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beneaththetangles · 3 years

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Reader’s Corner: Those Snow White Notes, Your Lie in April Revisited, and A Couple of Cuckoos

She’s My Knight, Vol. 1

The premise of this lovely little comic is simple: Ichinose has always been the popular kid, attracting attention from all the girls until cool, collected Mogami comes along, stealing not only Ichinose’s popularity, but also his heart. I’m a total sucker for the Mogami type in manga and anime—the tall, athletic, boyish girl—and she makes a perfect pairing with the pitiful Ichinose, who increasingly, as the volumes progresses, falls apart around her. There’s not much else here—just lots of gags and near-miss moments, so in that sense, She’s My Knight may end up being a forgettable series. But just as Ichinose is the damsel to Mogami’s knight, this series might be rescued, too, by hints that the girl is not as clueless as she seems. But even if that’s not true, even if the series means to simply tease us for endless chapters and results in a series that isn’t unique in any way, the manga would still hit the sweet spot of feel good romantic comedy so well that it doesn’t really matter—this is the perfect volume to open as you sit back, kick your feet up, and prepare to fall in love. ~ Twwk

She’s My Knight is published by Kodansha.*

A Couple of Cuckoos, Vol. 1

Nagi Umino learns quite the shocking truth: As an infant, he had accidentally been switched with another baby, and had essentially grown up his whole life as an adopted kid. To make matters worse, upon meeting his birth parents, and the girl, Erika Amano, that he had been switched with, he finds out that their parents had decided that the easiest way to resolve this whole matter is to have the two of them get married so that all the parents can officially consider both of them their children! With an anime adaptation announced recently, I figured I’d check out the first volume of the manga, and true to the name, it’s quite crazy. With a mess of family relations and some side romantic antics involving a smart girl Nagi has a crush on, this manga definitely has all the fun of a good romcom, and there’s not really too much that annoyed me about it, either, other than that the volume ended way too soon. I also liked how it touches on the awkwardness of trying to connect with a birth family you didn’t grow up with, and I hope future volumes do more with that along with the romance stuff. ~ stardf29

A Couple of Cuckoos is published by Kodansha.

Street Fighter Gaiden: Vol. 1

Videogames have made the transition to manga many times, and some have even done it on multiple occasions, which is the case with Street Fighter. I picked up Street Fighter Gaiden, which has two volumes and focuses on various stories in the SF series, focusing on various characters. Ken and Ryu get their due, and so does Chun-Li, who is some nice panels participates in a drug bust in San Francisco. Other stories feature Fei Long desiring to do something more challenging than be a movie star, leading to travels to Japan and a tragic accident while stopping some criminals; T. Hawk protecting fellow natives from another tribe who are being harassed by Balrog; and the final story, where Guile becomes involved in underground fights while trying to prevent a friend from getting involved with Shadaloo, the secret evil organization of the series. The stories veer from the traditional backgrounds of some of the characters, like Fei Long and Guile, but it’s interesting to read how the author puts them together. Fans of Street Fighter should check this series out! The drawings in the manga looks dated and a little rough here and there, but I certainly enjoyed it and will be picking up volume two. ~ Samuru

Street Fighter Gaiden: Vol. 1 is published by Udon Entertainment.

The Dawn of the Witch, Vol. 1

Witches seem to be making a bit of comeback in manga lately. The Dawn of the Witch, one of the new entries, seems at first blush to add little that’s new to the canon, assembling a weak main character mage, overpowered but very young looking master witch, talented witch / love interest, and a beastman, as they undertake a special type of journey / course assigned by their magic school. However, tropes can be deceiving. Volume one tells a story at breakneck pace, developing relationships, adding backstory, providing action, and dumping a ton of information, which while it could become oppressive, in this manga, is captivating. The world and its history are fascinating, the way magic is used has some uniqueness (including a cursed, talking staff?), and the divisiveness between witches and the church shows depth. The world-building in just this one volume is extensive and engaging, and the story seems to be in good hands, while the art and character design, developed by two additional members of this three-person manga team, are just as extraordinary, bringing vividness to action scenes, boldness to the characters themselves, and lettering and paneling that add further dimension to goings-on. The frequent and obvious fanservice, unfortunately, can be quite distracting; it’s not a coincidence that it takes a back seat once the story ramps up, indicating how unimportant it is. By the last chapter or two, there’s no room for panty shots; we’re swept up into the lives of these characters, the choices they’ve made and are making, and the world they inhabit, which in terms of recent witch manga, is second to none. ~ Twwk

The Dawn of the Witch is published by Kodansha.*

Those Snow White Notes, Vol. 1

Moving to Tokyo after the death of his guardian, grandfather, and teacher, Setsu is a lost soul. Though he carries with him a shamisen, the ancient three-stringed instrument, Setsu is unable to play, haunted by the words of his grandfather which told him he was unworthy of it. But will this move to Tokyo and the people he meets there be just what Setsu needs to find his sound? The first half of this initial volume is one long chapter, and reads like a one-shot, an almost self-contained story of Setsu’s serendipitous meeting with a hopeful actress, Yuna, and the impact the two have on one another. However, this front half of volume one isn’t particularly distinct in any way, and despite a desire to connect emotionally with readers through the young protagonist and and his family, the panels fall flat in this aspect, as do they when depicting the sound of the shamisen, whose tone and rhythm I could feel but not the emotion it gives. The second half of volume, however, establishes the story and characters better. Setsu’s personality is better defined, as is his brother’s, and new supporting characters are introduced as Setsu begins to attend school, setting the stage for a club-centered drama, a la Kono Oto Tomare and Chihayafuru, two other anime centered on historic Japanese pastimes. And like those, there’s potential here, though it will be lost if Those Snow White Notes can’t find consistency and an emotional anchor, which would be a shame, as the first episode of currently-airing anime adaptation showed how a few adjustments could turn this story into something quite special. ~ Twwk

Those Snow White Notes is published by Kodansha.*

Your Lie in April, Vol. 4

I’m continuing my re-read of Your Lie in April and have reached Volume four, a part of this series which can be a tough read. Kousei has finally returned to the piano scene after two years away to find that his childhood rivals have only improved. Both of them were motivated by him to become better. Emi saw him when she was very little and it inspired her to play, believing in her heart to play for joy, while Takeshi is driven to perfection to reach what Kousei had always achieved. Then there’s Kousei himself. In these chapters, readers bear witness to the emotional and physical abuse Kousei underwent as a child and it’s hard to witness. But it does help present a complete picture of the person Kousei has become so far. This is a challenging volume because of what happens, but it’s important to the overall narrative. Beautiful artwork and emotional moments will keep me moving through this re-read. ~ MDMRN

Your Lie in April is published by Kodansha.

Skip Beat, Vol. 17

The “Suddenly, a Love Story” arc is an oddity, a portion of Skip Beat that is quite long and cumbersome, with not enough Kyoko and perhaps too much of the unappealing side of Ren, full of insecurity and lacking much of his initial appeal. Volume 17 thankfully puts the arc to rest with a quick but exciting (and revealing) finale which pits Ren against no, not Shotaro, but Reino, the abusive and perhaps occultist musician. The next arc also begins in this volume, introducing Kuu, a movie star more famous, it seems, than any previous character in the series. Although we get to know him just a bit, he appears to be a rival who could threaten Ren. He also immediately challenges Kyoko, providing the potential for her to really chew up character interactions, something sorely missed in the previous arc. The final chapters of volume 17 feel like a breath of fresh air, hopefully pointing toward compelling chapters ahead—though I fear the problem of an unappealing Ren may be not be solved anytime soon. ~ Twwk

Skip Beat is published by Viz.*

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Reader’s Corner is our way of embracing the wonderful world of manga, light novels, and visual novels, creative works intimately related to anime but with a magic all their own. Each week, our writers provide their thoughts on the works their reading—both those recently released as we keep you informed of newly published works and older titles that you might find as magical (or in some cases, reprehensible) as we do.

#Manga #She's My Knight #Ikemen Kanojo to Heroine na Ore #A Couple of Cuckoos #Kakkou no Iinazuke #Street Fighter Gaiden #The Dawn of the Witch #Mahoutsukai Reimeiki #Those Snow White Notes #Mashiro no Oto #Your Lie in April #Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso #Skip Beat!#Reader's Corner #Articles #Author: TWWK #Author: stardf29 #Author: Samuru #Author: MDMRN

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comicteaparty · 4 years

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June 10th-June 16th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from June 10th, 2020 to June 16th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

How does poor web design affect if and/or how you read a particular webcomic?

carcarchu

it's a huge factor. if a comic is amazing in every way but the website or app makes it difficult for me to read i'm simply NOT going to read it. there are a lot of great series that i've put on the back burner just because the website is so annoying to navigate

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i've honestly never run into a website so bad it stopped me from reading a comic i was interested in

carcarchu

FYI the worst comic app i've ever experienced is Aqua Kiss which I downloaded to read a single series. it's the most barebones app imaginable with no search bar. if you want to read something you actually have to manually load each calendar week to find it and some stuff are buried dozens of pages back. and to make matters worse it doesn't have a "history" or "bookmarks" feature either

Deo101 [Millennium]

The worst things with sites that I see often are 1: huge headers, and 2: laggy sites (not really site design, but its adjacent I think) Another is if the pages are too big on the screen, so you can't, for instance, see some panels all at once. Those kinds of things can really ruin a reading experience for me

carcarchu

One example of a website that is hostile to the reading experience is ZMYK which for some reason hosts vertical scroll comics but cuts them up into little pieces as if they were comic format so you can't actually scroll through the entire chapter as it was intended to

That kind of thing grinds my gears so much how can something you have to pay for be that incredibly bad

Deo101 [Millennium]

I've also seen some sites that have graphic design issues, where elements are illegible due to their color, and some have very busy and distracting backgrounds. Those kinds of things won't necessarily ruin it, but they're distracting

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

forward comic's website was doing this weird thing where the further I read the longer pages took to load. Near the end it seemed they were taking 10 full seconds. Still read the whole thing though. Reading manga on shady sites with terrible internet connection as a kid has desensitized me

Oh one comic I was interested in but didn't read because of the site: I was kidnapped by lesbian pirates from outer space. It doesn't have a website. To read it you have to pirate (hehe) copies of the archive.

