JL8 #15 - Creator Commentary

JL8 #15 by Yale Stewart

Originally published on February 13th, 2012

This is probably the second (by which I mean chronological) JL8 to really take off. Looking at it on Tumblr, the preceding installments averaged about 600 engagements, where this one got nearly 3,000. It was pretty exciting.

Personally, I love stuff like this: characterization without any dialogue whatsoever. It'd be really easy to just give each character a generic book leading up to the punchline of Bruce, but why not explore the "space" a little bit?

Diana's reading "Myths & Heroes," pretty self-explanatory and not exceptionally clever, but it works.

Karen's immersed in a book all about ponies, which is short-hand coding for the fact that she's a girly-girl, since this is only strip #15 and she hasn't really been explored that much. You can't really see it, but she's also blowing a bubblegum bubble, again coding for girly-girl pseudo-airhead. The girly-girl stuff is all set-up because I wanted to show that just because someone likes somewhat stereotypical/generic things doesn't mean they're a bad or worthless person, which comes to a bit of a head in Karen's date with Bruce.

Barry's in a giant beanbag--which felt comedically appropriate--reading a Calvin & Hobbes collection (the only one reading comics, I might add).

J'onn reads Sherlock Holmes, another nod to the "Martian Manhunter" title, and not only is Hal reading a book about outer space, but he's excitedly talking to J'onn about it, despite J'onn trying to read his own book. A little portrayal of Hal being a little self-centered, which I knew I wanted to work into the story.

Clark reads Hop-A-Long Frog, which is a nod to "Arthur." I also thought having him float was a cute touch.

And finally, Bruce reads The Art of War. Frankly, it's a fairly obvious punchline, but it works. 

It's a good strip and one I'm still proud of. It even became the foundation for the later "READ" print, which is one of my all-time best sellers. That came about because I was worried about selling prints of the actual comic, so I redrew it as a single illustration. But that's a whole other story.

That's all I've got for this one. I hope you enjoyed! Talk to you next time. :)

-Yale