I’m doing episode #36 of A Coming Out Story in a different style from the rest of the series…kinda like how I did it with the “Conversation With God” story arc, where I used a lot of grey tones instead of my usual cross-hatching.

There’s a panel I finished this morning of me walking across the railroad tracks behind what was the old Radio Shack building, and I did a bunch of stuff with it I’d never done before, and made up a lot of new tricks for accomplishing certain textures and such. The lighting is harsh because I’m walking into the setting sun, low on the horizon, and it really pops out in a way nothing else I’ve done on the story does. I wasn’t sure why I was spending so much time and effort on it other than the tracks were an important part of my life there and that was a shortcut to Congressional Plaza that I walked often that doesn’t exist anymore. I wanted to do a piece of my history justice.

But looking at the finished panel I think I see how it works in the story. There was a meaning there that must have been working on me subconsciously and it’s about what this episode is about, and actually the entire story. This is me stepping across a boundary that cut between my neighborhood and that of almost all my friends back then. The old kid from the other side of the tracks stereotype. I’m a gay teenager walking from one world into another. From denial to…I dunno…something else…something much Much better…but still pretty iffy given it was 1971.