Tet #1 and #2 Writer’s Notes
Hey, there. Welcome to the Tet writer’s notes. I meant to start this after Tet #1 came out, but, you know… life interfered. So, without further ado, let’s dive in to this double-length first edition!
Not much to say here but “wow.” These covers were all Paul Tucker, from concept to design to execution. This one, in particular, was one of the earliest images Paul created for the book, and kind of set the tone for everything that followed, art-wise. And it’s just such a powerful representation of Eugene’s inner turmoil. Wonderful.
This was also one of the earliest images Paul created. It – along with the variant covers for issues three and four – were originally intended as promo pieces for the book. That wedding dress quote was in the first plot summary I sent to Paul, and seeing it pop up here made me pretty happy. I also have to give credit to Comics Experience and IDW for letting us put out variant covers that left off our names and minimized the book’s title so drastically.
I like the first line and image of my comics to sum up the theme of the book. And I’m pretty happy with how well this one worked. The combination of Eugene’s haunted visage, and his declaration that he’s never liked telling war stories. And, of course, I’m letting the reader know that Tet is much more than a war story to Paul and I.
I also found it interesting how many reviews assumed that we would find out more about this scene, as the series went on. We won’t. This page haunts and informs what comes after, but we never double back around to it. When Eugene says “that’s all you need to know,” he isn’t kidding.
Them colors! Hot damn, I love Paul Tucker’s palette in this book. This page also brings back bad memories of adjusting the location of the caption boxes for what felt like approximately 72 hours straight.
In my research, I found out it was pretty common for Marines in Hue City to trade C Rations to the local kids for Coke and better food. Which… was probably not a fair trade. I’ve never had C Rations, but growing up in a military family, I’m quite familiar with MREs, their successor. MRE stands for Meals Ready to Eat, but when I was a kid I thought it stood for Meals, Rarely Edible, because that’s the only thing I ever heard the adults call it. That, or “three lies in one.”
But I still ate MREs whenever I could, because it was cool, and a novelty, and it made me feel adult. Which, I imagine, was the same appeal that C Rations had to kids in Vietnam.
I kinda love that “I like to fall in love with every woman I meet. It makes life a bit more interesting” line. And I hammered away at it for quite a while, trying to nail the exact right wording, rhythm, cadence. Poetry is a huge influence on my writing (probably more so than prose), and I really want my words to sing. I know I fall short of that goal more often than not, but I keep trying.
Our introduction to Ha. I struggled quite a bit with Ha’s living quarters. It’s not the most realistic thing in the world for a single woman of her age to be living alone at that time. But it wasn’t unheard of, either, and I think it drives home Ha’s stubborn, headstrong nature (an aspect of her personality that Eugene hasn’t picked up on, yet).
The silhouette panel was all Paul – a callback to our covers. It was a great idea, and I think might have been a one-off thing, but I started writing towards it, making sure to include one silhouette panel in each issue.
One more thing about this page: when one of my Marine consultants read the script, he balked at the third panel, noting that marrying a Vietnamese national would involve a ridiculous amount of paperwork and red tape, and that there’s no way they could simply grab a chaplain. But, he said, it’s also possible Eugene was just joking. In my brain, Eugene was making a lighthearted comment, but also most definitely wasn’t joking. But after getting that feedback? Sure, okay. He was joking. That was the plan all along. Totes.
Eugene and Ha just chillin’ on the balcony in a war zone. You know, as you do. Hue City really was a strangely peacefully place before the Tet Offensive. Right on the border between north and south, but largely free of violence. There were snipers, though, and I wanted to acknowledge that, here.
I don’t think I’ve talked about the lettering yet, either. These blank panels, like the one here, were baked in to the design of the book from the beginning. Most were written into the script, and some Paul added in layouts. Every time he did, it felt like, “yup. That is the right spot for it.” Between those panels, and the silhouette panels, and the sketchy, crooked caption boxes, I’d hoped the lettering would feel like an organic part of the art and design of the book. It was important to us that Tet feel like an organic, unified product. Which is what all comics should feel like, of course.
