The Secrets to Building A Better Gingerbread Golem

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Issue One, Page Fourteen

This week’s post continues my From The Archives series, where I revisit one of my earlier pages and provide some insight on its creation. I’m going in chronological order, so that those of you who have just discovered the comic can get caught up!

---

---

This page is the big reveal of the Gingerbread Golem!

"SWEET MOTHER MACHREE!"

When I was trying to work out what to have the security guard say, I wanted something more interesting than "AAAAH!" The phrase above entered my head. I think it was probably something I heard the character of Chief O'Hara say in the 1966 Batman TV show, which I cite regularly as an influence on Steamroller Man! O'Hara was played by the American character actor Stafford Repp, as a somewhat clichéd Irish stereotype - hence the catchphrase. Mother Machree is an Irish-American song which (according to Wikipedia) dates back to a 1910 stage musical called Barry of Ballymoore. More recently it was featured in the Martin Scorsese film, The Departed.

---

This page was another that I revised in 2022 for the print edition of Steamroller Man #1. Here’s the original, drawn and published online in 2018:

In the three years between the pages, I had learned a lot more about comic-making, composing images, drawing my characters, and how to use my primary comic-making tool, Clip Studio Paint, more effectively. Simply put, the practice of working on the comic for an hour or so every day helped me get better at it!

I had done a lot of work, revising the pages preceding this one, in order to avoid showing the Golem’s final form until this page. So, for his big reveal here, it was important to make some changes that would dial up the drama and excitement of the original image.

I wanted the new page to look more dynamic, so my first change was to tilt the horizon. That one simple change can instantly make an image more dynamic. It makes all the lines that were straight horizontals and verticals into diagonals, giving the viewer the feeling that they are being tipped over, or in motion!

Another choice I made was a no-brainer - making the Golem BIGGER in the panel. In the original, he and the security guard are about the same size. As I drew more pages of the comic between 2018 and 2022, I worked out that Steamroller Man was about 7 feet tall, and since he and the Golem were going to fight eventually, I wanted the Golem to be at least 8 feet tall, to look like he would be a definite physical threat to our hero. Also, making him bigger on the page brought him closer to the reader and just made for a more dramatic image! (This change probably wouldn’t have been necessary if I had bothered to make model sheets or designs of my characters before drawing them on the page, but… oh well.)

I also chose to have him cropped by the edge of the panel a little, on his right foot. This makes it look like he’s so big, he can’t even fit in the panel! If the panel is our camera, hopefully the image has more of the feel of a photo snapped in the middle of the action, rather than the original, that looks more like the Golem stood there posing for the photo.

---

You can imagine the photographer of the revised image backing up as he snapped the picture - “AAAAH! RUUUNNN!” as opposed to the first version, which is more like “Just hold it right there, aaaaand…” CLICK!

---

I also had discovered a real fondness for drawing rubble and debris in the four years between these pages, and so I had a ball adding some of that stuff to the new image, helping it to feel more chaotic and destructive, along with some dust clouds and even more shards of broken glass!

Lastly, the Golem himself underwent some changes. I thought it would be funny and slightly unnerving if, in this reveal, we first saw the Golem smiling while he wreaked havoc. I had also gradually worked out something of a formula for drawing him, using specific brushes for the texture of his upper body, both in light and in shadow, as well as the way I approached drawing the blocky structure of his anatomy.

It all made for a better-looking Gingerbread Golem, if you ask me - but I’m biased, of course!

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll find the pencils for different versions of this page, below (behind?) the paywall! If you’re not a paid subscriber, thanks for reading and following my work, liking my posts and subscribing to this newsletter! More to come, next week!

Keep Rolling!

Matt