Welcome to this special Feburary (its really March, but whose paying attention) fourteenth issue of The Neon BoneYard, the comic art comedy club. This month features everyones favorite day of love and happiness, the release of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition . Oh yeah, and Valentines Day. On both of these topics, this issue issue continues (it just seems to go on and on, doesn't it) my series honoring the unsung heroes of the comic art work, the inkers. The featured page is from New X-Men #118, which was at the center of a mini controversy when it came out. It turns out later some people noticed either penciller (Ethan Van Sciver) or the inkers (several for this issue) had inserted to the hidden word SEX in almost every page of this issue (click the SEX link for the best article on this issue). While apparently everyone denied any involvment in this controversy (or just plain easter egg hunt), the appearances are just to many and too vivid to be a coincidence. After reading about this story, I just had to see if I could find one of these pages, and once again, I had one turn up at inker Prentiss Rollins' section at The Artist's Choice . On this particular page, you can see the partial word SEX in the second panel of the gun smoke (staring James Arness as Marshall Matt Dillion). According to the web article sited above, it is also visible in the gun smoke of the third panel, but frankly, I don't see it (although I also never see the sailboat in those stupid Magic Eye pictures either.)

I'll end this issue of the Neon BoneYard with two thoughts. First on how I create the jokes for each page. Most of the pages of original art I select have their own built in jokes. This one kind of formed "organically" (I might as well throw in the word "proactively", another useless corporate buzz word I hate) as I was working on this page late in the morning. At first, I had planned to pretty much follow the script of the original page from this comic, and on the last panel have some joke like "Hey wait, this guys eyes were brown. These are blue. WHERE THE HELL DID THESE COME FROM!!! AGGGH!!!" However, my limited "wording" tools (all free, which I will describe in another issue of the Neon BoneYard), did not lend themselves to such wordiness and multiple speech balloons. Since I was already featuring music and lines from Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy" in my salute to the inkers, I tossed the DVD in to get some ideas. Mix in a little Hostess Pies comic ad parody, add a dash of Mentos humor, and viola, instant comedy!!! Ok, mainly it was due to lack of sleep.

My final though on this special Love / Sex issue of the Neon Boneyard is, what is the diference between Love and Sex? The best definition I have heard so far is "Love creates tension, Sex removes tension." Think about it (although not with the February Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition stored in your bathroom drawer...re-write already in progress).

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