20100120 (2) – Initial assembly from strips 125 – 128.

20100126 (4) – Rewritten, re-lettered. Flows quite a bit better now, I think. Also, stripped the Highmark logo off of Fifth Avenue Place in panel eleven – it wasn’t there in 1997. UPMC getting ugly all over the USX also complicates the project – though that’s something I can work around later. With any luck I’ll get the major photo shoots for DCR.3 and DCR.4 done this spring and summer – some amount of my existing stock should work, though I’d prefer to do a Mount Washington shoot on a clear day.

In addition to cleaning up panel eleven, panels three through ten have been replaced. I love the aerial, I’ll miss the aerial, the aerial rocks and it’s period and despite being at least 10 years old, I can’t in good conscience allow myself to use it in the comic. I’ve spent a good-sized portion of the past year or two purging material that isn’t Definitely Mine (or Definitely Useable) from ATC… after I’ve finished with DCR.1b, I’ll finally be able to move forward knowing that pass or fail, win or lose, it’s mine. All mine.

DCR, anyway – I spent some time during the wrap of the first edition of The Dualist making sure all acquired assets were useable, though it’s a check I should probably run again before I commit anything to paper.

Or commit myself – it ultimately depends on rather I rolled snake-eyes or box cars the last time I researched the matter.

The original bits are preserved in the photoshop file – if I ever get the usage thing figured out to my satisfaction I may roll back the visuals to the previous edition. In the process of getting this page tweaked to my satisfaction, I’ve blown almost my entire stash of viable downtown shots – I’ll need to head out and pick up some more in the spring.

20101225 – Original strip metadata:

Strip 125, 20080502 –

For filing purposes, this is “operative” instead of “the operative,” as MT poops giant bloody bricks when it comes to spaces in category names.

I’ve been sitting on this for nearly two weeks – I held off on posting so that DCR would resume as a spurt of more-or-less daily comics for a couple of weeks. At this point there should be a total of sixteen before things get put on hold again while I finish the current chapter of The Dualist.

New chapter, new font*, new aspect ratio. This one ought to be shorter than the last one – dcr.1 was expected to be around 22 pages and wound up being 28. That’s short for ATC standards, but it’s long for what I’m trying to do here – dcr.2 (“the operative,” after the Cabaret Voltaire song) should hopefully be 22-24, with the first four pages over the next few weeks and the rest following – hopefully – later this summer.

To commemorate the changeover from dcr.1 to dcr.2, I’ve changed the “playlists” graphic in the local archive root from the original design that went up with the site launch a million years ago to something a bit better.

* Okay, so it’s not a new font. It’s the same font I use for ATC and it’s the font I converted DCR.1 to when I was putting it together to post on the ATC site. Moving forward, everything is now nice and consistent. Scary, innit?

Strip 126, 20080505 –

The funky thing about strips being cached up to the 14th? Forgetting to post ’em!

I’d planned for this page to be one huge image of downtown, and had a really great one my friend Martin took from a B-17. Thing is, it has the new hideous Godzilla Jump Ramp convention center. It’s ass ugly in that “ugly is the new black” style of architecture, so I’d plotted for some serious photoshop or dialogue positioning.

Then I stumbled onto a Betacam SP tape loaded with about 50 minutes of arial footage. Footage from roughly 1999, featuring too much of Three Rivers Stadium, lots of tunnels, totally avoiding the North Side (except for the stadium), and having lots and lots of useful establishing shots. It’s period, it’s almost perfect, and I’ll be using it throughout the rest of the book.

Strip 127, 20080506 –

While ATC’s methodology is “finish and post,” DCR’s seems to be “finish and forget.”

For a couple of hours a bit of the usual post-hangover emoing was pooing all over the metadata for this comic. Then I remembered that there’s more than enough of that all over both of my comic sites…. and who needs MORE?

Not I, surely!

Strip 128, 20080507 –

Words go here, or so I’ve heard. I’d have some, but I’m busy playing with my new toy, and my new game.

This being the ultimate reason for caching the strips. More on both after I’ve had time to build an opinion.

Fun fact: though it isn’t in the “draft” strips deployed to this site, there’s also a setting/year title card on the first full page of DCR.1. Fear the consistency.

Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Changed the instructor’s name in panel five, reflecting a continuity change made during the mastering of Whitehouse.

2016.12.31 – Setting post date to the metadata date of the last strip of the page, 2008.05.07.