Welcome To Eltingville Storyboards (Act 1, pgs 47-74) (Patreon)

This section of the first act begins the story proper. We've seen that the fantasy opening was the D&D game that the Eltingville Club was playing, and then we see their first argument and fight. We also notice that Jerry has done nothing wrong but is dragged into violence. And we meet Bill's mother, offscreen, as she was off-panel in the comic. If the series had continued, she would have been a terrifying offscreen presence looming over Bill and the Club.

I will not go into whether this character is based on anyone from life. Let's move on.

So we get the opening credits (you can see that storyboard here) and we come back to Bill's basement and our first (and last) official Eltingville Club meeting.

This section adapts material from the first Eltingville Club story. The meeting begins with the "new acquisitions" routine taken from the comic. For Pete's turn, we get the description of his lousy Thing With Two Heads resin model kit (which, unlike in the comic, we get to see in the pilot. It was one of my favorite props to draw). Jerry's letter-writing campaign to get Paramount to do a Captain Sulu show is based on Josh's account from the "information/activism" bit in the comic. Originally the club was trying to get the Sci-Fi Network to revive "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr". In hindsight I'd have gone with a different nerd series, the Club wouldn't have cared much for the show. But I was a fan so I threw it in there. I wasn't exactly worrying over their likes and dislikes or personalities while making the first comic. At the time, they were just four nerd ciphers in a throwaway five-page comic. When I wrote "Who gives a fuck? I don't" at the end of the comic, I meant it. I thought that was the end of The Eltingville Club. I had no idea it was just the first of many endings.

Back to the board. As in the comic, Josh presents the others with a bootleg VHS tape featuring "Sexy Sirens of Sci-Fi and Horror Revealed" ("Sexy Damsels" in the comic). The fact that I'm writing about a VHS tape as a plot point makes me feel older than I already have been feeling lately. Oy.

Anyway, this section takes us to Josh's attempts to get the VHS tape into the VHS player. The next storyboard post will involve salaciousness, anticipation, disappointment, embarrassment, anger and violence as we move towards the end of Act 1. I'll get that stuff scanned asap.

Notes:

• Previous WELCOME TO ELTINGVILLE storyboard posts can be found by searching for "WTE storyboards".

• If you noticed a gap between pages 68 and 71, it's because pages 69-70 don't exist. Sometimes storyboard pages get pulled or skipped.

• The Welcome to Eltingville storyboards were done by Stephen DeStefano, with revisions by director Chuck Sheetz. Their drawing styles should be easy to differentiate. Once in a while my art pops up but I didn't see anything of mine in this section while I was scanning.

• You can find Stephen DeStefano on Instagram @no_but_sdestefano -- he's worth a follow on IG (and Patreon), especially if you're a cartoonist or animator looking for tips and background information. Plus he draws beautifully. He's done character design and storyboards for a lot of TV shows and films, he's worked with the legacy Disney and Warner Brothers characters (as well as WB superheroes), also on Ren & Stimpy and he was the go-to Popeye licensing artist for King Features for many years. More recently he's worked on many Genndy Tartakovsky projects. He's also done comics for DC, Disney and I've worked with him a few times -- on Bill and Ted's Excellent Comic, World's Funnest, Wednesday Comics and Superman Villains Secret Files and Origins #1. Stephen was also one of the Instant Piano gang, which was the comic where The Eltingville Club first appeared. If you're into cartooning/animation you should check him out, Stephen's terrific.