main because I thought I lost the original concept art, but as it turns out...



...I didn't! Near the start of the year, I had a big move to a new apartment, and I found this old notebook paper in an old folder, along with a lot of other old art!

As for this first page, the top shows the original main cast. I remembered them accurately, except for Jupiter-Gibson. Still wide-eyed, but not bulging from his head.
The large tentacle monster was the FINAL BOSS, a transformed Jupiter-Shogi, which eventually became current day Shogi. The guy with the crown who looks like J-Shogi... I'm not really sure! King of his moon? His dad? I can't remember.

Other than that, just some NPCs and enemies. Digging the guy with the hair. In the bottom right was the idea for the world map.

This page is a little more interesting! At the top, we have some bosses, a snail, a guy coming out of the ground, and very faintly in the top right, the fire guy from the previous page in a more monstrous form. You can even see J-Clark (Indigo) and J-Gibson fighting the ground guy. Also, the space ship that would've been used for traveling between planets.

The second half of the page shows J-Shogi's idle animation for battle, along with him blown to bits. I guess that would be after he got defeated as the final boss reverts back to normal.

At the very bottom lies the remnants of an entirely forgotten plotline! You see, one of the moons was to be under the control of an old-school biker gang known as the Land Sharks. On the right is just one of the grunts, the Piranhas. Then three higher officers of a Saw Shark, a Hammerhead, and a Barracuda. Below them is their leader, a scarred Great White.
I think these guys were the precursors to characters like Strength Deck and... uh.. well you'll see eventually ;).

And I had to do it:

Now onto Clark-Gibson Alpha! At the top here is the original character sheet. Last year, I excluded a character's name (Character E) due to spoilers. But as you can see now, that character's name is Grant. Now in hindsight, was this really much of spoiler? It's just a name after all. Well, probably not, but I still like to keep as much as I can hidden.

Below that is a larger-scale size chart with a few frog monsters, a trout(?), A-Clark's house (the tall one), and A-Gibson's house (the long one). Glad I changed the houses in the end, these ones are a little generic.

A few more sketches of the Alpha characters, along with some more sea monsters. I designed the sea monsters off of real-world sea life, but with more monstrous and exaggerated details. On the left is supposed to be a whale, while on the right is actually a squid, with hydra-like heads instead of tentacles. I really enjoyed drawing these beasts. Maybe I should bring them back.
Other than that, not much else to say here.

Ditto, but a few more interesting things to note. The three faces in a row near the top are actually Lobber, the final boss of Shield Redux! I must've still been developing it when I was designing Clark-Gibson.



Near the bottom-left is... THAT guy!? He was in some concept art from last year! Who was this Clark-looking guy!? Another long lost prototype? I honestly don't know.

And now onto to the modern era with another character sheet. One new face here is Grant. Yes, I came up with Grant three whole years ago, and have JUST gotten to him in the story! And those blacked-out characters? Same thing, but I haven't even reached them yet! Maybe next year...

I guess I was also still thinking about the Commoner at this time. I don't even know if I'll ever need them, but I'll keep that door open.

The last piece of concept art, showing Barrel, Lockstock and Mammon! Barrel and Lockstock were also early character designs, though I think they came a bit later. Barrel looks a little more top-heavy here, though. I tweaked his design a bit because he had the same body shape as Mammon, which is probably why Mammon is on this page.

Comic Rough Drafts and Commentary

There's been a lot more comics since last year, so I figure I'd give some more commentary. The last comic I looked at was #052, so starting from there...

#034: Morning, Gibson

PSYCH! We're actually going back to this comic because there were a few things I wanted to talk about.

For those of you who aren't North Americans, you may not be familiar with the tradition of a snipe hunt. Essentially, it's a joke used to mess with young kids. The design of the snipe here is based off a really weird lawn ornament a relative of mine had and called a "snipe".

One thing this comic brought up and has stuck in my mind is, "How much do Clark and Gibson know"? What I mean is, both characters show some form of naivety: Gibson comes from a pretty cozy upbringing, and Clark fell out of a tree and wandered about for a few years. The way I see it, Gibson is more book-smart, while Clark is more street-smart, hence why Clark would know about snipes.

