"Issue 4" ("Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back")
Jay and Silent Bob (c) View Askew
Our homage to "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" finished off the 2001 gallery the way it began; with Tony supplying color over my art. We still had a long way to grow as artists, but I couldn't help but compare this to the first illustration we did for "The Mummy Returns". Not to say the coloring is good; far from it. Tony and I would grow more accustomed to Photoshop as we ventured on. However, viewing them side to side, you can see a little improvement in over the course of a few short months.
But all good things must come to an end and so our project reached that point. Looking back, we did pretty good that first year. There were a few missed deadlines and some films never got done. Although when you consider this was something we've never attempted before, and for better or worse, managed to make it to the finish line, I couldn't help but call it a success. This was a gallery planned to only have nine entries but finished with twelve. Not bad at all.
On a related note, the movie itself has a very special importance to me and Tony. A week before it was released into theaters, the two of us were in Chicago to personally meet Kevin Smith and Jay Mewes at the Wizard World comic convention. The most we expected was to wait a few hours in line to shake their hands and get a few things autographed. Little did we know that evening we'd be attending the world premiere of the film in a theater nearby where only a hundred pair of tickets were given out to the public. And we had the best two seats in the entire theater! Never in a million years would Tony and I have thought we would be seeing the movie before anyone else in the world and in the company of Smith and Mewes no less (although Smith was starving and had to duck out early). When I look back at all the experiences I had with my best friend, the two of us as guests at the world premiere ranks as one of the most surreal. -Jake