It's a pretty sad story- the author was young and tricked into giving up the rights to her series

She ended up taking the site down to prevent the company from getting any more money off of it

https://rosalarian.tumblr.com/post/65353128180/its-with-extreme-sadness-that-i-announce-that-my

Here's her post about it

I think it can be a good warning message to us

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

For me, the biggest thing that deters me from reading a comic is if the website isn't well optimized for mobile (as someone who reads a lot on the go). This includes the images loading bigger than the page, or navigation being hidden on mobile, or glitchy scrolling, or any number of ungodly things. Also, too many ads. That'll turn me away in a heartbeat.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah ads are definitely a huge turnoff for me too

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@carcarchu okay i just digested this comment and wtf

no search bar is laughably bad omg

how did you even find out about it

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah that's ridiculous hahahaha

carcarchu

it's a shame because there are genuinely good comics on there you can't read anywhere else?? and i found it because an artist i adore did a series for it but it got AXED after only 2 chapters and after that was pretty much scrubbed from the internet. i think it's a shame because it really had so much potential and it ended before the story was really able to start

it's a screenshot from the app. you can see that it is categorized reverse chronologically by week

the point of aqua kiss is to emulate monthly/weekly style manga magazines but in app form. however i think the execution of this idea was horrendous

SteffieMusings

Oh no! It must make reading there so challenging. As for me, if the navigation is so hard to understand/pages don't load properly when you click a link or when the website's colours hurt my eyes so much I can't stay there for too long.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

Honestly nowadays most of the CMS's out there share the same basic functionality and adaptability, so it's getting harder to screw up on that. Most sites are OK, if only a bit laggy. If the site takes less than 2 seconds to load and it's not so crowded that I have to look for the comic, I'm generally good.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

How much bad/inaccessible web design I'll tolerate is directly proportional to how much I care about the comic.

I've dropped a couple series in the middle of the archive just because they changed the site design to screw up the tracking of bookmarking sites, so I would've had to figure out an alternate way to keep track of it, and it didn't seem worth the effort

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh yeah, I've totally had that happen too where I was deep into an archive, had taken a reading break for a month or two, and came back to find the urls had been updated and my spot was lost it isn't so bad if a comic also has an archive page, but ive stopped reading a few stories that it would have been too hard to track down where I was.

DaeofthePast

I haven’t had to experience weird websites in a while, but I do sometimes go to an unknown website to read the comic/manga I’m looking for. Mostly what I’ve had trouble with is unnumbered chapters, of that it’s unclear where/how to start reading in general.(edited)

Like, I get to the page for that specific comic and then there’s no easy “start reading here” button anywhere

And when I do find the chapters list, I don’t know which end of the list is the beginning bc it’s unnumbered

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Is a "First page" button enough or are you looking for a "new readers start here" button? (<- is redisigning her page)

DaeofthePast

Is there a difference? :0

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

hm, sometimes yes.

Some old running comics have different jump-on points (schlock mercenary for example).

DaeofthePast

Ooh I see

Well when I first go on the site, I just want to start reading so idk

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

So, I always try to read every comic that's featured in the book club all the way through. Like even if I don't particularly like the opening, or if the comic is thousands of pages long, or I don't have time to meaningfully discuss the comic, I do try to at least give the comic a fair shake by reading through the entire archive. There have been four exceptions. One was because of content (it was a gag a day comic, and the content was SO horrible for SO long that I just couldn't stand it anymore. real "punching down" type of humor). Another was because the comic was literally deleted before I could get to it. The remaining two were because the site design/organization were so awful that the comics were unreadable. One of the two comics had a custom built, hand-coded site (I assume), and it just... didn't work properly. Like the "previous" button seemingly took you to a random page, the "next" button and the "latest" button led to the same place, etc. I'm not sure the creator ever bothered to test the site. The other one used some pre-built stuff, so it was ok... but you had to scroll to the top of the page to go to the next page. Not only that, but the author was posting all their comics to the same archive - which means one page would be the comic that was actually meant to be read for the book club and the next few pages were a completely different comic entirely. And this wasn't a gag-a-day either - it was a story based comic, so the three action minimum to get to the next page made things absolute hell to keep track of.(edited)

DaeofthePast

Wow

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Uff, yeah, that sounds horrible.

Nyx+Nyssa's page is currently a barebone mess, but I made at least sure the navigation works. :/

DaeofthePast

Having the comic be deleted while you’re reading it sounds like such a weird experience lmao

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i mean, it wasn't thanos snap style lol

DaeofthePast

Was the website gone too or?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

it was in between days

nah the website was still there, it's just that the author had decided to reboot their comic and forgot that they had submitted it to the book club

DaeofthePast

Oh okay I imagined Thanos snap style

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Not really a design but a site thing: I can't do comics without an archive of some sort. On platforms like Tapas or WT, the episode list serves that purpose perfectly fine. I personally need to be able to see how many pages there are, and I need a way to go to specific pages easily. It might sound like a small complaint, but it's a big thing for me! There have been comics that piqued my interest, but once I saw that there was no archive of any form, I left forever. Sure, I might be missing out, but there are also lots of good comics out there that have accessible archives. My life isn't long enough to read them all, so I'm letting myself be very picky.

copperine

I can manage a very basic site just fine. But if a site is hard to navigate, or just makes reading the page/getting to the next page difficult - I'd be likely to give up eventually. Doesn't matter about the quality of the comic, but if it's a chore to just read it, it's going to put me off after a while

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I will note - if you want me to actually discuss your comic in the book club, please do have an archive link, and probably a cast page too. Like the lack of one doesn't stop me from reading entirely, but I can't discuss anything without being able to look back at specific moments. (and one of those archives that just has dates doesn't count - lemme know what the chapter is!)

copperine

For example - when I read webcomics on dA, I was absolutely fine with either the author having a dedicated folder with the pages in order. Another option was to link next and prev pages in the description. But if I had to go find each next page, I just wouldn't.

DaeofthePast

By an archive do you mean kinda like a chapters list?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

A list of all the pages, ideally

That also list the chapters somehow

copperine

Short version: if I feel like I'm spending half as much time navigating the site as I am actually reading, it's gonna get old real quick

DaeofthePast

And same copperine. As long as it’s organized well, I will probably read it

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like maybe you click on a chapter link to get to a list of the pages, or maybe it's just a list of the pages with the chapter names as headers

some sort of organization

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah! (I admit my own comic's archive page isn't the prettiest, but it's 100% functional.)

DaeofthePast

I only have a chapter list so far ^^; idk how to go about getting an archive

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Chapter list is totally fine if your chapters tend to be on the shorter side

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I like having chapter lists around, although coding them can be a handful Not sure if to go for an archive with thumbnails or just with page numbers though.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's also workable if you also have like... a dropdown menu for individual pages on the actual pages? So it only takes 2 clicks to go to a specific page (first click to go to the chapter, second click to go to the page)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

OH yeah, there was also a dA comic in the book club once that didn't have any next/previous buttons. However, it was a short comic - the bare minimum for getting into the book club - so I still read it all the way through. But it was pretty annoying to do so. (it was also pretty obviously a fetish comic, but that's not really relevant to the discussion XD)

DaeofthePast

I want to post by scene so I’ll be dividing chapters like “chapter 3 part 1” to hopefully that will be better

copperine

I'll always take functional over pretty

DaeofthePast

Haha I’m not sure if I want to know the comic for that one

Also what is “punching down” humor?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, the author was a straight man, and nearly every joke was making fun of people who weren't those things.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

it's like making fun of people but

copperine

Yikes

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

you're intentially trying to put them down

that's punching down in my imo rip

DaeofthePast

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yeah....

DaeofthePast

Well at least I know what to call it when I see it in the future ._.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, occasionally I see a shitty joke in a comic and I keep reading because maybe the author improved (we do sometimes get comics with archives that date back decades in here) But this comic was just so consistently awful for so long that I couldn't stand it

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

oof that aint good

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Though that's kinda off topic lol

DaeofthePast

Oh yeah

So bad site design...

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Anyway, I don't really wanna post the examples of the comics I talked about in here cuz I don't wanna call anyone out

Actually, hold on, lemme check something

DaeofthePast

I feel I haven’t had too much experience with bad site designs, but I might have just forgotten(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

ok yeah

so, the comic where you had to scroll up to the top of each page to click to the next one, and the site was multiple comics alternating pages that made the story rough to follow

copperine

Oof yeah having to scroll up to click next won't stop me but it is a bother

DaeofthePast

I like having the next button both on top and the bottom, even if they update page by page(edited)

It just feels convinient

copperine

Yeah same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Re: punching up/down, here's an overly simplistic set of examples: billionaires making fun of poor people is punching down. Poor people making fun of billionaires is punching up.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

's good webdesign pattern for everything with continous content - e.g. blogs, web-novels, webcomics.

Ideally you have one on top, between content and comments and under comments

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

the comic that alternated storylines & required scrolling back up to go to the next page was Antibunny: http://vinnied.comicgenesis.com/d/20061002.html if you see that page I linked and click next a few times, there's no obvious distinction between the main story and the spinoff story (no, like, header change between the two, and the art style looks similar), so you can see how it'd be confusing to follow and the scrolling is just icing on the cake (it used to be even worse) the only reason I feel comfortable sharing that is because the author uploaded the comics to new sites, and fixed all those issues in the process: http://antibunny.net/

DaeofthePast

Oh nice. So they realized the problem

copperine

Aren't they in this server? Or am I thinking of another one

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah, the author is in this server

copperine

I thought so

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Hence why he realized, because we told him that there was a problem during the book club

copperine

I'm not gonna take anything said here as a comment on anyway btw

DaeofthePast

It’s cool that submitting their comic to the tea party resulted in some good feedback :3

copperine

You love to see it!

