On the Cutting Room Floor

In this process, a number of pages, stories, and drawings did not make the final cut of The Average José. Though the stories are worth noting, they did not fit the tone or the flow of the graphic novel. I've instead decided to include them below.

I had planned to illustrate a whole page where Vavô learns of Zulmira's infidelity from a friend. I decided to cut it because the layout I chose was far too confusing and wouldn't help the story along, choosing instead to have Vavô describe it in passing.

I toyed having this same page in the style of a traditional Azorean decorative ceramic called an Azulejo. This would have stuck out like a sore thumb in the graphic novel.

This is an image of the founder of the Azores, Portuguese explorer Gabriel Gonçalo Vehlo. I was planning on including a story about the founding of the Azores. I may still do this and post it here.

Prior to the other José story, I was going to include the history of the Azores map and the reason it is called the Azores. This was because when explorers first arrived on the islands, they saw a number of birds that they assumed were goshawks (Açor, in Portuguese). These were noble and majestic birds, so they named the archipelago the Açores. It turns out, what they actually saw were buzzards, which are far from majestic. My intent was to describe the characteristics of the two birds, and have them parallel the two Josés: one loyal and selfless, the other deceitful and selfish. The set up for this section would have taken up far too much real estate in the graphic novel, so I cut it.

I wanted to include some Canadian legends in addition to the Azorean legends. One that I toyed around with was the story of The Flying Canoe.

At one point, I had a section about superheroes and my distaste for the recent trend in Hollywood to highlight anti-heroes. I wanted to say that stories about people who just wanted to be good, who had no ulterior motives or demons they were wrestling with could be just as interesting as their counterparts. This would lead into a section of everyday heroes, and I would describe how Vavô was one such hero.  When I completed this section, I found that I was editorializing and getting away from Vavô's story. I also was not pleased with the art style, which was very different from the rest of the work.

Prior to going with the sketches, this is what the post-it notes would have looked like.

The section where I describe the purpose of the sticky notes was originally supposed to be in this style, with each panel represented in a cardiograph. The discussion was between Uncle Bill and I. Though it looks great and I still love the style, it too did not fit with the rest of the graphic novel.