Marion, Indiana! And that palette change! Yowza wowza. Lovely work by Paul Tucker. Also, fun fact: Marion has a Veterans Affairs hospital. Early drafts of the script worked that in, but it never quite felt organic. I never wanted the characters in this book to tell each other things they would already know, just for the audience’s benefit.
I also love these vertical establishing shots that Paul does throughout the book.
Oh, Eugene. I love you. And there’s some really lovely cartooning from Paul Tucker on this and the next two pages. This scene moved at a much smaller pace than the rest of the issue, deliberately, and I was pretty worried about that, but Paul absolutely nailed it.
You do not want to know how much I researched the word “eyefucking,” to figure out if it was in common use in 1968. Answer: not really. It came into its own in the 1970s. But I figured Marines would be on the bleeding edge of swearing, so it worked.
Another lovely vertical establishing shot. And the beginning of the Bao-Eugene relationship, which is as important to the book as the Eugene-Ha relationship.
S’up, Minh? Also, how ‘bout them colors in panel one? Also, how ‘bout that floor in panel three? Also, how ‘bout…
This panel three caption text is insanely long, and is basically used to short-circuit the investigation plot. Kinda cheesy, and I wasn’t thrilled with having to do that, but I think it works. It also helps hide the mid-page scene transition.
I also love this old lady. That last panel! Yeah.
Such a totally goofy coincidence for Ha and Bao to know each other so well. I usually try to come up with a plausible reason for such big coincidences, and I really struggled with that before going “eh, fuck it.” Coincidences that complicate things tend to go down with audiences a little easier. Coincidences that help the protagonist? Not so much.
That grin in panel three! Eugene is really enjoying making Bao uncomfortable.
I love this establishing shot, and the fact that Paul filled the previous pages with background characters, so that we could feel the passage of time as we see the bar emptied out, hours later. This is also the first time we see the ugly, paternalistic side of Eugene’s character, as he tells a Vietnamese native in 1968 that she’s naïve about war and loss.
Eugene’s bunkmates probably really hated him, here. I also worked incredibly hard on these captions, and—
-- on trying to decide whether to keep all the captions on page 22, and move some of them to this page. End the end, I really love the pacing of these last few pages, and I feel like dropping the captions off of this page makes it feel like we’re shifting, for the first time in our book, to a different perspective. Eugene didn’t see this. He wasn’t there for it. So why would he have anything to say about it?
And now we’re back with Eugene. And man, this page is gorgeous. I also like that every issue of this mini ends on a note that feels like it could be the end. Not a conclusive ending, but an ambiguous ending. Which, you know… maybe be how we leave the whole thing. But that’s not a surprise to anyone who’s ready anything else I’ve ever written.
Man, this cover is on FIRE! Get it? Because… because… oh, okay, you get it.
I may be speaking out of school here, but I believe Paul originally intended the issue #1 cover to be a one-off, and that it wasn’t until a bit later he realized he could continue that same design idea through all four. Either way, I love this.
This is the only variant cover that wasn’t originally designed as a promo image. It’s also the only one to feature a quote from a minor character (so minor he isn’t even named in the book), not one of our main folks. And did I rewrite that scene specifically to shoehorn a thematically appropriate cover quote into it? Uhm… moving on!
The paneling on this page is the same as on issue one, page one. We’ll continue that throughout the rest of the series. We also jump ahead in time, here. Issue 1 ended with the signal flare launching the attack on Hue City, and now we’re plunged directly into the ongoing conflict.
Layout wise, one of my favorite pages in the book. It was Paul’s idea to slide in these images of Bao, Chip and Ha, to help readers catch up, and they elevated a pretty pedestrian page to something pretty awesome. Also: “Tens of thousands dead on both sides. And I was thinking about a girl.” I leave it up to our dear readers to decide whether that’s romantic or creepy as fuck.
