For the record, a .44 Magnum really does go “BKOOM!” They also have quite a kick. It’s one reason Mike is very careful to only squeeze off one shot at a time.

A couple of friends took me out to a shooting range where I fired most of the weapons that appear in this gunfight, or equivalent firearms of the same caliber. It provided me with some insight into the ballistics and details for this scene.

This warehouse scene went through many script revisions during the writing process and even while I was drawing the pages. I had trouble laying out the interior, and frequently diverged from what I’d written in the script. In the end, nearly the entire action scene was improvised.

This is the south branch of the Chicago River. Bridgeport is just south of it. It’s an old, traditionally blue-collar, Irish neighborhood where the White Sox play at the now former Comiskey Park. It’s also where the younger Mayor Daley grew up.

I drew this page in the spring of 2004 after a friend showed me around South Side. I was looking for a warehouse to photograph for this scene. It was foreign territory to me at the time, because I was a “North Sider” and rarely had occasion to venture south of I-290, which unofficially divides the city into the two “Sides.”

Roughly one year later I became a “South Sider” and regularly went over the bridge drawn in panel one to visit my girlfriend at the time (now my wife). She lived only a few blocks from this warehouse!