The couple that montages together, stays together.
Page 28
Okay, I love these pages. They have their problems, mostly due to 2003 Tim being a dumb kid, but the indulgence in heist movie tropes here is delightful. (If I do say so myself.)
I can see more and more digital work creeping in because I'm not yet good at hiding it. Paige's belt buckle in panel 1 was celarly done in Illustrator. You can tell by the lack of character in the line work even more so than the perfection of the circle.
I love these next three panels and they're often the ones that come to mind when I think back on this story. It's a clever little layout and the way I left a halo around them with the zipatone dots is pretty cool and not an effect I think I used too many other places.
Who are they shooting at? Who cares. They're having fun and falling in love! Screw who ever is getting shot!
Page 29
Aw. You can tell Paige really likes Locke because she lets him push the button for their slo-mo back the explosion awesome walk-away. You may feel that bit is over used but create an action story of your own in a visual media and try NOT to use it. I dare you. It's TOO fun.
The line work in that explosion is a little TOO organic for my tastes but don't worry more stuff will blow up in this series and subsequent Tims will handle it better.
How can you tell this comic was written by a 23/24 year old dude? The characters are drinking jager bombs. Gross. I drank a TON of jager bombs at this age. Me and my buddies used to do Friday night bar crawls and do a jager bomb at every stop. And then get gyros at 2:00am. Just thinking about that probably took another year off my life. A lot of that post college boy life did inform Reckless Life though. I thought it was cool at the time. Now I find mostly adorable.
Page 30
Tim was raised in a house with very defined/traditional gender roles: the comic book page!
While I do love these pages I'd change this one. The girl is going shopping and the guy is playing cards and smoking a cigar! That's what girls and guys do! Says the 20-something dude raised in a super conservative/traditional household. It's fine for Locke but this feels very out of character for someone who has spent the entirety of this story in a grey turtleneck. 2003 Tim had lots to learn! (So does 2021 Tim but at least he knows it.)
Page 31
More very apparent Illustrator/Photoshop work on the dollar bills here. I get that one. Who wants to draw those details over and over again?
Speaking of not wanting to draw things I have never enjoyed drawing cars and am not very good at it as a result. This instance isn't horrible but any time I had to draw cars in perspective it got dicey. (Which is why the background cop cars are impossibly straight-on camera.)
NEXT WEEK: The best part of the Hallmark movie!