Originally, Eugene didn’t have any dialogue on this page. His two word balloons were added after I was worried that it might not be immediately clear that the dude in the back of the truck is dead. In which case, the “I don’t feel great about this guy’s chances” would come off less like a dark, sardonic joke, and more like just a factual statement.
I really like how Paul handled the pacing on this page and the next, as we journey away from the battlefield and towards MACV headquarters.
I don’t want these notes to just descend into a series of me saying “I love this page.” But I love this page. The deliberateness of it. The pure character work. This moment does nothing to advance the plot, but a lot to tell you about the kind of person Eugene is.
And we’re back in Indiana. Again, a deliberately slow pace, and again, Paul Tucker handles it admirably. The trick I used in this issue is that every time Eugene moves through the city, we switch to Old Eugene, on his journey back to Vietnam. It works to effectively disguise Eugene’s movements, and let us simply catch up with him at each new location.
Like Ha’s apartment! The last two panels of this page were originally silent, but yes, as I hinted above, I totally added this dialogue so that we would have a quote for the variant cover. But I think it works out pretty great. It was done for necessity, but now I wouldn’t change a thing.
Eugene Smith, total badass. Truthfully, I wanted him to seem kind of clumsy in this scene, like he’s stumblefucking his way through. But with such limited space, that’s difficult to do. So I asked Paul, in the script, to try to make these action scenes and clumsy as possible, and I think he did. Eugene’s body language never looks quite graceful, here, and the whole thing feels a bit off-kilter.
Also, props to my Marine reader for telling me that I should have Eugene count to three before throwing the grenade, which both prevents the enemy from throwing it back, and also takes nerves of fucking steel.
Another seemingly huge coincidence, here. But there is a reason for this one, explained in a future issue It was originally explained here, but the explanation felt a bit… forced. So there you go. Bao also makes a glancing reference here to the Hue Massacre, and the North Vietnamese’s hit list. There was originally more explanation, but again, I didn’t want to include information that these characters wouldn’t know about, or wouldn’t naturally share with each other.
Ahhhh, the staircase. The staircase gave me a lot of heartburn. It’s not likely that Bao and Ha, with their background and lack of children, would live in a place large enough to have a second floor. But there’s a moment in issue three that uses the staircase – an incredibly small moment, but one I really, really love. So we went with it. Besides, it looks cool, and it’s conceivable that they just have one small downstairs room, and the upstairs bedroom.
This was really predictable, right? You all saw this coming? Sorry. “Predictable” is the no. 1 complaint people seem to have about my work, and I can see it. It’s fair.
And now we begin one of my favorite sequences in the book, and one that will take on much greater resonance near the end of our book. I hope. We also delve more into Eugene’s desire to be Ha’s savior. There’s a thin, ugly line between trying to save someone out of love and trying to save someone for uglier, more selfish reasons. And Eugene dances merrily along that line.
Again, the captions fall away for a second as we see things from someone else’s perspective. I also dig that gas canister silhouette.
This was tough to write – getting into Eugene’s head during a moment so foreign from anything I’ve experienced. But I’ve known fear, and confusion, and a lesser pain, so I tried to tap into all of that to gain some understanding of what he might be going through. Also kind of proud of that “my shit in his nostrils” line. War isn’t pretty.
I love all these pages, but don’t have a lot to say about them. They were hard as hell to write, and Paul saved my ass. I also wrote and rewrote and rewrote the captions during the lettering phase, juggling them around to different positons on the page.
Hey, tank. How you doing? In my research I discovered that just a few days into the battle, the tanks began to stay off the roads, smashing through buildings instead. When I read that, it was like, “yes, okay, I’m using that, okay, okay, yes, definitely, okay.”
Probably the most pulpy, noiry page in the book.
Leading up to this thing of beauty. Holy hell, that coloring. Wow. Truly lovely. And again, an issue ending that feels like it could be the end.
And that’s Tet #2 and #3! See you back here in a couple of weeks.
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