It always makes me happy when webcomic community stuff helps people out, that seems like the ideal outcome

DaeofthePast

Yess

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

i agree on that yeee

DaeofthePast

It’s like having a friend point out a spelling mistake. Embarrassing but you can live with the knowledge that your work is now a little bit better(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah kinda off-topic, but I love it when the author of the comic for the book club joins the server. Like not only does it mean that the author could join in on others' discussions in the future (pay it forward 'n stuff), but... it's just really sad when I see a comic pop up in the book club and the author seemingly forgot they submitted it.

DaeofthePast

How long does it usually take to get to a comic? :0 that they would forget they submitted it?

copperine

I always hope I can help others out or support them, and I hope they feel the same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The book club had a very very long wait list in the past. These days, not so long.

DaeofthePast

And I guess if you submit a comic with a website, the people here can be your beta testers

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

what's odd is that five months ago, the wait list was six months but now, the wait list is two months y'all need to submit/resubmit your comics

DaeofthePast

I tried going to submit mine yesterday and the site doesn’t let me v.v says you’re booked for July

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

oh yeah, so it is

DaeofthePast

Maybe later :3

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i guess Rebel doesn't want the queue to get too long

copperine

I would submit mine but I'm only at 10 pages and I believe you need to have 20 to submit

DaeofthePast

Ooh they have a minimum?

Gotta count my pages now

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean it makes sense. Hard to discuss a comic that only has the cover for chapter 1

DaeofthePast

Tru

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

"Let us dissect this cover image for an entire week"

DaeofthePast

It would be a hilarious April fools challenge

copperine

Idk I think it was 20 minimum?

DaeofthePast

shrug

copperine

@snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) can you shed any light on this

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The sign up form is where you would normally find that information.

copperine

... very good point

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But the form is currently unavailable, and it's possible that Rebel might change the requirement when it becomes available again

copperine

Thank you for the heads up

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

FYI, https://comicteaparty.com/ is where the form will be available eventually

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

They accept resubmissions now?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I def like arrows on the top and bottom of pages for sites to be more of a thing, as well as clicking the image for the next page too! Honestly there hasn't been a make or break, mainly preferences, and the most complaints i have are with the mobile formatting. I think most comics have been pretty solid in functionality that i've read, and it's clear that having their own website is becoming mainstream enough for there to be help, tips, and tricks to making it work!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I definitely prefer if I can just click on the comic image to go to the next page especially for mobile.

copperine

Agreed!

Idk about resubmissions tho

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... Wow. I absolutely HATE clickable images on mobile, because they usually mess with the pinch-zoom.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i've had sites that didnt have image click throughs and the arrow..... was like SO TINY XD

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Didn't think anyone would actually like it, so... huh.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i kept going back and forth

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

yeah, navigation needs to be bigger on mobile for safe tapping.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh, re:resubmissions, I'm pretty sure you can if it's been long enough? I think @snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) mentioned it recently as an option. But maybe a tangent for #general

boogeymadam

i dont mind the pinch zoom being a little more difficult from time to time cause usually the clickable image is worth it to me

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Same

boogeymadam

am also fond of sites that allow left/right arrows to let you move forward and back on desktop

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Mainly it's just for like Krispy said, reading on mobile and tiny next/previous buttons.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ye my dummy thicc fingers prefer the click through image for sure

ohh yes Boogey that too

boogeymadam

it took me hours of googling to find the very simple comicpress option to just turn that on on my site

copperine

Mmm I do like sites that allow pinch zoom though

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I also prefer clicking on the image to go to the next page

mariah (rainy day dreams)

My fingers small, but still dummy T-T

copperine

It makes it easier to get a better look at the page

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

iweudhweiu Mariah XD

copperine

Especially if it's got smaller font

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

nyxandnyssa has a seperate navigation for mobile that's much bigger and skipping scene select to make tapping easier.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I've had the hover text def bum me out for some comics, where you click the image and it just displays the text, then you gotta click the tiny next bar def killed me there

copperine

I've never had issues with pinch zoom affecting clickable images but I can imagine it would be annoying

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

but! never breaks me out of a comic for me to stop reading-! i persevere in the face of adversity XD

boogeymadam

i've never encountered a site so bad i couldnt continue reading. maybe stuff where i'd stop reading until i was less frustrated but i'd come back later.

DaeofthePast

That’s something I’ll have to consider for my site then

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I feel like Smackjeeves had a really obnoxious auto pitch & zoom before they updated most recently. I like when I can turn it off on my phone. I'd rather do it myself most of the time and let my phone try to auto it X')

DaeofthePast

I usually read on desktop more often than on mobile so it’s good to hear from other’s experiences

copperine

Idk I've never used a custom site yet

boogeymadam

same dae, except on tapas and webtoons!(edited)

comics with their own website i'll boot up my computer for a single update of

DaeofthePast

Even on webtoons I read on desktop

boogeymadam

omg your power, webtoons feels so choppy on desktop to me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

im definitely lucky that our site got a mobile friendly version i remember the 'ol pinchy zoomz was tiresome on our site for sure

DaeofthePast

I get headaches from reading on my phone unfortunately :/

Idk what the difference is between reading mobile and on a desktop but my brain doesn’t like it

Like, I can text fine???? But reading a comic for some reason is like “no”

So yeah, comics on desktop for me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohh!! it could be the close proximity!

DaeofthePast

Ooh :0 maybe?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i know i get motion sickness depending on how close/ far i am from screens

DaeofthePast

Maybe it’s something like that... :O

boogeymadam

whatever the reason sorry you get headaches and motion sickness from comics :'0

DaeofthePast

Every once in a while I’ll try again to read on mobile I never learn

boogeymadam

the only reason i dont like mobile is sometimes comics text is a combination of too small there and the font is hard on my dyslexia

DaeofthePast

Rip

boogeymadam

so i see if zooming in on my computer helps

DaeofthePast

The lesson here is that it’s good to have both mobile and desktop options

boogeymadam

yep :'D

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohhh yea def agree. I know that feeling and i sometimes ... have a Time reading my own work XD (i admit it lol!!)

boogeymadam

sometimes my own comic is hard on my dyslexia for The Effect so i never have hard feelings with other comics

copperine

(brb)

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ewiudhiwue the things we do AT WHAT COST XD

DaeofthePast

Asdfghjkl

Meanwhile I use the same font for everything

boogeymadam

wait im gonna generalize this more so it can be a party

DaeofthePast

Please post that on pillowfort so I can reblog it

boogeymadam

you can post it for yourself if you want dae!

i'm having a hard time logging on asdfgjh

DaeofthePast

Rip sure

copperine

Ah see I have both

Because hand lettering

It's great for feeling right for a comic but also eternally wondering if it's readable

DaeofthePast

Ooh yeah I guess that would count as both

What’s your comic btw :0

Wait, we’re supposed to be talking about website design right

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yep! If it gets too off topic, you can always continue in another channel that's more fitting.

copperine

Ah sorry! Sure thing

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Mobile is too small for me

DaeofthePast

Yeah

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

(oHHMYYGOSH BOOGEY XD)

boogeymadam

mm archives were mentioned already, and how it can really turn readers away to simply not have one at all? my favorite archive is https://www.vaingloriouscomic.com/comic/archive 's but i've seen some where they attempted an all picture archive and it backfired by just being a page of all empty boxes. this didn't deter me from reading it and it got fixed pretty quick tho~ mine is one of these and its a very chonky slowmoving page cause i uploaded the first 90ish as fullsized pictures. nobody's ever complained so idk if it's ever deterred anyone from reading but i know i gotta fix it someday.(edited)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I really dont mind any kind of web design in particular though tbh. I prefer desktop sites but it’s fine if the design isnt great

DaeofthePast

Have you guys ever gone to a comic website (for a single comic) and the colors used in the background were so bright that it felt like they were blinding you to the point it was hard to read the actual pages?

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My archive is down right now becayse it broke and I dont know how to fix it lol

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i def want a fully view-able archive but we're gonna be hitting 800 pages and i dont know how well that will work XD

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

But I have a navigation bar now

boogeymadam

u could have multiple pages of archive, krispy!

i'm starting a new page for chapter 2

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Or dropdown menus

boogeymadam

but its probably important to have a dropdown if u have more than 1 page, yeah

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I want to switch to picture archives, but I haven't found a good plug in/way to get my word press to do it :( if anyone has recommendations...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I wish I knew how to make dropdown menus

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i'll have to bring that up ! we dont do the tech work for our site ( thank gosh seriously) but i love archives that show full pages

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

If I could make dropdown menus I would be unstoppable

copperine

I miss the drop-downs on SJ

boogeymadam

i feel like dropdowns are smth i pretty much only exclusively see on hiveworks comics

i wonder what their secret is,,,

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I’ve inspected the elements on so many hiveworks sites lol

I want to know

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

they use word press I think

for their comic sites

just have to do some digging with the site html and csss

copperine

Right click and inspect maybe...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Php stands for my Personal hell pit

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

if i could go undercover for yall i would XD

boogeymadam

also!! @mariah (rainy day dreams) i use elementor for mine

its not perfect and breaks like every time i update it but it works asdfg

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... I'm currently writing a sparkling fresh wp-plugin for my page (comic easel wasn't doing what I wanted), but I am also a software dev who enjoys coding.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My template I use functions in mostly php and xml and its gibberish to me but functions so well I dont know how to improve it to have specific things I want

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

my knowledge with site design is basic at best lmao

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

wordpress is a bit special in that it does most things more complicated than strictly necessary.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but I do like fiddling with stuff

^that too lmao

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I know Shiza of osarilho is really good at web designing? she's made some beautiful work with her site!

