I can’t remember exactly in what order things started to come together, but it all just started falling into place. I began doing little storyboard panels as I saw them in my head – sometimes out of order or not relevant to the previous panel. Looking back, this was probably not the best way to approach the comic, but it was all still pretty new to me and I was learning as a went. Each time I had an idea, I would quickly sketch out the panel then move onto the next one. Before I knew it, I would have all these different illustrations in little boxes, basically with no rhyme or reason – but began to tell some kind of visual story.
I knew I wanted to begin the comic with the main character sleeping. I liked the idea of starting off the comic in a place of calm, and then quickly escalating it to world of chaos as the issue rolled out. A little side note, Daniel’s room was based on my bedroom apartment in Boston. I liked the idea of putting Daniel in a bedroom with bared windows. It created the atmosphere of almost being in a cell, which is how I felt sometimes in my little bedroom apartment in the city. There would be this orange light that would spill in from the streetlights above, that would create a barred effect of light across the wall.
Capo is of course based on my own little black cat, Neo. In the third panel Capo is licking Daniel awake, which is something Neo just began to do on a consistent basis in the mornings before I went to work – I figured it would be a cute little addition to the comic. I really wanted Dan to have a cat. I thought it would be interesting to have a person with no real friends, lives alone, and only has his cat to confide in. I think isolation can be a very dangerous thing mentally, which made Daniel the perfect candidate to become the Landscaper.
I didn’t have an dialogue at this stage, and the story wasn’t really flushed out yet, but I knew the images I wanted to get across – so I continued to draw individual panels. I wanted the character to watch the morning news and to hear about an attack that had taken place the night before. This news broadcast would foreshadow events to come in the issue, but also would give Daniel a particular mind set for the rest of the day. Of course I wanted an attractive news reader – Lydia, which was initially supposed to be a potential love interest for the character of Dan, but it never came to fruition in this issue.
Here’s an example of some of the first panels I drew for the LS issue 1.
