I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.

Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.

I've learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I've also learned to making big-scale design decisions early.

When the term 'machine gun' enters common parlance, the word 'machine' becomes much more sinister.

Ninety percent of the research comes first. I mostly blunder around reading stuff and talking to smart people until an idea batters or oozes its way through to my narrative brain.