It is just not cricket...

That's because this next sports themed confrontation (following Montone and O'Neil hammering a Squash ball around a court) features Golf...

Why Golf? Well this seems to have a more obvious potential answer - it is the favoured sport of highly paid executives, hardly anyone can't have of heard of or experienced a boss at some point being "down the golf course"

If Outland could be said to have any particular allegorical message, it is very much about big corporations (with the given company name Con - am being an inverted shortened version of Amalgamation of Conglomerates) and corruption in those big companies all the way from the top...

A similar message first appeared in Ridley Scott's Alien with the company in question being more interested in getting a Alien than the crew surviving, Outland borrows more than a few cues from Alien, being equally "down and dirty"

But just how dirty will Outland get...? you know what to do, Tune in next week...

Stranglehold

So here we have it - Jaunty Jim - sorry I mean Yario has O'Neil firmly by the neck in the walk in freezer

- So obviously there must be something important in the fridge as well as it being a good place for a ambush being firmly out of sight...

Looking at the whole picture...(or even the movie)

Yario appears to strangle O'Neil and just as he is congratulating himself, O'Neil leaps to life completely surprising Yario and O'Neil finishes off Yario (for good)

And its then revealed that O'Neil was wearing a plastic collar around his neck preventing him from getting killed, (a similar ruse to that famously used by Clint Eastwood to avoid gunfire) so not only was O'Neil expecting to be ambushed he even knew which weapon would be used... so Montones death is at least important from that point of view

O'Neil then goes on to find the motherload of the highly illegal and dangerous drug that's causing all the deaths... tucked away inside one of the animal carcasses...

So if we step back a bit to the gathering in Outlands night club of everyone who O'Neil was watching via CCTV - we had Spota who after being thrown into a zero gee and atmosphere free cell got his airline cut by a knife, we then had Montone who was strangled by a garrotte in his apartment (at least in the movie) and Yario above...

That leaves just one person left - who O'Neil will be paying a visit to next - yes it's time for another odd sports themed confrontation, this time with Shepherd himself...

A pain in the neck

Which is what O'Neil is clearly experiencing here after shining too much light on the forbidden subject...

Courtesy of Yario and his garrotte...

So it's clearly Yario who killed Montone (at least in the movie at any rate)

on a side note, it is probably just me but I was wondering how much of a Steranko self portrait Yario was, I mean the hair and face do look similar, obviously the glasses are missing...

But what do you think, a sneaky in joke from Steranako or just a great drawing...

Don't drop that torch

I mean it's dark enough as it is in this butchers walk in freezer..

It must be a butchers freezer, aside from the large animal carcasses everywhere theres big meat hooks for them to hang from..

But there is another kind of butchering going on here, perhaps the next page will shine some light on this?

Temperature is monitored at all times...

So says the large letters hidden behind both a oversized piece of meat (most of a cow or a pig possibly) and the proportionally tiny shadow figures...

Telling us in no uncertain terms that it is chill in here...

Like many scenes in the movie it does not bare much scrutiny very well, are we excepted to just casually accept that whole entire animal carcasses are shipped over the astronomical distance between Earth and io (between 528 and 931 million kilometres from what i could see) and then are put in a large walk in freezer?

Seems a very costly exercise and doubly unnecessary from the point of view of how much waste the people eating this would generate, I mean there are many reasons why astronauts have powdered ice cream and a mostly liquid diet...

That aside even actually having a freezer (with temperature being monitored) seems rather ridiculous, given the surrounding environment it would be more of a case of not actually having much (or any) heating than actually chilling anything as space is rather cold so why waste energy freezing something when you could for most intents and purposes just bung it outside?

I suppose this is the part where one thinks its best not to poke at the holes, lest an abyss beckons..

Anyways something not quite so cool is happening in the freezer, find out what starting next week

Montone is dead...

So goes the dialogue starting the next instalment, as seen below

but the death itself happens completely "off screen" in the comic and is not depicted at all.. instead all we get is a brief explanation "killed because O'Neil came too close to discovering the truth"

Which, well - doesn't bare scrutiny that much, after all O'Neil has already uncovered that the workers are going crazy and dying as a result of strong and very illegal drugs which are being smuggled in under supervision of Outlands manager himself Shepherd, - I mean how much more truth has O'Neil to uncover here?!

