"On the Line" ("Signs")
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (c) Amblin Entertainment
For more than eight years, I foolishly had an ambition to get Tony to pencil a picture. At that point I had done plenty of collaborations with him and it was always a treat. He was great at tossing in ideas or suggesting how things should be inked and colored. But when it came to the penciling, for some reason he (as well as Sehera) reacted to it like kryptonite. He just preferred going straight to pen. At first, I would just shrug it off and handle that aspect myself. If that's what works best for him, then so be it. I respected his choice and knew he would always come up with some great stuff. But when we realized we had yet to do a collaboration piece for the 2002 gallery, a question came up which quickly turned into my rant of the year: "Why do I always have to pencil? Why can't you at least try to pencil something? At least I try different things."
Yes, it did come across that whiney. But I guess it worked because he finally broke down.
This, ladies and gentlemen, was Tony's first attempt at penciling. The historical occasion where my inks went over his pencils. And if that's not worthy to appreciate this picture, I don't know what else to say. If there's any problems with it, the fault lies all on me. I'm just relieved my buddy learned to stop worrying and love the pencil. -Jake