Grizzly & The Bear Patrol #7 - Heart of Stone

[kybearfuzz]

It's taken nearly four months, but I finally got this issue done this afternoon. This one has a guest character based on bigsabu. Is he a hero or villain? You will have to read it to find out.

Normally, I wait until morning to post the issue, but I thought I would give the West Coast guys and East Coast night owls first dibs on this issue.

The cover was actually the last thing drawn and caused me the most trouble. I was just not getting any great cover ideas and this was the best I could come up with. I do like how it turned out. I guess now that this is done I can get to folding that mountain of clean laundry I've been neglecting. :D

There are 21 large graphic pages behind the cut, so it might take a while to load. They are all work-safe. There are some odds & ends comic notes at the very end.

• According to my notes, I started writing this story back on October 12, 2011. A big part of the delay has been the holidays. I have to admit that I had a lot of fun drawing this one.
  
  
• The character of Mandusa was one I drew a while back. He was a male Gorgon who turned his cubbish admirers into stone. I'd have posted it with the issue as a bonus poster, but it is definitely not-work-safe.
  
  
• Saber was originally called "Sabu" for bigsabu, but I thought he needed a superhero name. It is based on the idea of a saber-toothed tiger. I like the costume, but for some reason, it makes me think of a wrestling outfit. Not that it's a bad thing. :)
  
  
• This is the first issue without the entire team being involved. Sometimes it is rough to get six characters involved in the storyline, so I thought I would leave a couple of them out for different reasons. I picked to leave out Polar Bear and Center because they are not based on real friends of mine and I think the others enjoy seeing themselves in the book.
  
  
• Since I know you guys like the shirtless bears, I put Red Beard in a position where he'd need to teleport out of his costume. I thought it might be a good way to get him nearly nekkid AND have it be a fun plot point. And the ginger bears are always a crowd pleaser it seems. My only regret is that I had to draw in the red chest fur with Photoshop and it was too much work to add the leg hair too.
  
  
• I tried different angle views this time. I need to work on different page set-ups as there are some really cool page designs out there right now. I'm still the king of minimal backgrounds though.
  
  
• The next issue (whenever I get around to it) will probably be an installment set like the first three issues. This one was actually set up for installments, but once I got started inking, I felt the urge to keep going.

Any questions, comments or critiques, I welcome them all.

Comments

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Robert has very animated features and has very distinctive eyes and nose. His nose is broad, which I think is incredibly sexy.

Center is the bartender at the "On The Growl" bar. I've not really stated how many employees Grizzly has at the bar, but I'd say that while the bar is open, either he or Center is working. This isn't the first time he's been left out of the main story because of work really. He was only in the epilogue of issue #3 because he was working and had a date that night.

Half-naked professor bears are fun! (*wink*)