Taki Workplace BURGLARY

Gift Art Comic Strip - Pencil & Paper - 10 Panels

Taki's at work and leaves the Register to go take out the trash to the dumpster...and she gets more than she bargained for when she clocked in that day!!!

Disclaimer: I want to make it VERY clear that I hope that this kind of scenario never EVER happens for real to Jenna nor anyone else, especially those of you out there that work some lonely night shifts in less-than-safe locales.

"Outside the back door, in front of the dumpster, stands two well muscled ski-masked men. Taki immediately drops the trash bag and pulls out her Pepper Spray. 'STAY BACK' she says loudly, fighting back the fear. As the two men hold their position, Taki starts to back up closer to the door, when a third man grabs her from behind!!!

Taki struggles but the man is much stronger than her, and soon her arms are held behind her back and she can feel the coils of rope encircle her wrists. 'What are you going to do with me?' she pleads, but the rogue says in a low voice 'Quiet!' as she feels him knot the ropes tightly out of the reach of her fingers. He then forces a cloth between her teeth and knots that behind her head, effectively gagging her.

The underling runs up the boss. 'Boss, a customer walked in but we got her...what do we do?' Knowing that time is short, shorter still with this kind of complication, he says ' Put her with the Cashier. WE GOTTA GO!' The thugs put both the random customer and the cashier in the storage room and jump in their getaway car. Tires screeching, they are quickly out of sight with the money from the register and the 'hidden' safe.

Taki twists and turns her wrists but it's no good. Although only her wrists and ankles are tied, those jerks did a good job. She looks over at Teresa, who is trying to make progress with her knots but doesn't look like she is succeeding. Taki was sorry her friend picked the wrong time to visit her at work. 'Won't somebody please come in and find us?' she thought to herself."

It is always fun to do a comic strip work, but only halfway in does one realize how much more detail and effort is required to make it all work!

So here is what I did:

Panel-by-panel:

Panel 1 is Taki's standing pose with the trash bag.

Panel 2 is just a simple frontal view of two bad dudes.

Panel 3 is another simple (see a pattern here?) hand grasping pepper spray, although since I don't own pepper spray I used a reference for it.

Panel 4 is where things start getting more detailed - I am not a big fan of handgagging, but for a temporary way to surprise/subdue a damsel, it works. The idea here is that the guy behind Taki rushed up from behind quickly.

Panel 5 is my typical JC-style non-action action panel.

Panel 6 was a lot of fun because I like the helpless "arms drawn behind back arched" type pose.

Panel 7 is just a rehash of panel 6, only adding a gag - I took some creative liberty with the dude's height to make it work.

Panel 8 is a classic "bad guy discussion" deal, and I had a couple of references to draw upon.

As for Panel 9, don't shoot me, I can't draw cars! But I tried.

Panel 10, the finale, is where you get both damsels AND the detail. I didn't bother with backgrounds for the other panels because everything is drawn so small to fit on a single piece of paper that I didn't think it would have looked good for all the careful effort I would have had to put in.

As for you, fearthequietone a.k.a. Teresa, I hope you don't mind that I used you again in another DiD sketch!!!

Let me know what you all you folks think of this!!!

- JC

EDIT: I just couldn't let this one go without a few fixes: First of all, backgrounds for every panel (except Panel 5), and in Panel 6 I realized that I drew Taki's hand from the wrong side! I fixed that, and also adjusted her body, since her head looked a little small, and plus from what Jenna has told me she doesn't have as much "talent" as what I gave her in panel 6, so it should be more proportionate now. Panel 7 I figured I should close her eyes for more dramatic effect. And then a couple little fixes here and there.