Our eighteenth strip strips Jack.
FAN FACT
The wormaid’s bikini is made from armadillo shells à la Ariel and her clamshell bikini.
Our seventeenth strip is a special one for the 4th of July.
FUN FACT
Some of the quidditch players were layered behind the fireworks to give the appearance that they were flying through the explosions.
Our sixteenth strip introduces a new character who will become our “Sith”.
FUN FACT
Doug actually came up with the idea to have a “Sith” character. After I showed him the first “Jedi/Wizard” concept, he suggested a spin-off series that followed the Jedi as they fight this Sith character. The spin-off never happened, but the characters remained in Thornsaddle.
Our fifteenth strip continues the Jedi/Wizard storyline with lightsaber wands!
FUN FACT
I had been stuck with the problem of how to introduce our Sith character and the lightsabers. Doug came up with a strip that would just introduce the lightsabers, leaving the Sith for the next strip. He wrote the first three panels and left the punchline up to me. I came up with three alternatives and he picked the third one. Here are the other two.
Alternate 4th Panel #1
DOUG: Ummm….
MIKE: Alright Leia…you want to give it another try?
Alternate 4th Panel #2
MIKE: Your boyfriend will be very proud.
DOUG (with a defeated look): Shut up.
Our fourteenth strip imagines what it must have been like to invent polyjuice potion.
FUN FACT
As you can see above, Doug put together much more of the background than we end up seeing in the strip. He does this frequently.
(Source: Thornsaddle.com)
Our thirteenth strip is about having a good time :)
FUN FACT (CONFESSIONS EDITION)
When Doug sent me the panels for this one, he suggested that it could work without dialogue. I agreed, and for a few days I wrestled with whether or not to include the song they sing. Obviously I put it in, but now that I look back on it I wish I hadn’t. I mean, I think it works either way, but it would have been cool to do something a bit different.
Our twelfth strip shows off our love for Star Wars.
FUN FACT
Those two wizards trying to become Jedi…yeah, that’s Doug and me. Literally they are named Doug and Mike. Although, we never refer to them by name. We just call them Jedi.
Our eleventh strip was arguably our most popular one. People just love that horse.
FUN FACT
The professor’s name (Butch McMann) came from a friend of mine who was trying to come up with the most masculine name for herself. This was way before Thornsaddle was even an idea. I liked the name so much that I remembered it and eventually stole lovingly gave it to the Professor of Magical Creatures.
Our tenth strip deals with the dangers of apparating that no one seems to care enough about.
FUN FACT
Sometimes I send Doug a script that isn’t polished, but contains the basics of what it eventually needs to be. Information like the setting, who is talking, and what they are doing. So Doug sent me the panels based on my “first draft” and then I changed the dialogue once I needed to put the strip together. For fun, here is the original script:
PANEL 1
A bunch of students are lined up shoulder to shoulder on one side of a big room. A teacher is pacing back and forth, talking to them.
PROF: Okay. So here goes apparating attempt number one. Now, some of you will disappear and then reappear on the other side of the room. You might also be missing pieces of your body when you reappear.
PANEL 2
A student leans forward and voices a concern. The professor and the student are in profile (with the student on the left), talking to each other. The professor is very “matter of fact” about the whole thing. A bit snobby.
STUDENT: Pieces? As in “more than one”.
PROF: Not in every case. Sometimes it’s only one finger.
PANEL 3
The student starts to leave.
STUDENT: Yeah, I think I’m fine with just walking.
Our ninth strip introduces the ghost town of Rattlecrow.
FAN FACT
Guess who read a bunch of lettering articles before doing this strip?? This guy!! I’m posting the links for them below. They were incredibly helpful and interesting.
http://www.balloontales.com/tips/arrangement/index.html
Our eighth strip is another one in a long line of “quidditch is dangerous” strips.
FUN FACT
It’s impossible to see at this size, but Jack is wearing a “Bunyan Oxen” quidditch jersey. Doug puts in a lot of these “hidden art” goodies that are perfectly viewable at the size he draws them which is 2000 x 2000 pixels. But when I shrink the comic down to 925 pixels wide, those details get lost.
Our seventh strip shows how the wizarding world is just a little bit different.
FUN FACT
This is the first strip we created with our more streamlined system of Doug sending me panels and me arranging and lettering them. The word balloons were created in Photoshop because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Thankfully it only takes me two issues to discover the power of Illustrator.
WHOOPS! I accidentally scheduled this one out of order. Anyway, here’s our third comic :)
In this strip we introduce another character, Betsy.
FUN FACT
Most of our characters have names, even if we never say them in the comic.
Our sixth strip is actually the first Thornsaddle strip I wrote. In fact, it wasn’t really a “Thornsaddle” strip yet. I just thought that it was a funny idea. Eventually the idea evolved into placing it into an American wizarding school. I sent the script to Doug, who expressed interest in the project, and he sent me this. Notice the little sound effects for the cell phone. Wonderful.
FUN FACT
Like all the strips so far this one was written by me, but it was drawn, colored, lettered, and arranged by Doug. That didn’t last though. How it would work is I’d send Doug a script and he’d send me a comic completely put together. Unfortunately, I would constantly ask Doug to add/remove/change words or punctuation. And that wasn’t really a good use of his time. So for the future strips we decided that he would just send me the art, and I would letter and arrange it into a comic strip. That’s why you’ll see the lettering and word balloons evolve (hopefully for the better) in the coming strips.
Our fifth strip contains the first drawing of Tom, the student with the glasses. I liked his look so much that I made him Jack’s best friend.
FUN FACT #1
This strip was created before the final Thornsaddle crest, the symbol you see on all of the banners, was created. Originally it was a crude drawing (lol, sorry Doug). But he translated it into the much nicer crest we have now and I went in and replaced them with the newer one.
FUN FACT #2
The punchline was taken from the film Life of Brian.