boogeymadam

i want to ask shiza for more help but not before i have some money to pay her :')

she's helped me a lot already

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I can do html and css at the babiest level

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'll check that out Boogey, thanks! Even if it does break X') And I guess I'll just make a note to start stashing money to hire shiza XD im definitely at the point where my site needs a general face lift, but I don't have the spoons for it.

boogeymadam

imo i've made some really pretty pges with it. it's a drag and drop that's excellent at galleries, but it doesn't like when you don't have even rows for some reason

the wordpress plugin, Elementor, i mean.

copperine

I've been wanting to try comicpress for ages

I just don't know where to start

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'm gonna move over to #shop_talk for my response

copperine

I had someone who was gonna help me out but we lost contact so it's on the back burner

boogeymadam

OOPS yeah

copperine

But for websites in general I prefer to have one that feels very basic than one that feels too busy or crowded

I'm not a graphic designer at all lol

If I do try an independent site I'm planning to pay a coding friend to help me

DaeofthePast

yeah i have no idea what I'm doing when working on my site, it's kinda basic, but at least it looks nice

copperine

I just use a premade theme on my ComicFury site

It works and that's good enough for me so far

Oh I guess the other thing that would put me off reading a comic is if the site isn't formatted for mobile, and/or particularly if the site doesn't have adaptive formatting

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

same, but editted it hard core so it looks like it's own thing lmao

copperine

I usually read on my phone because my computer is where I work so I like to get off it for hobbies

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but for me uh i guess mobile i try to read it either on tapas, webtoon or its own site

I find just clicking the page to the next one helps me a lot lol I don't do a lot of zooming

copperine

Mmm

copperine

It's personal preference a lot tbh!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I like my comuter because its big

copperine

Valid

Mine is not

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

did anyone talk about paying me please you don't have to do that

copperine

Idk but you can pay me

Idk what for but

I'll take money

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I absolutely would have to if you made my site awesome X') work is work, and you should be paid for it

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

fair enough

Just send me a DM whenever you're up for that and lemme take a look at what you already have

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I would hire someone to do web design for me but I dont have the funds & I dont wnat to make someone do work for me for free

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

I've been meaning to set up my own website for a while now, since the collective i was originally hosting my webcomic with kinda fell apart, but it's so much work and i'm hella intimidated :'''D

copperine

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) there's been some related discussion in #shop_talk and I believe @boogeymadam might be able to advise (I'm sure others can too but I'm going off the convo from earlier)

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) depending on how much it is I can help you out

RebelVampire

Admin Reminder Remember this channel is for experiences as a reader first and foremost, so #shop_talk and #general are better if you want to discuss your own stuff.

DaeofthePast

thank you for the reminder :3

RebelVampire

I would say poor web design is something I have a complicated relationship regarding webcomics. On the one hand, outside of a site being 100% completely broken, I'm willing to sit through a lot to read. So in terms of affecting whether I read a comic the first time or not, there isn't much to say there. But it does affect how engaged I am with the comic. Cause if I can't easily go back to re-read a page, easily find things like character names, have to deal with extreme lag cause the host is garbage, have to deal with eye bleeding color schemes, etc. you can bet your bottom dollar 1 time is all that comic is going to get in terms of reading it. I can only subject myself to so much, and if I don't feel like reading a comic again because of the site itself, I'm going to quickly forget it in favor of comics whose sites don't make me cry. I do give more leeway to sites created by creators in many respects. But professional bigtime hosts like Tapas or Webtoons literally have no excuse for some of their garbage design choices. And some of their design choices are super duper garbage.

DaeofthePast

that's true yeah, there's a big distinction of the quality expectations between sites by small creators and those of big companies like Webtoons

RebelVampire

At the same time, though, I know from first hand experience that poor design choices are literally influenced by user data for bigger companies. So for every decision I consider stupid- at the same time they probably did the AB tests that showed crappy design A had better results for their conversion rates than user friendly design B.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Which boggles my mind

I wonder if there's some kinda causation-correlation thing going on that the A/B tests could not detect accurately

boogeymadam

Rebel mentioned sites that have eyebleedy color schemes and I'm in the same boat; will read the comic, just will be turning down the screen brightness a looot. Sites that have a huge space of extremely neon background that distracts from the comic make me reluctant to read on the site, and I'll look for a mirror before trying. That white background of the 2 big comic hosting sites can at least be affected and turned dark by nightmode when needed, while nightmode doesn't work on half the bright comic sites I've tried it on. u-u

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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kierongillen · 5 years

Text

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 40

Spoilers, obv.

The first issue of "Okay." I've known for quite some time that it was likely the final arc would use the word "Okay" in some way. The unpacking phrase "It's going to be okay" has been a backbone of the series. Due to the first year on the book, that's been a loaded phrase, all the way through.

But when signing a first volume of the book, I've added the dedication "It's going to be okay." There's lots to unpack in that, and I suspect I'll wait until later in this arc to say any more. But knowing that eventually we'd like have an arc called "Okay" was definitely part of doing it.

The quotation marks are key. It's a move I've done a few times in my career, in terms of showing it's a story that wants to highlight something, and raise awareness that the word should be approached with conscious consideration. This is a choice. I want you to know it's a choice. Let's talk about what that actually means anyway, right?

It's a technique I first lifted from Bowie's "Heroes". Which, of course, is doubly appropriate to use it at the end of WicDiv.

We knew they'd be a gap between the end of Mothering Invention and the start of this. The remaining five issues of the arc were tightly plotted, but in the document, this is the one which I left a lot open. I knew what I wanted to be, and it was a chance of finding an execution to make it work. It was a last chance to do a big concept issue.

(Which isn't to say there isn't conceptual stuff elsewhere in the arc. There just isn't a whole issue of it.)

This is something that I've been trying to do since issue 6. As in, a purely fan-centric issue of mainly talking heads. Every time, it's had to be cut for space. The talking heads shots of realistic footage, showing a lot of fans views on the matter. You get ghosts of it – any time Beth turns up, you get some, basically, but all of those moments could have been issues in another version of WicDiv.

(The one we won't be doing is the whole issue of literal talking heads. As in, Tara, Lucifer and Inanna just telling stories. That's fun, but we just don't have the time, and when I realised I had to stop them talking, it was definitely out. Oh, Minerva. You spoil everything.)

Equally, WicDiv's a book with two poles – the modern fan pop cultural part and the mythological grandeur. We swing one way or another, and it's easy for the latter to mug the former. I suspect that's because that's the easier stuff. Especially as Laura has gone down her hole, she's been incapable of seeing the good parts of fandom. An issue of that before the end, seemed necessary.

(Equally, with where it goes. Like, we start with Laura as a fan, and end with her on stage, saving people. The Bowie Saved More People Than Batman of WicDiv. It's a book about cycles, and ever more so here.)

So! The other side is this apocalyptic final scheme, and give a perspective on that – the necessary plot. Equally, keeping Laura off stage as long as possible.

So we end up with this.

I knew wanting to pick up and run with minor characters in WicDiv was something I wanted to do, and merging it with a disaster rapidly led to something else – this is clearly an inverted Watchmen 11. There, they gather the supporting cast together in the b-plot and then with a I-did-it-35-minutes-ago kill them all. We flip that. We imply everyone we're watching is dead, reintroduce the whole cast and then have Laura save them.

Suffice to say, formally, this was tricky.

Jamie and Matt's cover:

Meet Tom. We surveyed the whole supporting cast and picked someone who was present enough in a scene to be likely to be remembered but minor enough to be a surprise. In the end, there were less options... and the kid who asks Persephone about what to call her obviously has some strong thematic elements. She told him something. What did he make of it? It also gave a supporting cast of friends.

It's fun doing a cover like this and people going "who the hell is he?"

I wish he wasn't white and male – if I realised I was definitely going to use him in issue 24, I'd have likely have suggested otherwise. But, on the other hand, there is a point that white male guys should have heroes who aren't white male guys. So maybe I'm okay with it. Comics!

Claire Roe's Cover Well, this is monstrous. You do get the image of Minerva, like she's in Home Alone, trying to smuggle skulls. Just some great images here.

Ray Fawkes' Cover

For the Heroes Inititative Charity. The theme was "Giving" which immediately jumped to a "Lucifer giving an apple." Giving is very loaded for us. Ray is amazing – he's been an incredible support throughout all of WicDiv, and we love him. Go buy his books. My favourite is THE PEOPLE INSIDE, but for something more genre, the UNDERWINTER books are fascinating, horror. UNDERWINTER: SYMPHONY is the adult gothic sister of Wicdiv, if you squint.

IFC

Flipping "Ascended Fangirl" into "Descended God" was sitting in the script for this issue before anything else.

Page 3

Black page with white text is something that's come to the fore in the last year of WicDiv. In here, the exact word choice was key. While this feels like a documentary in terms of how it arranges information, the text doesn't tell you that. It tells you it's just footage. This means that it's not necessarily an in-world document.

Page 4-5

Working out the exact panel dimensions was a nightmare, and led to a couple of rewrites to move some pages from eight panel to a more accurate six panel. You can also see Jamie start to wrestle with the unique horror of drawing stuff that is slightly distorted, choosing angles which are less traditionally interesting and so on.

Unboxing videos are a fascinating phenomena. It's fun to see culture happen which I fundamentally don't get on an emotional level. That's what culture should throwing up.

The details on the ticket do make me smile, in an awful way.

Yes, the "change the orientation" panel is clearly us showing off. This is the sort of issue I did a lot of doodles for. It also led to a bunch of lettering challenges for Clayton, in working out whether to put balloon tails off-camera to signify the other speaker. In the end, Clayton talked us into the other approach, noting it worked fine in Mister Miracle. Hey, if Tom King does it, I guess it's fine with us.

It's worth noting the way the off-panel speaker is orientated, to ensure you know who they are. See the "Tom" in the dialogue in the second panel, to ensure you know it's Nathan.

