Gallery: Coloring An Inner Darkness

An Inner Darkness is one of Golden Goblin Press’s supplements for the Call of Cthulhu RPG. The scenarios deal as much with real, historical human evil as they do with the spectres of the Cthulhu Mythos. The book is profusely illustrated by Reuben Dodd. As production on the book neared completion, I was asked to color one of the illustrations in each scenario for a total of six. Mr. Dodd does fine color work but he’d already moved on to other projects. The editor, Oscar Rios, sent me tifs of the chosen illustrations and I set to work.
This is the first time I’ve colored anyone else’s artwork.The illustrations are clearly designed to be in black and white. So the trick was to add color without having that color clash with the linework – enhance not compete. For this specific illustration I started by chosing a set of flat colors that I thought emphasized the depressing nature of the situation – yellows, greys and sickly green. Once the main colors were chosen I added light greytones to indicate shadow and contour. I used the orignal linework as a guide for my light source. I’m happy with the results. I’m even happier that Reuben liked them too.

Story Seed #48
This Face Knows Your Secrets

A wealthy businessman turns himself in to the authorities. He’s come to confess his involvement in a money laundering scheme. It had started out simply, just cooking books, some shady investments, but it grew to covering up greater crimes including kidnapping and murder. The businessman is terrified. Not of his partners. They’re scary people but they’re just people. He’s afraid of the Face he sees in every reflective surface. The Face that stares at him knowingly from the windows of the building across the street. The Face that mouths truths to him before he can look away. The Face that no one else sees. 

The Face was a crime fighter from the early days of comic books. From 1940 to 1946, reporter Terry Trent would put on a fright mask and go beat up bad guys. Other than a scary disguise, Trent had no super powers. Due to the vagaries of copyright The Face is a public domain character.

I’m suggesting a couple different new versions:

1. The Face is an actual supernatural entity. It appears before evildoers and torments them until they, out of fear and greed and their own stupidity, are undone. Sometimes they turn themselves in. Sometimes they destroy themselves trying to escape the Face. The Face rarely appears physically. Mostly it manifests as shadow or a reflection where there should be neither. Sometimes it’s a voice telling secrets. Perhaps it has been summoned by one of the evildoers victims. Perhaps it picks its targets on its own.
2. The Face is the creation of a team of actors, hackers, make-up and special effects artists who use it to bring justice to those too rich and powerful for the law to successfully prosecute. Perhaps they originally created the character to get revenge on one untouchable man and then, once they succeeded, they decided to go after other targets. Their M.O. is similar to the supernatural version of the Face, they work to get evildoers to undo themselves.

Recommendation – Zebragirl

Zebragirl by Joe England is/was one of the first webcomics I followed. It tells the tale of Sandra Eastlake after her accidental transformation into a demon thing. The series ran from 2000-2018. The early strips are crude in comparison to the later ones but I find the evolution of the art interesting to watch. The story is now complete although England still adds the occasional postscript strips.

Local News – Postal Slang

A lot of jobs have their own slang, a jargon that only makes sense to people who do that job. I work for the Post Office as a letter carrier. These are some of the words and phrases that are otherwise nonsense to civilians.

Throwing Parcels
This is what the clerks do at the beginning of the day. Pallets loaded with parcels come in. The clerks bring the pallets into the station and center them in the middle of an network of hampers, one hamper for each route. They scan each parcel to indicate that it’s been received and then literally throw the parcel into its appropriate hamper.

Hot Case
There’s a case in the center of the station with cubbies for each route. The carrier put missorted mail into large general cubbies and the clerks sort that mail into the proper route cubbies. The carriers are supposed to empty our cubbies before we pull down our routes.

Pull Down
Each route has its own a case – a couple of racks with slots labeled for each address on the route. At the beginning of the day we sort mail into those slots. When we’re done sorting we pull down each swing and put into a tray. The trays go out to our trucks.

Swing
A swing is, generally, a block of mail. That is, it’s the mail for a block on a street. Usually it takes 15 minutes to deliver a swing. Usually. Time varies depending on whether the swing is mounted, a cbu, or a park and loop.

Park and Loop
A Park and Loop is a swing that is delivered on foot. The carrier generally parks their truck at one end of the block and then delivers up one side of the street and down the other in a “loop”.

Mounted
Mounted deliveries are those that can be done without leaving the truck. The carrier drives along a street and delivers to mail boxes at the side of the road. In some areas, all the routes are mounted.

CBU
A CBU is a Cluster Box Unit – a set of mailboxes that can be opened with a single USPS proprietary key. The carrier opens a single door and is able to deliver to all the boxes that are part of the unit.

Car Hop
A Car Hop is a delivery that is usually separate from other deliveries – a single address on a street,. Sometimes a swing consists of a series of car hops, single deliveries down one side of a street.

Deadhead
A Deadhead is a street with addresses on one side that is delivered on foot. The carrier parks the mail truck, delivers to the addresses on foot and then walks back past those addresses to return to the truck.

Long Week (Iron Week)
Postal employees have rotating days off. One week a carrier might have Monday off. The next week Tuesday. Then Wednesday and so forth. The Long Week is our six day work week from Monday to Saturday.

Long Weekend
The Long Weekend is the one where our scheduled Friday off and our scheduled Saturday off and our scheduled Sunday off happen consecutively and we get three days off in a row.

CCA
CIty Carrier Assistant. These are the folks who are delivering mail while waiting to become “career” i.e. permanent employees. They’re the carriers in training. The substitutes. They deliver whatever route needs delivering. They work overtime whether they want it or not. They work Sundays delivering packages for Amazon. They have no consistent day off. I was a CCA for about a year and a half before I made “career”.

Office Time
Office Time is the time a carrier spends sorting mail, setting up and pulling down their route. Management has a series of metrics that they believe reflect that amount of time that a carrier should use as “office time”. Those metrics are accurate so long as the mail arrives on time and in proper order, there are no emergencies and the carrier remember to clock to street time whenever they are not doing office time things.

Street Time
Street Time is the time spent sorting parcels into the truck, loading mail into the truck,  and then delivering the mail. Street time is more fungible than office time.

DPS
The DPS is the mail – letters and postcards and small flyers – that comes from the local mail sorting plant. The DPS should be sorted for line-of-travel and therefore the carriers shouldn’t need to sort it before taking it out to our trucks. I have about 170 active delivery addresses and I average about 1400 pieces of DPS for my route. Since the coronapocalypse the DPS numbers have gone way done. I’ve had a couple of days when I had less than 325 pieces of DPS.

LIne of Travel
The line of travel is the order in which a route is delivered. 

Nixies
I don’t remember what Nixie is an abreviattion for. A Nixie is a piece of mail that we can’t deliver on our route. Maybe that letter belongs on another route. Maybe it”s addressed to someone who doesn’t live at the address on letter. Maybe the address doesn’t exist. We bring the undeliverable mail back to the station and put in the clerk’s throwback case for sorting.

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Stay safe. Be smart. Look after each other. Remember to dance.