Usually when I write a HEAT page, I’ll write out all of the dialogue and, by the time the script is printed out so I can start drawing pages, it’s pretty much finalized. Minor tweaks while I’m drawing are fairly common (splitting lines or small additions or deletions), but for the most part the lines I wrote in the script are the ones you read in the comic. When I wrote this page I couldn’t come up with a line I was happy with for Mad Doc Crockett, so I just wrote that he shouted obscenities and figured I’d think of something later. And then I kept on writing and forgot about it completely until the blank page was sitting on my desk next to the script and I realized I didn’t have a line there. I again tried to come up with something funny and terrible that he could yell, and again, nothing. Then a light bulb went off in my head and I took it in a kind of bizarre, abstract direction, which you’ve just read the results of.
On Saturday: The run-in continues!
So much funnier than actual obscenities! Make it a running gag.
I love how Dick is coming over the railing in the last panel.
Thanks, Matt!