But how exactly did Clark learn about this practical joke? Well, back when Clark wandered about Pome and Spur County, he met a sneaky, snake-like fellow named Surpentyn who tried to trick Clark using the exact same method. Clark eventually saw through Surpentyn's scheme, gave him a swift kick in the jaw, and would later use his experience to help Gibson. So yeah, that's my explanation.

#054: Officer Bubbles

The second comic of the Jailbreak storyline and the first appearance of Officer Bubbles. As mentioned last year, Bubbles was a character from the Jupiter RPG. I needed a policeman, and I thought Bubbles would be a good pick. Trapping things in his bubbly self fits well with his line of work.

When I started planning this story, I had to think about how to get Clark in trouble with the law. I eventually settled on some form of contraband that would also wrap around to save the gang in the end. At first, the contraband was Clark's weapons, most notably his bazooka. However, I couldn't think of a good way to have the weapons resolve the conflict aside from the obvious. In the end, a bootleg movie and an officer's hypocrisy won out.

#058: Festive Week '21

The yearly Festive Week comic, showing everyone's activities during the holidays. I actually drew the panels as I thought of them, and rearranged it later as I saw fit.

This comic was also the return of a few minor characters, most notably Mammon, who hasn't been seen since Comic #12 up until this point. Poor guy, spending Festive Week by himself. Maybe one day we'll get to see him again.

#060: The Rival's Reaction

Another favorite of mine solely for the expressions of both Cutlass and Gibson, along with the angles I drew Cutlass in. I don't think Cutlass has ever been as happy as the last panel since.

#066: Shogi's Car

Shogi being a shady conman, I figured the best place for him to live would be in his car. Back in the day, Shogi used it to drive around from county-to-county for his scams. Eventually, it ran out of gas in Goals County, and Shogi has been too cheap to get it filled. The car itself is based off of a classic Volkswagen Beetle.

While I was drawing the fifth panel, I originally drew it with six or seven tentacles coming out from the car until I remembered that Shogi only has four of 'em!

#073: Jailbreak

The titular comic of the Jailbreak storyline! While an important comic for setting up the second half, I made a pretty jarring error. In fifth panel, it shows Cutlass and Gibson approaching the back of the police station, as shown by the front sign peaking out from the other side, and soon entering the storage room. Now, take a look at the police station layout I had in my mind at the time:



As you can see, the storage room should be on the side of the station, not the back! This might've been kind of confusing. Sorry about that. Admittedly, I never really mapped out the building when I was writing this storyline, so this error was bound to happen. Another thing is the two Evidence/Property rooms. There was initially only supposed to be one room, but then I drew the door near both the front and the back of the hallway later on, so I decided to put two rooms to rectify this.
I think from now on, I'll try to map out important buildings.

#077: Warranty

Oh boy... another learning experience. So, when I wrote the outline for the Jailbreak story, I put down the following:

Gibson and Cutlass hide, then get spare when Bubbles leaves.

The "spare" would've been a spare key that the rescue team would've used to get Clark out of his cell. However, A) Why would the spare key been in the storage back room? and B) I thought it would be funnier to have Clark actually break himself out.

However, when I got to this point in the storyline, I realized something: Why in the world would Bubbles leave!? If there's an intruder in the police station, he wouldn't just leave after a brief look-around! I had to think up a reason quick, the comic was this week! Eventually, I settled on him getting distracted by a warranty for the vase.
Was this the best solution? Eh, probably not. Maybe a phone call would've made more sense? Regardless, it's what I came up with.

I will say that I'm going to make the best of this little mistake. That slip of paper might be relevant for later down the road...

#083: Film Buff

Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted the contraband that got Clark arrested to actually save him in the end. It's like a circle that wraps around. Or something.

In the second panel, you'll notice that Shogi's top hat turns back into his normal bowler hat with a little "POOF!". Shogi's hat IS pretty wierd. It holds things, it transforms, it sometimes floats above his head. I like portraying the hat as some whismical, magical object, but don't think too much about it. It just helps Shogi's "mysterious visitor" persona.