"The front row if it kills us" is very us. This issue is a mix of awful tension and strokes of equally awful gallows humour. His smile is also adorable.

Page 6

Sometimes the most beautiful thing in the world is a page of exposition via the medium of power-point. We're all big fans of the 1960s kirby superhero maps, and this is kind of the same thing.

Page 7

This is also a masterclass in a "Naturalism is hard" sort of page layout. The choice of the greys by Matt is really nice too.

Page 8

And back with Tom and friends. Worth noting the planning on this issue – I had this list of scenes, and tried to work how much I can cut between them to create a rhythm, which obviously accelerates the further we go in.

"Shitting them whole"? Nathan is totally right. Tom, you re NASTY.

Trying to get a subplot which fit in the space for them is key. Like, friends navigating a space. That Tom and Nathan are both far from perfect in this is also important. I just realised this is totally an alt-dimension Kohl and Kid-with-knife scene.

Page 9

The greatest tragedy of WicDiv is we never got around to doing the WicDiv calendar with all the dates on. Will we get around to it for Christmas 2019? IT COULD BE POSSIBLE.

The problem in terms of story here is getting the multiple lies – Woden doesn't know what Baal has had him to do, and Baal doesn't know what Minerva is making him do. So trying to set that information up so is clear, while also in a naturalistic fashion is a trick.

We were having LOC CAPs on some of this footage, but decided to cut them all. Only some of them had it, and having it on them all would create a mess. This is the one I regret though – there's one tiny bit of information I'd like to have got in here. C'est la vie.

The colour banding on this is fascinating – the late night recording. Also, Jamie's burn on the calendar is golden.

Page 10

This was another one where the lines were worked hard. What happens BEFORE the image, what happens AFTER the image and all that.

Anyway, some good thinking here Tom.

The chat between the two, in terms of fans-beliefs and minor pieces, and hot takes and their own beliefs. Also re-introducing certain takes.

Page 11

This page is hard. The silent third panel is amazing – what Jamie does with the panning between the two. The caption would have revealed who's filming it – the Sister – but that isn't essential information.

"You soppy twat" is something I'm oddly pleased with getting in. It's a very naturalistic issue, and the tenderness is very real.

There has been a tendency for people to take Baal's fight against the Great Darkness solely to save his family, and understandable why. This scene and what follows shows that no, it's not just that. He actually believes he's saving the world, because if he didn't, he certainly wouldn't fucking do this.

Page 12

And Minerva reveals her side of all this. The little callback to 1373 does make me smile.

The stylistic nature of this is key – Jamie doing the fish-eye, Matt working the blues, giving that night vision creepiness.

Page 13-14

This issue was definitely me trying to look for ways for Jamie to not just draw a million crowd-scenes. The first two is definitely me lampshading it.

In passing, this two pages is basically all of Young Avengers in sixteen panels.

The last panel is a thing of love, and definitely inspired by a Glastonbury festival, circa 1998. I'm there alone, as it was one of the infamous wet years, waiting for Nick Cave to come on the main stage. A highly high and/or drunk guy stops beside me, after pushing through the crowd. He's clearly very excited, to the level where a group of younger women start to join in and/or mock him. He is very entertaining.

Nick Cave comes on stage, doing a half-speed From Her To Eternity.

"From her."

"To."

Eternity."

Murmurs Nick.

Our new friend hasn't actually noticed and howls at the top of his lungs...

"FROM HHHHEERRRRR TOOooOOOOOOooOOOOOOoo ETERRNNITYYYY!"

...at at least twice the speed of Nick.

At which point, he's decides he wants to be further front. Turning to the people around him, he suggests we all go forward. "Yeah?" "Yeah!" the girls scream, and immediately they all form a conga and start pushing through the crowd, with him chanting "NICK CAVE ARMY COMING THRUUUUUU!"

I join in, as clearly I want to follow this journey. It leads us to the front, where I believe I stay for the rest of the night?

On the way to the front I step on the shoe of a guy who, a year or two later, invites me to storm the stage on a Saturday morning TV show. I turn it down, and then he only goes and does it anyway.

Pop music!

Anyway, that panel is for that guy, wherever he is.

Page 15

Okay, I can't hold off crowd scenes forever. Sorry Jamie, but not too sorry, as this looks amazing. Matt pushing the controls completely into the red, with the distortions going on. This is everything. It's also the panel where the conceit of watching television is lowest – the panel shape is wrong, and it's unlikely a camera would be on Baal's mum on the top of the pillar... but they are deniably so, I suspect.

I look at this page and smile. This is some comics. Nice work, us.

Page 16-17-18-19

And we're off. This is... oh, god. There were diagrams for this, in terms of working out panel flow. There's multiple routes through the two pages, which cascade together. The backbone is the "Baal" story arc, across the diagonal on both spreads.

The second panel reads across both pages – notice the orange band leading you to the right – where a talking head explains what's actually going on at the gig, and why everyone is being immersed.

When you finish this row, you get the presenter giving the context for the remaining talking heads. On the first spread, you get a talking head talking answering the question... and then placing them in the crowd. When that ideas's been set up, in the second spread we have multiple talking heads answering it, which all gather around a single group shot showing them all by each other, unknowing. And then there's Tom, and his friends, mixed in, with Tom's own answer stumbling towards his own truth, and his friends together, joined in this.

I'm getting excited here, clearly, but this is some engineered machine monstrosity, and I love how it collaborates with the reader.

This made it a nightmare for the guided view on Comixology. We contacted them in advance, offering to help a little. In the end, I wrote my suggested route, and they went with it. Moving from a non-linear sequence to a linear sequence clearly changes it somewhat, but I think it keeps a lot of the percussion. So don't blame them, blame me.

Oh – I had a list of people to possibly include in this sequence, and selected from them. There's been some impressive attempts by readers to ID everyone. Clearly, I tried to signal who they were in their dialogue a little. My personal hero is the guy from issue 19 who saw Dionysus before Baph nabbed him. You're a fucking legend too, mate.

Tweaks we did was realising it was three hetero-reading couples on the first page, which was heteronormative. We changed that to avoid it. And, yes, that's Jon's mum.

The one I wished I could get in, but lost, was the guy standing to the right of Laura in Issue one, who jizzed to Amaterasu. His line would have been something like "I hope I enjoy this one as much as that time with Amaterasu!"

This is an awful book, in many ways.

20-21

And just let the awful moment linger. Do it naturally and show it. All that rush and then this. Once more, Matt Wilson for Eisners. The hyperbright is one thing, but the flicker on the aftermath another. And the hint of the giant in there is also carefully worked – it's something we needed there, but also was a small part of it. What was important just imagining all those people dying.

Inevitable Total Eclipse Of The Heart reference, the go-to song for ending WicDiv dance parties.

23-24

And then, after all that, we get this moment, building towards that final image of Laura.

Honestly, this got to me when Jamie first sent it to me in a burst into tears way. You've come a long way.

I also like the idea that Laura, before heading out, looked through all her stuff and decided "Yes, Hoop ear-rings are the look for saving 20,000 people."

Next issue is out on Wednesday.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #writer notes

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theangelofvengeance · 7 years

Text

Jacket Required (Hopper X Meeshell) Oneshot

Rain had broken out outside Ever After High like cats and dogs. With cold rainy days like this, any plans that the students have had after school was nevertheless canceled or at least been put on hold until the entire weekend. However, that really didn't seem to bother Hopper Croakington II at all. Because he decided to use this little rainy day to his advantage, kicking back at the lounge room with a brand new comic book in hand. It was pretty much his escape from all the crap he had been experiencing, mostly being sick and tired of being shot down over and over again by almost the female student body in this school. After all, Hopper hadn't been having very much luck with love, knowing that he had been the son of the Frog Prince.

By then, one of his lava lamps had blared around the room, making it very easy and relaxing for Hopper to read out the latest issue of SuperFrog with a can of Mountain Spell in hand.

"Oh, no way, SuperFrog's got BirdBrain's cornered now! He definitely won't get away this time!" Hopper smirked at the panel.

And once he had turned the page, Hopper's look of excitement had turned into shock at what he saw next.

"Oh, great, now BirdBrain's summoned his goons." sighed Hopper. "I'll tell ya, that's starting to get very old."

Before he could turn another page though, he jumped out of nowhere as a mysterious pink-haired girl popped from the door looking wet and shivered all over with teeth chattering. Much to Hopper's surprise, that mysterious pink-haired girl happened to be the daughter of the Little Mermaid, Meeshell Mermaid. Looking by all of the water dripping right through her skin, Hopper was led to believe that she was either rained on or perhaps something else.

Either way, Hopper was quite willing to find out.

"So, did you just get rained on or what?" He asked.

"K-K-K-Kitty rained water ba-ba-balloons on me while I opened the d-d-door to the pool." Meeshell said, shivering from the water.

"Yeah, Kitty tends to do that to everybody. It's her sorta thing." Hopper reminded her.

"Where... where d-d-did she even g-g-get the water?!" She shivered again.

"Possibly from Spellaska," guessed Hopper. "I don't really know how in the hex Kitty could even afford their blistering cold water over there in the first place."

Suddenly, Meeshell had found herself eyeing at one of the new leather sofas that had just been shipped over to the lounge room. Oh, how her body would just mold over to those warm seats, helping her get a little dry in response.

"Hey Hopper, is anyone using that sofa?" she asked.

"Oh no, go right ahead." Hopper said, giving her some room.

After giving his approval, Meeshell managed to lay her entire body around the sofa, resting while trying to get rid of the shivers that were being caused by the freakishly cold water. Meeshell was literally frozen due to the after effects caused from the ice-cold water balloons that Kitty dumped on her as a prank. Hopper could even feel her shivers tremble all over the room and from where he was sitting at. It made him a little concerned for wear though.

"Um Meeshell, don't you need a blanket or anything?" He asked her.

