Piece of Cake

...Ho bloody ho.

I got an email from Matt Craig, West Midlands comic dynamo, before Christmas asking if I'd be up for entering the Eagle Intiative comic competition, which closed yesterday. He was drafting a story when he was taken ill rather dramatically (hope you're still recovering well, Matt) and told to rest up.

The idea of entering had rather struck me, though, so I wondered if I couldn't set about writing a story of my own which I could then draw up. The short version is that I could and I did, the long version is that from the first scratchings of an idea to inserting the final speech bubble on GIMP took over a month of long hours. I dithered over whether I could get an action sequence into one page or would have to stretch it out over two, and I'm glad I managed to keep it to one because I was working up until Saturday night and wouldn't have fancied having to complete a whole extra page with the Monday deadline looming.

Anyway. Is it the Very Best that I can do? I tend not to think anything I do is quite as good as it should be, but I think it's about as good as I could get after giving myself a rather squeaky deadline. From what I can gather, something like half the population of the planet has entered, so I'm not holding my breath waiting for the Winner's cheque to plop through the letterbox, but stuff it - I wrote it, I drew it, I lettered it, I learned some things, and I finished it to the dealine.

So that's why it's been nothing but an extended musical interlude for weeks on end.

Anyway, it's called 'A Piece of Cake.' A few random panels to meet Rosie:

(I should say, before it goes all Richard Keys, the disparaging 'just a girl' remark in the first panel is not editorial, and indeed its disproving is part of the story.)