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Story no. 40 - Past, Present and Future.

Guard Tales are stories set in the Guard's world, but not necessarily featuring the Guard.

****Please note that I am using a standard thumbnail image for all the full size pictures on this page. This is purely being done to save myself some time.****

Story Notes

This story is an attempt to encapsulate The Guard’s career from the 1940’s, when he started out through to the 1960’s, the twilight of his career as a crime fighter. It is a series of snapshots from the Guard’s life as seen through his interaction with his doctor and Flatcap, a younger crime fighter.

The page one photographs have been created using the panoramic option on my camera. It does take quite a few shots to achieve a picture which ‘flows’ and isn’t blurred. Even so the ground appears to be rising in the first photograph, which isn’t unpleasing on the eye.

I made a conscious effort in showing time passing in the Doctor’s office by changing Doctor Rubin’s hat, his hair colour and the Rubber plant’s growth.

We finally get to see a map of the island of Jamuda and one typical house on the island. (The island’s name is a mixture of Jamaica and Bermuda. I’ve visited Bermuda, but not Jamaica). I’ve been meaning to include the island in some of my stories for some time now. As I have Flat Cap, who has only made two other brief appearances according to my Guard index. (Good old index). Hopefully, we will learn more about the island in future issues. Houses in Bermuda have roof tiles painted with a white cement wash of paint and powder mixture, which sanitizes the rainwater as it runs off the roof into a house’s holding tank. And that’s the roof style we see on Raymond St. Clair’s house.

Trying to come up with a different way of ‘writing’ the word ‘Guard’ for every issue is quite a challenge. (I’m thankful that the name I came up with for my hero only consists of five letters. Anymore, and it might have become impossible to produce something different every month). This time round I decided to spell the words not only using buildings, but also different building materials that make up the buildings of the City of Yorkton. That is, stone, different colour bricks and so on. (Really, I don’t need any help in trying to make life difficult for myself, I’m coping very well on my own, thank you). The only letter that was difficult to recreate was the letter ‘R’. This went through several building changes. And I’m still not all that pleased with the final result. I was also concerned about the amount of white space surrounding the letters. I felt that the white space needed to be ‘filled in’. However, after reading and looking at some comics and comic art books it seems I don’t need to be scared of white space. It can have a purpose on the page in allowing the reader to fill in the white spaces themselves with (in this case), other buildings for the City of Yorkton.

The ending for this story was a challenge and it took some time to think about what I wanted as a suitable ending. In theory every story should be contributing to pushing forward the overall story / theme of the series. Although that’s not always the case for every story I produce.

Hope everyone understood the pun for the Yorkton Courier, crime reporter.