These are the original roughs to Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, April 1989). These were penciled on 8 1/2" x 11" bond paper, then blown up on a photocopier and light-tabled (traced) onto Bristol board for lettering and inking. (All the images here are scanned from the original small roughs except the front and back cover.
As can be seen, the original title I had in mind was The Original Golden Age Megaton Man #1, but I decided to go with the presumably more commercial title and a logo resembling a certain famous brand designed by Jim Steranko. Since this was the fourteenth Megaton Man comic book, I would have preferred calling it Megaton Man #14, but that numbering system was blown when the publisher crammed its "new #1" edict down my throat with The Return of Megaton Man #1-#3 (#11-#13) a year or two before.
Also, the roughs indicate that I renumbered pages and moved scenes around at this stage. For example, while the rough for the printed inside front cover (page zero in the comic) is numbered page 1 on the rough, and many of the splash pages are evenly number on their respective roughs, I clearly decided with 33 interior pages to start the story on the inside front cover and sacrifice big-reveal page turns. I also shifted scenes around; for example, the rough for page 8 was originally numbered page 3, meaning that at one point I thought to cut away from the Original Golden Age Megaton Man flanked with X+Thems splash that is page one in the printed comic straight to the scene in Ann Arbor.
There were a total of 35 pages of art, including the front and back covers, out of 36.
Totally awesome to se the process!!!
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