My filler plan involves showing the first piece of Stapler artwork I ever made… just about 10 years ago! It all came from me playing with a real life stapler, opening the hinge so I could swing it around, and thinking I’d jokingly draw a hero that used that as a weapon. It all grew from there.
I thought that first piece of artwork showed The Stapler using a weapon similar to “Comic 022: Weapon Get (Part 5)”, but I seem to have confused my memories and now I see that he’s not wielding any such weapon. Weird! Oh well, enjoy!
Other than the general idea of the thrusters that go around his ankles, he’s pretty different looking. And those thrusters haven’t even really been used in the comic!
As you can see, the accent in his last name used to be over the E so it would be pronounced “Stay-play”, but I thought that sounded dumb and moved the accent to the A. Now it’s pronounced “Stah-pull”.
This seemed a lot more interesting when I was scripting it out. Not a shot at the artist at all… more at myself. Didn’t quite realize how much this would look like needless filler. But that’s what it is! I probably could have shoehorned this entire comic into one or two panels in the last comic. Oh well! I never claimed to be a master storyteller.
Gotta love how villains have that dramatic impossible shadow to them when they aren’t ready to reveal themselves. Maybe if they just never openly revealed themselves they could commit a lot more crime just sneaking around all blanketed in shadow.
Also I’m fully aware of the discrepancies between this shot of the house and the last time you saw it in an aerial view (008). The artist drew it differently and I didn’t catch it until after I had already drawn the thing so I just went with it.
I’ve been told by a couple people that it’s not perfectly clear what is happening in the final panel. So let me kill any chance of it being funny by explaining it: he’s desperately jamming whatever he can get his hands on into his clothes in order to steal them. He is a horrendous kleptomaniac.
If you go back and look at the first comic, you can see I added color. It took forever and I really don’t think it makes it look all that much better. So instead of redoing every comic in color and making any new ones in color as well, I think I’m going to to take the opposite approach and go for a simpler 6 tone black and white comic. I’m pretty happy with it overall, but I may continue to tweak my style as the comic goes on. Only time will tell!
The Stupendous Stapler 