It’s the secondary and tertiary characters that can make all the difference between a good story and a mediocre one. How many times haves you read a comic or watched a cartoon and all the supporting characters appear to be spit out of from the same mold? Sometimes it’s a matter time — there is no wand that can be waved to make new characters simply appear, they need to be developed. Perhaps I spend too much time on that at times, but I’d like to believe it pays off. This is Sergeant Slag, who’s pretty much a one-dimensional character: he doesn’t like Roscoe’s kind. He’s a first class FURC-hater. And as haters tend to be, he’s rather myopic — he allows his prejudices to keep him from finding the the true criminals.
I have several pages of sketches of some sort of sergeant to accompany Detective Penski. The Penski character was already gruff, the sergeant had to be more of an ignorant clod. During this period, I experimented with all sizes, races, and even gender. This led me to think about their captain, who would eventually appear on the page as a politically savvy woman. She would have to be smart in order to become a captain — someone who was considering all the angles and ramifications.
Roscoe’s bike is a constantly evolving vehicle — perhaps like the Batmobile, with many iterations. I’m always trying to justify its design, as if it would ever actually fly. So I work with it for a while and think, jeesh, that thing would never get off the ground, or how does it really do this or that? Stay tuned.