"Actually, I'm f-f-fine," she responded while shivering, "These leather seats will be w-w-warm enough for me."

"Okay, suit yourself." Hopper shrugged in an unsure way.

With Meeshell trying to rest out the wet feeling away, Hopper decided to go back to his comic book without any interruptions, hoping that he would get a little peace and quiet without any worry.

An hour later...

Hopper was quickly rubbing his eyes, feeling a little bit tired of what was gonna happen next to his favorite superhero.

"Oh no, SuperFrog's now trapped in BirdBrain's goop!" He gasped right at the comic panel, "Ohh, and it's untrappable too? That can't be good."

As much as he wanted a little peace and quiet, he couldn't seem to get it for some reason as he heard a sound of shivering coming from beside him.

The froggy prince groaned as he put his comic book down, only to see Meeshell shivering quite to death from the freakishly cold water. Hopper was obviously led to believe if Kitty's pranks had gotten a little too far for wear.

The guy obviously started to feel very bad for Meeshell right now. Seeing her all alone drenched in nothing but cold water beads around her face, arms and entire body forced a very compassionate side inside Hopper to break out on the open. There was no way that he was gonna leave her out near-frozen. So he knew the only way how to fix this uncomfortable situation of hers.

"I think I know what I should do..." He thought to himself.

Without trying to wake Meeshell up, Hopper decided to take off his crimson/yellow striped coat and draped it all over Meeshell's shoulders, basicially using his coat as a blanket in order to warm the mermaid up. Along with that unexpected gesture from him came a fascinating smile all around her face. Hopper never imagined how peaceful and innocent Meeshell was when she was sleeping with his coat around hers. All of those shudders came away instantly off of her, now shedding the warmth of his coat all over the mermaid infectiously.

After she sighed dreamily in her sleep, Hopper went back to his sofa and popped his comic book back up for him to read again.

"There, that should warm her up..." he thought while taking one last look at a sleeping Meeshell.

30 minutes later...

Hopper had now slumped to the sofa, resting himself for a nap while the comic book he was reading rested on top of his chest.

As he was sleeping, Meeshell started to open her eyes one at a time, possibly as a signal that she had woken up from her very long nap. With the snooze that she took, no wonder it felt like sleeping an entire day without any lunch at all. After she rubbed some of the dust off her precious pool-blue eyes, she noticed something being draped all over her shoulders like an entire weight crashing down on her. Meeshell looked to both of her shoulders, trying to analyze what this was around her entire back and around her neck.

"What the hex do I have around my neck...?" muttered a drowsy Meeshell.

But then, it suddenly hit her right now.

The thing that was draped around Meeshell's shoulders was none other than the coat of one Mr. Hopper Croakington. She looked over to the froggy prince, who just like her was also sleeping peacefully without any bother whatsoever. Her heart felt taken aback at his kind gesture towards her. He was willing to give up something of him in order to keep her warm from all of the cold water that had been drenched all over her from Kitty's water balloon prank. Thanks to him, she was now all dried up from the hydrogen.

"I can't believe he did that for me," Meeshell thought. "I feel like I should repay him back..."

And repay him she did.

While Hopper was still nodding around in his sleep, a sneaky yet quiet Meeshell got off from the sofa and tip toed over to the froggy prince himself. As he cocked his head a little forward out of wooziness, Meeshell took a deep breath and closed up toward his face, capturing his lips with hers with a very tender kiss. Meeshell was taken breathless of his mint-scented lips, forcing the kiss to last a little bit long before Hopper's eyes bulged in surprise, therefore waking him up! Seeing his eyes open up like that, Meeshell immediately broke away with a bright red blush around her cheeks.

"Ohh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it..." gulped the mermaid.

"Meeshell... what was that all about?" Hopper said, displaying a little slant smile.

Not trying to hide it anymore, she thought up a perfect response for him.

"I just wanted to say thank you for lending me your jacket," Meeshell replied. "It was feeling really cold here."

After hearing what he had to say coming from the fragile pink-haired songbird, Hopper thought of the best reply to her...

...

...with a smile.

"Anything I can do to help, Meeshell." Hopper nodded before adding, "You can keep it if you can want."

"I'd love that." She blushed once more, right before heading back to her sofa and going back to her nap with Hopper's coat draped all around her.

She just couldn't help but be smitten of the way Hopper had tended to her like this. As her eyes closed all the way, all Meeshell was doing was thinking of the crimson-haired gentleman non-stop. She really owed him thanks to that caring deed of Hopper's. Something on the inside told her she definitely wanted to know a lot more about him way more than Meeshell could ever imagine.

#Ever After High #EAH #Hopper Croakington II #Meeshell Mermaid #oneshot #fanfiction #romance #fluff #sweet #cute

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arkus-rhapsode · 7 years

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What is Canon in Fairy Tail?

Hey guys so of recent I’ve had this thought on my mind of the canon of the series of Fairy Tail. Before I dive into discussing fairy tail spefically I want to first establish this idea of what is canon. The definition of canon is “ a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine.” The big point of that is “Genuine”. With many series in popculture having expanded into media in different fields it is often debated over what is genuine article.

Now Fairy Tail started as manga written by Hiro Mashima, and if it had just stayed a manga then the way of accepting what is genuine would be simple, what’s written and drawn is canon. Hiro Mashima is the creator of this world and all these characters, he is it’s god. Whatever he’d write would be considered canon no matter the context, he could very well write that Natsu is the Easter bunny and that be canon, even if it would make no sense in context of everything that had happened up to the point but Natsu is Hiro’s creation he can decide what Natsu is or isn’t.

However, Fairy Tail isn’t only a manga, like many manga, it was adapted into an anime. As well as light novels, movies, and spinoff manga. Well I’ll try to tackle each of these and boy this is going to be tough.

Now let’s first start with the anime, the general idea of an anime is to capitalize on the popularity of a series to make money for a studio, while promoting the original manga. An often underlining rule among anime/Manga fans is the manga is canon and the anime’s job is to adapt it on to the small screen while adding things to immerse yourself into the world such as music, actors, and coloring. Now here’s the biggest problem when discussing anime is filler and to discuss filler we need to define what is filler. Filler is again meant to immerse yourself into the world of the manga, however with filler there’s a very cynical approach to it and that this is a studio that needs to fill a contractional obligation. Be it one slot or a whole arc to build up chapters to adapt so there doesn’t need to be more filler. Now, here’s the issue when talking about filler in fairy tail and it goes to a little arc called key to the starry night.

With other filler arcs such as the eclipse celestial spirit arc and the daphne arc it’s easy to scoff off them as “they don’t count” because there is no reference to them in the manga at all. But with Key to the starry night arc there is a reference by Yukino in the manga. Even calling it “the zentopia incident” and just to make this cock tail of confusion complete, we add creator involvement. Now let’s try and break this down, first, thanks to this reference I now need to introduce readers to something I call “the Shaz Domino principle”, which is no matter how small, no matter how uneventful, and how insignificant, this reference was put in directly by the creator there is no denying that zentopia is a thing in this universe. But now we get into the nitty gritty and zentopia is a thing in the manga, but what do we know about it? Know you could clearly say “I watched the anime, I know what zentopia is” well here’s the thing, does every Fairy Tail fan watch the anime? How do we know that Everyone who is the fandom has been exposed to the whole arc of zentopia. But for those who may only read the manga not having access to the anime or possibly believe it not to be faithful to the source material will have read that panel and not know what zentopia is with no build up before hand or mention afterwards. It’s something they have to take at face value. As well as the creator involvement, We don’t know what Hiro Mashima really contributed to this filler. There is no way for me to transport to him and ask him this question of “what did you do for the anime staff?”

Because creator involvement can range from a number of things, like Eiichiro Oda providing the linework for daddy masterson in the lougetown filler of one piece to Tite Kubo providing a little pre story to set up the Bleach hellverse movie. We don’t know what Hiro Mashima did for this, and even if we go searching there is no way to be certain that our great internet super highway is right. There has been the controversy of Lisanna’s return with many siting he did it for the anime staff or those saying no it was his intention from the start, there is no way of knowing unless directly from the man himself. And how easy would that be? It’s been well documented that and Hiro even stating he wanted Erigor in the oracion seis arc but due to deadlines he cut it but the anime staff put in Erigor. But there has never been a case of Hiro Mashima saying “This filler arc is canon.” It wouldn’t be hard either he does many afterwords in his manga volumes so how hard would it be?

Now another problem is “well wait a minute, how does angel have that new magic then? Yukino said Zentopia that must be canon” Again here’s the problem lack of evidence, there may be a reference but where is Midnight’s Darkness Magic? Why Sawyer seemingly forgetful of the lesson Mirajane imparted on him? Where is Satan Soul: Halphas? We don’t even see the reaction to Zentopia being mentioned to Lucy. Cobra appears in the GMG arc acting as if he was never heard from sense to the Oracion Seis arc. “Well Hiro’s very wishy-washy with the canon already who cares about these plotholes then.” I can understand that Hiro has forgotten things that he’s written like Lucy can use a different star dress even though she didn’t even summon the spirit, Gray didn’t eat Ice lock when it was around his neck. Well if Hiro Mashima is able to care about things such as the whole Grandeeney mentioning Wendy and Natsu have met, Natsu in Avatar looking up at the former destroyed bell tower in tuly that was only verbally mentioned in chapter 1 and 2. So the man has some self awareness of his series and something as big as an arc where lucy is almost removed from existence would kinda need some justification and not one scene.

