The strip we are talking about here is #1021 from "The Head Girls", and the panel is the last one in that strip.
This is what the strip usually looks like. (Sans text, since it's taken from co-production files.)
But when we looked at the original art, we saw that there was something "wrong" with he last panel.
Apparently Holdaway must have felt the composition in the panel was wrong. He then made a stat to enlarge the woman and pasted it on the original art.(You can see traces of the edge of the stat on the published strip. Right in front of the womans face.) The stat then fell off at one point or another, and left us with the original image.
What we should have done was probably to restore the image to Holdaways intended version, but it was forgotten.
Anyway, we hope you don't mind us bringing you a previously unseen version of a Holdaway panel instead. ;)
To make it easier for you to compare here are the two panels side by side. Enjoy!
It should be noted that the original art was provided by Peter Hartung. If you want to own your own piece of original Jim Holdaway Modesty Blaise art, please check out his online gallery: www.comicart.dk
He's got some really nice ones for sale.
Edit: In fact, he's got this very strip up for grabs at the moment!
Amazing. You can even see the glue residue.
ReplyDeleteThe composition in the first panel is odd, too. The speaker (back of his head only) is almost covered by his dialogue and the window leaves a huge hole in the middle of the panel. Was the dialogue pasted over the finished art, as was done on the Romero strips? Hard to believe Holdaway would deliberately lay the panel out this way.
ReplyDeleteThe lettering was done straight on the original artboard.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I would guess Holdaway had nothing to do with the placement of the balloons.
ReplyDelete