Rather than dwell on that, lets step back a bit and look at the movie in which post finding Spotas air hose cut by a knife, O'Neil finds Montone in his apartment strangled by a garrotte which is still tied around his neck

Either way really Montones death does not make much sense as anything less than an act of rash panic of the part of the person ordering the murders...

I mean murdering Montone as an "example" to O'Neil does not make much sense, as if anything the powers that be rather O'Neil be like Montone as in he knows the situation but is quite happy to take a bit of money and look the other way and not interfere...

Isn't then the message by killing Montone as a warning then to be NOT like Montone?!

All we are left with realistically is panic on the part of the person ordering the murders and the need to introduce some twist / excitement into the movies story by the writer

For one of the main characters its a pretty bad way to go - either way in comic of movie it should have been a bit different - I don't know if I would agree that not showing it all makes more sense as Montone being killed by a garrotte is a plot point

of this double page spread we are looking at right now... 

Does this mean there is another  murderer or there is suddenly a shortage of knifes - find out some more over the next few days

Cell 36

So here we are with the finished page

and the double spread that goes with it...

So, in the movie O'Neil tries to get Spota to talk by telling him how "accidents can happen" in a zero gee cell, that you can loose all sense of direction and so on with Monotone with him...

O'Neil implicitly instructs Monotone to make sure no-one else gets in where Spota is being held...

and then goes off to see Shepherd again...

Comes back to the cell (on his own) to find Spota has been murdered with his air pipe cut and blood dripping out his air hose

Now it could have been Monotone...?

In the comic adaptation the frankly unnecessary second visit to Shepherd is cut out - but Monotone is clearly seen here with O'Neil discovering Spota murdered...

Apart from apparently far too easy and free access to knifes in Outland (this is already the 3rd one in the story so far) the other thing that the movie make reasonably clear is that the cells are secure access which means only the police (of which O'Neil is the overall person in charge) have access..

Now in the comic it could not have really be Monotone who did the murder as he is there with O'Neil...

This means someone else is the frame, but who...

It will be a while before we find out

Tomorrow another murder attempt is made, but by who and to whom...

Giant steps are what you take...

So goes the lyrics of the song "walking on the moon" by the police...

Have a look at the boots Spota is wearing in the zero gravity cell

Those are moon boots, with deep, wide tracks as the moons surface can be loose and dusty in places...

But IO is made of a lot sterner stuff, hard rock basalt and molten lava and would probably need something closer to golf shoes, with spike coming out the bottom..

What's that? These boots are just for the Zero Gravity cell, an interesting notion, but from everything seen so far costs are kept to a absolute minimum

No, its another nice stylistic choice by Steranko - maybe I need to get a grip :-)

Off the cuff

Well okay, it's more like in the cuffs for Spota, so it must be him just floating along down below

But O'neil clearly wants to say something...

Find out what - beginning next week

No comment?

I'm running a bit behind today, so no time for any "commentary", just the drawing...

Maybe someone else has something to say?!

Hit the walls jack

Ah, the luxury of a padded cell....

So if you just happen to float in the direction of the wall

You will be pushed right back again

I guess it's best not to panic in zero gee - otherwise you end up bouncing around like a pinball..

Just floating about

So off we go starting another two page spread which provides a stark reminder of the harsh reality of life on IO and the need for all the ductwork, piping and signage...

As for human life to survive - everything has to be provided in Outland :- air, gravity, heat, light, water, food...

So in the prison cell block, it's possibly unsuprising to find the cells actually provide none of the above and the criminal depnds on a space suit to survive...

All that would be needed was for the lights to go off and it would be total sensory deprivation tank with the added bonus of not knowing which way was up, down, left or right

better not get air sick now...

It's all come together

So after a few hours of hard work the page is now completed

And it can now be joined together with the previous page to make the traditional double page spread complete

So here we go - if I am reading left to right (given this is an american comic that's a safe bet)

O'Neil spots Spota and yells out at him, then we switch to the overall spread of the freeze framed confrontation between the two, notice Spota has a knife...