Now, on to spin offs and light novels, this I have a better grasp of due to knowing about the manga industry. When a series can be made into a novel or a spin off it is mandated by the publisher because at the end of the day Kodansha Comics is a business and a business wants to profit off it’s hot sellers. Now obviously Hiro would need to sign off on this as they are using his brand in their work, but at most it’s in the hands of the publisher. Now enough of the business jargon you want to know it’s on the canon or not. Well the spin-offs have been done by a variety of mangaka and to varying success. Well the main idea of the spin off is, like filler, is to enrich the story focus on characters that don’t get the spot light as much, like saber tooth or Gajeel or Laxus, but here’s the thing a lot of these spin offs tend to line up with very gray moments between events in the already established series. Since we never focus on Saber tooth who’s to say that the Abyss Horn fight didn’t happen, we didn’t pay attention to gajeel for a while maybe he was on a mission.

Now Unlike the key to the starry night arc there’s never been a reference to ANY event in the spin offs. We never here from Ichiya about the red princess stuff when he showed up in the alvarez arc, Cobra and Gajeel never think of each other, Sting and Rogue never mention they fought an earth dragon. There is easier ways to dismiss it as actually being relevant. “But what about FT zero? Are you going to say it’s canon because it was drawn and written by HIro?” Well unlike the other spin offs there is more references in the manga series to the events to Zero than there is for the other spin offs. I brought up how a person who only reads the manga would have to take “Zentopia incedent at face value well at face value we do get the flash back chapters about FT’s founding, we do get (prooly) Zeira established before her sudden return. They didn’t have to read the the spin off or watch the anime filler to get that info.

Now on to the light novels which are a little harder to talk about because Hiro contributed all the artwork for them. He even reused the designs of Gajeel and Levy’s kids in the manga series. This is another tough one as we know Hiro Mashima isn’t some monkey who will draw whatever is handed to him by another writer he obviously must have had a dialogue with the writer of “colors residing in the heart”. But here’s something that I question all these spin offs make reference to the manga series but does any other outlet acknowledge they exist? We never get the Anime talking about the return to edolas or onne spin off saying Abyss Horn was part of the Balam alliance. Only reference to fillers like the eclipse zodiac arc appear only in the anime and not the manga. The only one that ever gets to be mentioned in another media is the “trouble twins” with Hiro Mashima using the design of Gajeel and Levy’s kids meaning it’s very likely that the events in that light novel could happen.

Now here’s another problem, Omake. They are all written by the author of the manga and are even adapted into filler episodes so are they canon? Well in Japanese Omake literally means ‘extra’ and what is an extra? Is it a little story that’s told at some unspecific time? Is it a kinda “what if” scenario that the author wants to experement his writing skills in? Does he just want to make you laugh and needs the context to do it?

Well at times it seems to be generally accepted as a “what if” scenario because we know that 1 billion years ago the ancestors of Natsu never molested the ancestor of Lucy, we know there was never and Ichiya epidemic, we know that that Fairy Tail and the Seven Deadly Sins don’t share the same universe. “But hey those are so outlandish what about “Mulan Rouge” or “Natsu vs Mavis” they seem like they could very well happen and they were in both Manga and OVA form.” Well hears another nitty gritty we aren’t really given a point they could’ve occurred in the story.

Well at this point I’m sure everyone is reading this saying “Your just cherry picking everything at this point and your making it sound like anything not written or drawn by Hiro Mashima isn’t canon and all of it is just glorified fanfiction”. Well glorified fanfiction is a good term because I know many writers who actually seem to understand and do more with the universe of Fairy Tail than Mashima himself. And here’s the biggest factor of them all, is the audience.

The audience has a wide variety of what they want to accept as canon for personally reasons. I know many who love the Oracion Sies and want key to the starry night to be canon so all that development they got wasn’t brushed off as “doesn’t count”. I know many who would love to pretend the “stone age” Omake never happened because of the disrespect it shows to favorite characters even though they are Mashima’s. I personally enjoy the Gajeel manga because it focus’s on Gajeel and allows him to get more shine than either manga or anime have given to him. I know some who for shipping purposes will full heartedly state the christmas omake is canon even though people can find flaws like “Jellal being in magnolia makes no sense”. And here’s another thing the Sabertooth manga I didn’t like but I did something with sabertooth that wasn’t just just Sting or Rogue.

The audience sees the potential in this world and most likely wants to create their own canon. Their own way of accepting the things they want fairy tail to be and brushing off the stuff that hinders their ability to enjoy it. Me personally I find the easiest way to accept is “If it wasn’t in the main manga, it didn’t happen” but someone could say to me “If it didn’t happen in the manga it didn’t happen except for Mulan Rouge that makes sense as canon”. We all make are own acceptance of what we want fairy tail to be. And if that’s the case, then no ones wrong or right because like opinions our views of acceptance are different and like opinions, if you have a different take on canon you’re going to end up butting heads.

Well that’s my take on it. Now if you guys got anything say send me an ask or message. And maybe we can all admire each others canons.

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zak-graphicarts · 6 years

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Sam Elston: Drawing People & Writing Thoughts

In this post, I’m looking at local artist Sam Elston, his portfolio of work and the importance of drawing from life for inspiration.

Self-portrait. (2018). Taken from https://www.instagram.com/p/BiRoFLGDRK_/?taken-by=samelston_

Based in Essex, artist Sam Elston produces incredibly energetic and expressive illustrations and sketches. His works have an appealing dynamic aesthetic, with loose linework and gestural marks. He’s interested in capturing the everyday - and as such, he’s only got a limited time to sketch that fleeting image before it fades away. This kinetic, rapid approach to drawing can be best seen through a more recent example of his work, Interests are Interesting.

The use of muted, flat greys and greens give the piece a dull aesthetic, something which reflects the ‘everyday’ quite effectively. This is doubly true then riding a public bus, where life seems it’s most banal. The lines look as if they could move at any moment, with scribbled marks creating an inherently exciting and dramatic atmosphere - even when it’s just a bus driver and his pin collection. This plays a part in the successes of the artist’s entire portfolio, I think. He takes moments from everyday life, ones which we tend to overlook, and forget to admire in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, and illustrates these in loose, observational comics.

This same dull, flat theme can be seen in a few of his works, most notably Steel Grey Day - a piece with his signature hand-drawn aesthetic, with clear mark making that creates an effective, lo-fi and naive finish to the work. The hint of colour gives the comic a focus, but blends in well with the dull tones of the rest of the piece. Real life isn’t in greyscale, obviously, and the subtle muted blue gives a life which still feels very monotonous, and weirdly, grey.

Along with these hand-rendered pieces, Sam is able to make subtle commentary on everyday life - writing his thoughts whilst drawing which creates sublime works of visual poetry: his observational comics in particular could be considered the comic equivalent of a haiku, with loose, scribbled images of everyday life accompanied by imaginative and ambiguous thoughts working together to throw the audience into Sam’s shoes.

These observational comics inspired me in particular, and over the Easter break I decided to produce a few more, inspired by the ideas behind the artist’s work. In these pieces, I adopted an aesthetic from one of Sam’s earlier works, Faces, a simple exercise in which he went out and began drawing people in cafes, as reference for another project. These have a confident, bold line quality that I found visually quite interesting - and I think with a Sharpie there’s a spontaneity in your marks - you’ve just got to start drawing, without any planning or sketching first. There’s an honesty in the process that I like, and so decided to adopt it in my own comics.

Faces. (2017). Sam Elston.

Through this, I produced several of these ‘observational comics’, and found it to be quite a fun exercise - most importantly, it made observational drawing interesting and fresh for me as a graphic artist. Normally this is where I’d go into more depth on the artist’s portfolio, but I decided to contact Sam via email and we were able to talk about his work, why he started making observational comics, his influences and a quick review of my own art.

To begin, I asked why Sam started creating observational comics - if it helped with composition or characters. ‘At the start I just wanted to improve my drawing skills to try and find a consistency in the drawings I was doing, so I started drawing a page a day in an A6 Sketchbook - which gave me a size restriction and I suppose started the whole panel thing. I was never very good at making up stuff straight from my head and found it much easier to just pause and draw whatever was in front of me at a set time each day.’

It seems like it wasn’t really a conscious idea to make it a comic - it just happened through the format he was using. This is quite an interesting idea, and none of the artists he goes on to mention follow this panelled structure - suggesting this was his own personal touch.

This regular drawing helped Sam build his confidence and speed with his sketches, who began playing around with the composition of the page. ‘At this time, I would mainly draw things rather than people because I would take longer and people move all the time. At the same time I wouldn't let myself spend more than around 5/10 minutes on each drawing otherwise I’d end up never finishing it.’

Adding a time limit seems to breed creativity - this is something that I’ve begun doing in life drawing classes and my own work, and the challenge forces you to capture a specific subject or person in the quickest way possible. This idea of timing yourself for a drawing is perfectly expressed in the comics I’ve discussed already, thinking about the expressive and scribbled marks in Interests are Interesting especially.

‘I came across Robert Weaver by accident when I was looking in a 'lots of artists in a book' book and really liked his Reportage work and then found 'Robert Weaver: A Pedestrian View' which is a book that has more of his personal work in. When I saw this stuff, something just made sense and realised that I could add text to what I was drawing and it didn't really need to make complete sense or have a big narrative, it could still be as natural as just sitting down and drawing except now it would be a case of, draw what is in front of you and write down what you're thinking.’

This summarises Elston’s work perfectly - draw what’s infront of you, and write down your thoughts whilst doing so. He’s clearly not taking the aesthetic from Weaver, however - with his examples in A Pedestrian View staying true to a sense of realism, with an acrylic still life aesthetic illustrating anonymous legs in a constant state of motion, manholes and police barricades. There’s splashes of colour to add life to the composition, but his works echo more of a still life painting than an energetic moment in our everyday lives, as Sam’s does.

Up until this point, Sam had been strictly drawing from life - not writing from it. Seeing Weaver’s works, however, inspired him to stop worrying about a linear narrative and begin writing his own thoughts in addition to his comics, creating a series of works which took the idea of an observational comic in a very traditional place. These examples are rather cinematic and introspective, acting almost as a camera pan around his home town as the naive, wobbly lines illustrate seemingly banal scenes of coffee machines and Chinese takeaways.

