(click on links to see photos)
The Adventures of Tony V.: SuperSenior is a comic strip created by my friend Tony Vitiello and me. For months we had talked of doing a regular comic for our school newspaper, The Record. But we lacked the ideas or premise to work from.
We were out having a late dinner when Tony joked that he wanted to make a cartoon about his terrible love life. I loved the idea, and we discussed it some more. By the time we left the restaurant we had modified the premise, come up with a title, and had three layouts drawn on a napkin. The first comic premiered March 28, 1997. The Record comes out twice a week, and we didn't miss a single issue after we began.
The concepts for the comics were usually a collaboration between the two of us. After we had a general idea of the joke, a quick layout was scribbled with stick figures. Then Tony drew the art in pencil and passed it to me. He always drew his character, I always drew my character. We divided the secondary characters between us. After the pencils were finished, we scripted the cartoon word-for-word. Then I penciled and inked the words and word balloons. Next, I'd go over all the penciled artwork with black ink and white ink, using a thin brush and dip pen. Finally, I would erase the original pencils, leaving only the inks. Looking at the finished art, you'd notice a lot of "paste-up" art corrections. But when the art was shot to be printed, only the solid black and white showed.
Fall 1997 was the last semester to enjoy The Adventures of Tony V.: SuperSenior. We were content with what we'd done, and I graduated that semester. But we're thrilled that the strip can live on in Cyberspace.