Then.....

well for it to make sense, you then read the right hand side panels, where Spota attacks O'neil with a knife, and O'neil retaliates by hitting Spota square in the jaw with the butt of his rifle

and then you read the left hand side panels, where O'Neil has collared (possibly strangling?) Spota and then Spota surrenders

Now there is no direction arrows, but the story doesn't make sense the other way away around... as Spota is then giving up before attacking with the knife

Also this is the end of the scene - it does not carry onto the next two pages

Like I said, I am guessing that Steranko possibly drew the big centre piece and the two side panels where pasted on top - the wrong way around - but is that a mistake or a avant garde statement?

The other thing to note is in the movie this is a good 3-4 minute action sequence with a chase across the sleeping quarters, down some corridors and a face off in the kitchen where Spota famously drops his drug stash into boiling vegetable oil which O'Neil fishes out using his bare hand (presumably not the hand just cut with a knife?!) and one of the most exciting sequences in the movie to date

Steranko compresses that into just 2 pages and missed out the kitchen entirely, we seem to have switched from spacing out a few seconds across two pages, to squeezing in 2 or 3 minutes with no much obvious build up in change of speed, or maybe thats just me

Does this continue though - find out beginning next week

leftsides right?

So with the additional of a few lines

It still looks like this should be the left facing page - not the right - maybe it will look better put together once blacked in?

Speaking of which I have to say this page possibly contains the largest amount of tiny tiny detail to date, the whole entire sleeping complex from the movie has to be represented in the bottom right hand corner of this page and yet still maintain the same overall forced perspective of the ceiling at the top of the page to give more of an idea of the size without taking up much room

I have to guess that Steranko probably drew this part in its entirety and then overlaid the insert panels on top...

or not?

This two page spread will finally get completed by tomorrow and then we can see...

It's starting to make sense

So okay rewind a little bit - on its own the previous page did not seem to make much sense

So one has to figure that with the next page forming the typical 2 page spread it might make some more sense?

Here's the original:-

and my pencils of the same...

Maybe it's just me but it seems these pages may be the wrong way around...

Find out a bit more why this could be tomorrow

Like a bolt from the blue

Oh no, not some idiosyncratic title line leading to anything either to do or not to do (that is the question) with the drawing below...

Which upon receiving its liberal pouring of ink is now complete...

No, what I am referring to today is that this humble blog has been discovered and visited by a lot of people in the last few days - all courtesy of the spanish web site entrecomics and EL TIO BERNI..

[UPDATE] Who has kindly translated  his log posting below...

"As Pierre Menard, Robin Barnard is recreating Jim Steranko’s Outland by means of tracing and inking. He has already completed half of the book, and hopes to finish it bu May. Here you can see almost all of the pages he has finished, but traced pages without blacks are even more interesting, as the one you can see over these lines." 

with this bit of line work included as an example...

Well what can one say to this?


It is utterly fantastic that anyone at all would show an interest in my humble / crude attempts at learning to draw let alone in such a particular way


I don't know what to say by being mentioned comparatively to Pierre Menard - the same Pierre Menard who:- "is often used to raise questions and discussion about the nature of authorship and interpretation."


But obviously a big thank you to El Tio Berni and all the viewers who have come this way..


Now you will have to forgive me this small indulgence...


Hola! Tendrá que perdonar mi español en realidad estoy usando untraductor que explica muchas cosas!
Sin embargo, muchas muchas gracias a El Tío Berni y todos los quehan visitado este sitio debido a su increíble anuncio!
Espero que os haya gustado!


[UPDATE] For those who was curious, I used Google translate... (sorry)

Collared!

That's what Spota has been - well and truly collared by O'Neil in the 1st little panel on the second row here

It looks like Spota is almost kind of being strangled ...!

but hang on was there supposed to be a chase - I mean in the movie there is nice action packed chase sequence...

But what's going on here in Sterankos comic adaptation?

Find out some more on this - next week

A short chase?

Having spotted the Spota - O 'Neil gives chase...

But already seems to have managed to get him against the wall?

Is this the shortest chase ever ....?

Find out more - tomorrow

Spot the Spota

Yes O'neil has gun in hand...

As he has spotted Spota... Cue a chase across most of Outland - or not??  

Find out, starting tomorrow...

And also see if you can spot what's wrong (or missing) in between this and the previous post...