Also there's a human on the TV screen. Not really why I made it a human. Clark-Gibson isn't some post-apocalyptic, humans-were-once-around story or anything. I'm just gonna say it was a human-like actor. Maybe he has like wheels for feet or something.

#090: Dream Journal

This is a weird one. A week or so before this comic, I talked with a friend of mine. I told them how I was keeping a dream journal at the time, a dream journal which I haven't written in a while, and about my comic. They mentioned how Clark reminds them of Q*bert, an old arcade character. Those two things ended getting mixed into one comic.

I try not to do a lot of "referential humor" in my comics. I notice a lot of media nowadays relying on references to other media or whatever for entertainment, which I'm starting to get a little tired of.

#100: Clark Origins

THE BIG ONE! I HAD to talk about this comic.

Back when I thinking of ideas for storylines, I had an idea for an origin story of Clark and Gibson, and a story where Clark cloned himself. Since both sort of revolve around the creation of a "Clark", I decided to combine them together to create this neat two-parter storyline.

You'll notice in the top left, there's two panels of Clark approaching the beetle, which are copied in the long panel below. This comic was originally just going to have the standard grid format, but with more panels. However, this comic is special, so I began with the standard square panels, switched over to more dynamic panelling, and ending with a return to normalcy. It's like a bell curve. Or something.

This comic was the first drawn on graph paper. I just ran out of blank paper I'd been using, but I think the graph is an improvement. Helps me keeps sizes of stuff much more consistent.

As for Clark's origin itself, Clark's goal with being the deadliest man started when he was just a little grub. His small size meant he had to fight for survival, but as he grew more, he started having more fun taking down bigger and badder opponents. He put himself on a ladder of strength and wanted to keep going up!
But what about the Lucky Feather? His blood created it? How does THAT happen? Well, that'll be for another day, I suppose.

#107: No Name

There's actually two versions of this comic! The one on the left was the original, called Title Drop. It was just going to be Clark and Gibson introducing themselves with a handshake, with them saying "Clark... Gibson". A title drop.

But after I already drew the comic, a thought came into my head: Where did Clark get his name? Gibson makes sense since he has parents who named him, but Clark fell out of a tree! Why would he call himself "Clark"? So I redid the comic a bit, keeping a few of the panels and adding some new ones to make this an 8-paneler.

In the story, Gibson names Clark after the ficitious company, Billy Clark Camping Equipment. This company is actually named after the same person who I named Clark himself after: William Clark, a famous American explorer. To reiterate, I named Clark after William Clark, then named a company after William Clark, which is what Clark is named after in-universe. It's like a paradox. Or something.

If you're curious about where other characters got their names, here's a few: Gibson, Cutlass, Shogi, Erland, and Barrel and Lockstock.

#115: Cutlass's Bunker

Did it really take 115 comics just to finally show off the inside of Cutlass's place? I guess so. I definitely learned from the police station mistake, since I went and made a quick layout of the bunker before making the comic.

Speaking of Cutlass, on her character card, it says one of her hobbies is "Earth Science". This was a really early idea, and to be honest, I'm not really sure what I can do with this. I never thought of her as the scientist type, but moreseo like a "prepper". She lives in a bunker after all. I might update her character card one of these days.

This is one of the comics that is placed between the Origins and Grant storylines. I wasn't going to do anything special for these, but then I had a fun idea of showing the growth of the Grant tree over the following month.

#120: Bearing Fruit

And now we come to the last comic I want to talk about for now. The first appearance of Grant. Oh boy.
I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but Grant is probably one of the first characters I ever came up with for Clark-Gibson. As for what I have planned for him, you'll have to wait and see.
Clark and Grant are just hanging around for now, but their inevitable fight is soon approaching! Who will be the one to overcome themselves!?

Closing

And that wraps up this year's comics, along with Clark-Gibson Month. I just want to say thank you once again to everyone who's been reading Clark-Gibson, and participating in everything else I do on this goofy little site. It means a lot to me, and I'm glad I get to share my hobbies with you all.

The results of the survey's Character contest will be up soon! Definitely before the end of the month. Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey as well.
And with that, I bid you all farewell! Thanks!

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