“Striking Sparks” — Page Thirty-Seven
And another scorching scene! Except, this is, y’know, pyro-porn as opposed to our lovely lab geek. Marissa will be back soon, never fear, and don’t forget she’s this month’s TWC vote incentive up there to the left. (Unless you are reading this from the future, dredging back through the archives. And hey, if you are, how’d the Ebola thing turn out? Everyone okay?)
(No answer. Goddamn zombies.)
More below!
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Bobservations
Hot In The City
Woo hoo! Setting fire to City Hall required shooting some new fire stuff, since the angular shape of the building required billows of flame with squared-off bases, and they needed to be burns rather than explosions this time.
So Max and I had a certain amount of going back-and-forth on this page. He’d send over loose roughs, and I’d shoot stuff for it. Then he’d send slightly tighter roughs, and I’d stick the new effects all over them, with the fire and smoke positioned as carefully as possible in a big stack of Photoshop layers. Then I’d send the whole pile back to him, so he would know what actually needed to be locked down and inked and what was going to be covered up with smoke and immolation.
And then he’d start working his magic with colors and shading and highlights and pixie dust to create this final page.
Turns out it was a good thing we’d gone on that field trip to City Hall. Originally, when I’d researched the place, I’d assumed it did not have any fire sprinklers. It’s an old building, a government building, and as such, it is actually exempt from being retrofitted with fire sprinklers. Apparently whenever a law requiring certain building codes gets passed, government buildings are almost always exempted. The Wikipedia article claims this is both to prevent corruption and because of budget issues.
However, when we went through the building, we noticed it had been retrofitted with fire sprinklers. One assumes that either Los Angeles had the cash that year or they just decided not to be completely stupid about safety. Well, this meant changing the script so that the pipes were damaged by the crash, and throwing in some supporting water spray in the second panel of page 32. It’s these little things.
But fire’s more fun. The ledge effects were a tablespoon of DetFilms #2 powder in a six-inch length of angle iron used as a trough. As so:
If you happen to get off on billowing crimson flame detail (that would be me, yes) you can click that picture for a larger image. But if you prefer your redheads a bit more buxom — well, that TWC button’s right up there in the northwest quadrant. Go get your Marissa fix!
— Bob out
PS: don’t forget to order your Owl book! ————————————–>
Artist’s Notes:
Dad’s giving me too much credit; he left out the final steps in our creative process:
1. Gleefully slapping generous amounts of word balloonage all over my artwork, being sure to obscure every painstaking detail
2. Blogging extensively about his arduous role in our efforts
Ah, teamwork!
-Max
Just started reading the comic, and I like what I see.
Don’t worry Max, the page looks awesome, even with all the word balloons. Must be all the setting stuff on fire.
Welcome balthazar! Glad you like the comic!
I work for the state of Oregon, and I’ve never heard of any law against retrofitting a building for safety. In fact, whenever a safety hazard is identified, it’s often (but not always) prioritized immediately.
Nobody wants another Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
Not a law against it; an exemption from the law that requires it. This is apparently SOP. Government buildings are almost always exempt from whatever laws are passed regarding codes, etc. Just Google “government building exempt” to turn up all sorts of articles on the practice. Doesn’t mean they can’t do it; they’re simply exempt from being required to do it.
No biggie — we adapted the comic to handle it anyway.
Oh, I believe you, I’m just perplexed. Mostly because I’m the safety officer for the house I work at. I’m with DHS’ Stabilization and Crisis Unit as a direct caregiver in the mental health field. I was also “sidemoted” (like a promotion, only with no extra benefits besides an extra hour of optional overtime, plus a heap of extra responsibilities) to the position of safety officer.
Recently the safety manager for our agency told me that all homes are required to hang our fire extinguishers on the walls. Why? Because… I don’t really know why, but I was told we had to do it. I literally hung our extinguishers an inch or two up from the counters where they were already sitting. Some of the extinguishers are hung so you could barely squeeze a tissue box under them, but hey, now they’re up to code.
