Believe it or not, even though Brandon and I have made well over 500 pages of Hawk & Croc, there’s still some stuff I’ve drawn that never made it into the comic.
Today’s post, for example, takes place right at the end of the “School Daze” era, which originally ran in 2004-2005. Now, I didn’t actually DRAW these four pages until 2016, and there’s not really a seamless way to stick them in anywhere, especially since they’re so short.
But I’ve been sitting on them for the last several years, and I figure this is as good a time as any to share them.
For anyone that doesn’t remember a comic you probably didn’t read from over a decade ago: Hawk’s girlfriend and her family just moved away. He’d been slowly befriending the green-haired Beth who was relatively new to town, and hadn’t really befriended anybody else yet. And then, “The Kiss” happened. Keep scrolling after these three comics:
(I don’t know why that last comic is dated 2006. I must have also been drawing some later strips ahead of time over winter break and mixed up what year it was.)
Of course, long-time H&C readers will remember that Hawk and Beth eventually got married, so of course it made sense to end the high school flashback era of stories by showing the beginning of their relationship. But what happened in the several years in between?
So yeah, about ten years later, I wrote and drew the moment that happened immediately after their first kiss. I went back and sampled the very bright colors I had initially used, and mostly tried to match the art style, although I had improved as an artist in the intervening years. And then I absolutely never posted it anywhere.
So. I present to you, for the first time ever:
After The Kiss.
Fun fact: This isn’t the only version of this moment in H&C history that I’ve written. Stay tuned…