But it was a pain in the ass trying to get the spacers to fit in the wall without bending them. If I work at a government building, and it’s exempt from these codes, then why the heck did I have to go through all that trouble? ಠ_ಠ
And boom!
Primary Weapon:
Inspection Report Portal
Automated Sprinkler & Alarm Reports Between Contractors & AHJ’s
😀
Google loves us and pays attention to what we do. 🙂
I always figure that even if the government routinely exempts itself from its own regulation, there’s a certain amount of CYA, especially if they are afraid of being sued. (“You mean in a home for mentally disabled people, highly-compressed canister fire extinguishers were just sitting on the counter where they could be knocked over and damaged or moved and/or otherwise unavailable in event of catastophe?”) Note: I’m well aware that extinguishers are tough and heavy (I use old ones for effects purposes) I’m just quoting the potential newspaper article if something went wrong.
There is also the possibility that some high-ranking idiot knocked one over while getting coffee and it landed on his toe, so he threw a massive tantrum about it and thus, now they all need to be securely mounted on the wall.
Or something bad actually happened somewhere and it is CYA time: “In light of this recent tragedy, I have directed that all…”
Actually, I like the wall mounts. It will no doubt astonish you to learn (hah!) that I have extinguishers all over the place myself and the wall mounts give me more counter space.
So more work for you, I’m afraid, but I bet it makes some bureaucrat happy that things look all tidy and official now. Job well done!
Ha! Thanks Bob. And yeah, I’ll confess more than half of what I do is CYA. Incidents and human error are inevitable. This is especially true when caring for the needs of individuals with maladaptive behavior. The criticism we receive when targeted behaviors occur in public rolls off our backs, because receiving flack for that is better than having our funding cut.
“Why is this behavior home receiving ‘X’ amount of money?! All their residents are perfectly sane!”
But I digress. The reason I love my extra responsibilities as safety officer is because I have a knack for identifying potential hazards. So since I’m the one marking these things down, logically I won’t be held responsible when an investigation is opens up.
“Hey, it’s not my fault our client got hold of a (redacted). I’ve been on everyone’s case for months that the (redacted) hasn’t been secure!”
So you know it: CYA ^_~♡
Also, licensing swung by yesterday. Our site managers are always super paranoid about having any of the homes shutdown for any reason: missing documentation, lightbulb out, or anything out of the ordinary. So that’s something.
I’m trying to figure how this ties in with Max and company. If the teleporter could be used to save those people; it would make sense, but they’d just arrive ‘in safety’ dead. That wouldn’t be much help.
The only thing I can figure is a certain good looking police detective will be at the scene, Max will ‘happen by’, and the detective will recognize him from the tapes.
Guess we’ll find out.
When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, space and time are the same thing….
LIKE
Stay tuned!
Well, I do hope we don’t get all space and time with it, cause time travel causes it’s own set of issues. paradox and all. However, as someone who doesnt need to breath, and can pop in and out, he’d be great for teleporting in with knowledge to impart of where to go to be saved, then pop out and report to fire department people who’s where and whats what.
He can bring escape gear so long as they are finished using it in 3 min.
Wait, is that the Louisiana State Building?
Hah! A quick image search shows the Louisiana State Capitol Building and Los Angeles City Hall are indeed quite similar in structure. However ours is based on LA City Hall. (“Based on” as in “we reserve the right to make things different as if required for drama”)(also known as “the rule of cool.”)
Or otherwise known as “never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
Much the same way that the Arkansas Capitol Building in Little Rock is an almost exact replica of the US Capitol Building. I believe it has even been used in a movie or two as the US Capitol.
As is the Washington State Capitol Building. 🙂
If you happen to look up the Nebraska State Capital, it’s also a very similar design.
I read that as 9-1-1, I make my own jokes.
Seeing those three guys in the third panel reminds me of the Rescue Heroes action toy figurines.