‘So I would try and do a full spread per day and write down what I was thinking at the time of drawing. At this point, I had planned to make what I drew in this sketchbook into a zine so started playing with panel size and the flow of it from page to page so that it looked more like a comic than the stuff before but I think it was more along the lines of a visual diary.’

At this point, Elston was avoiding drawing people, due to the fact that they move around and it’s quite an unnerving activity for the first few times you try it. This is a sentiment that I share, but exploring Sam’s work and discussing how to approach observational drawing made me go out and draw people in my sketchbook, using the same loose style.

Discussing his more recent influences, Sam mentioned the work of artist Joost Stokhof - an artist who draws and writes things on an A4 page until he’s filled it, with the compositions hinting at storylines and bigger narrative, drawn from life. Looking at Stokhof’s work, I can see a clear influence on Sam’s more recent work - which abandon the traditional panelled approach to comics and show a more spacious, loose composition. Sam’s keeping with the scratchy and scribbled aesthetic, however, which allows his art to stand apart from the somewhat more refined, linear and minimal line work from Stokhof’s examples.

I think responding to an artist’s visual style can be exciting, but it’s more interesting, to me, at least, when we incorporate an artist’s philosophy and thought process to our own work. This way, we’re able to move past mimicry and a purely superficial line of enquiry and visual analysis and hit more distinctive areas when responding to our research.

An idea that I’ve found to be strictly Sam’s own, however, is the use of a ‘cardboard view finder’ to create the compositions for his comics. This struck me as an original and creative approach to the medium, so I asked why he began using it. “If I’m in a slump, I use the viewfinder to help me find interesting compositions as it can be hard to see them when you can see everything at once, I think a lot of it is about giving yourself restrictions whether that is time, size or focus points.”

An example of one of Sam’s viewfinders

That last part was one of the most important ideas to take away from the conversation, I think. As artists, when we give ourselves restrictions we force ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and be creative in ways we aren’t used to. When I begin designing characters, I’ll be following Sam’s practice and giving myself a time limit on each sketch, keeping the illustrations expressive and loose.

“As for a reason why [I make comics], I think it's to keep me drawing as there is no excuse not to, if all it is is what is in front of you, it can become a very cathartic process if you let it - I think it would be a good thing to start and try and keep a Visual Diary as it gives you space to try stuff out that can help inform your practice and it should definitely help to free you up and grow your confidence and speed with drawing.’

I asked about drawing people - his process, experience and any tips. “Coffee shops are good if you sit in a corner where you can see lots of people (they're normally all too busy talking so you can stare at them easily) or sit at a window then you can draw people outside. To loosen up and warm up at the start draw 10 faces in 10 minutes (they might not turn out any good or they might - who cares because they're warm-ups) get a sketchbook just for warm ups if you don't want to draw straight into your main one. If you think they are going to drastically move or leave half way through you drawing them - take a sneaky picture and use that instead. For practice, draw from pictures but only give yourself a few minutes.’

Coffee Shop Drawings. (2018). Sam Elston.

This is something that Sam’s put a recent focus on, producing quick studies of people in cafes. Drawing people is something I’ve been working on throughout this project, something which, previously, had always been rather intimidating to me. All the animation tutors I’ve spoken to have stressed the importance and value of drawing people as a great exercise for animators - and so this is something I’ve been trying to keep up with on a regular basis. It’s a good way to develop ideas for characters, but also I’ve found it helps to develop skills in gestural and figure drawing - as I only have a few moments to sketch someone before they walk past.

Finally, I asked Sam to make an overall comment on my work, shown on Instagram.

‘It's really good that you're letting your own personal interests feed into the work your creating (if that makes sense? Like, I can see that you do actually have an interest in film and animation because of the work you're making and the research you're doing.) so I would try and continue to do that and see how you can push that further.’ This was an idea I hadn’t even considered about my work - that it conveys to the audience not only an interesting work, but my own passion for the craft, and subjects I’m exploring. He’s basically saying to continue to explore my own interests in my practical work - and that’s essentially what I’m doing with Exquisite Walks, exploring the potential of a walk cycle in animation in exciting new ways.

‘By the looks of it, you've got pretty good digital skills to be able to put together the animations, videos and digital drawings so keep that going and see how you can combine traditional and digital methods together in the work you make - which I can see you've been starting to do with the Moonlight animation tests. Illustratively, you're getting a good confidence in your line work. I think FMP will be a great time for you to step out of your comfort zone and try and learn something new because you've got a good skill set to work with that will be worth pushing. ‘

A few of my works that Sam is discussing.

‘Learning something new’ is essentially the mantra for my FMP, as I’m drawing people from observation, learning new animation techniques and I’ll be exploring how to make a stop motion puppet - pushing my 3D skills further than I’ve ever done before. It’s not something that I’m particularly confident with, and is probably one of the biggest ways I could ‘step out of my comfort zone’ with an animation project. It will be a challenge, but that’s how we grow as artists.

A little project of Sam’s that I was particularly inspired by was his ink warm ups, using a brush and ink to produce quick character sketches. This is something that I found really interesting, and wanted to incorporate as a warm up for my own character designs. The challenge comes from the time limit, use of a brush instead of a pencil, and the camera watching your every move - it’s a timelapse so just recording your process forces you to work in Sam’s signature ‘loose’ approach.

There’s no time to think when you’re on camera, and as result, my pieces possess a loose, fluid line and uneven, quick ink aesthetic. These are just warm up sketches, but it’s an exercise which allowed me to get ‘loose’ in a mindset sense additionally to my linework - working in an autonomous, instinctual manner like my compositions with the Abstract Aesthetics workshop. They’re quick sketches, and they obviously have value through these quick approach - but there’s a difference between lose and ‘bad’. It’s a fine line, and I think it’s a line that I’m skirting with a few examples. With the brush size that I was using, I should have focused on heads and faces - the few body illustrations I attempted look very amateur and crude in comparison to my other examples.

This is a process that I’ll continue to use as I progress through my FMP, as it challenges me to abandon my structured predisposition and ‘get loose’ with my drawings. Brush and ink is a medium that I’m yet to feel comfortable with, and results in a distinctive, visually exciting aesthetic and imaginative, aloof designs, not responding to anything other than my own thoughts.

Through this online discussion, and looking at Sam Elston’s portfolio of work and producing my own observational comics, I’ve learnt the value of drawing from life for inspiration. There’s a wealth of ideas to draw from when we respond to things and people around us - an honesty and substance that results when we’re producing our own research. A key idea that we’ve discussed in class is how primary research is essential for a successful, distinctive self-led project, and I will continue to draw from life as I begin to develop character designs from my own observational sketches, and recorded walk cycles.

This also marks the first time I’ve been able to conduct my own primary artist research, contacting Sam and discussing his process first hand. Not only was this to hit the higher grading criteria of the brief, but also to make my research more valuable and useful to me as an artist. I was able to discuss his thought process and get some ideas for my own developments into character design, in a way that moves past simply reading from a website article.

Whats next? Having explored the work of Sam Elston in detail as an artist case study, I’ll be focusing on creating character sketches and developing these into several designs for my animation. With this, and my contextual research into the idea of an Exquisite Corpse and Richard William’s approach to a walk cycle, I’m shifting my focus into producing exciting practical outcomes - creating character designs and learning new animation techniques.

Recently, I was able to attend a street art tour in London exploring some of the world’s most exciting works of graffiti and street art. This was a great experience, and introduced me to a handful of interesting artists that I plan to briefly discuss in an upcoming blog post.

Actions

In my sketchbook, continue to draw people from observation following Sam’s challenges

Create several character designs in response to these drawings, using a time limit to produce a series of designs with a range of materials

Write about the London Street Art Tour, discussing key artists that I found exciting e.g. Nathan Bowen and MCLN.

New References

Weaver, W., 2013. Robert Weaver. Distributed Art Pub Inc.

Self-portrait. (2018). Sam Elston.

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rachel364481240-blog · 6 years

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spynotebook · 6 years

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Dynamite has sent us a new writer’s commentary for their brand new Barbarella series. Mike Carey goes page by page through the first issue. Here we also see covers by Kenneth Rocafort, Joe Jusko, and Joseph Michael Linsner with interior art by Kenan Yarar.

Page 1:

We had a lot of ground to cover in this first issue in terms of world-building – giving the sense of a society that’s both familiar and alien, getting Barbarella into prison and out of it again, introducing her and the supporting cast and laying the groundwork for the wider conflict. So it seemed to make sense to hit the ground running, with a space battle in progress and Barbarella flung into the middle of it.

Some of the first sketches I saw from Kenan [Yarar, artist] were of the crew of the Parosian flagship as we see them in this scene – and I knew at once that he was a great fit for the book. He embraced the weirdness of this alien theocracy and brought his own craziness to the party. The stained glass window is a particularly nice touch.

Page 2:

If you want to sing We Labour in the Vineyards of the Seven, like a good son or daughter of the church, it fits in a rough and ready way to the tune of Oh, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

It was my editor Matt’s [Idelson] suggestion that we make the Parosians polytheists, so as to minimise the sense that we were getting at any specific religion. Any of our readers who are believers are more likely to believe in a single god than a whole pantheon (all due apologies to the comic fans who are Hindus, Buddhists or Shintoists).

In the original outline I had the Parosians worshipping a mother goddess, but matriarchal religions are usually much more laid back when it comes to matters of sex. The Parosians are fairly uptight, and their sexual hang-ups are very much a plot point.

Pages 3-4:

I thought long and hard about how to bring Barbarella on stage for the first time. Jean-Marc L’Officier, who is a creative consultant on the book, said at one point that he saw the original Barbarella stories as a kind of adult Alice in Wonderland. Like Alice, Barbarella wanders into outrageous situations and takes them in her stride. She accepts the insane logic of the universe she lives in, but she never allows it to compromise her own sense of how things should be. I really like that definition of the character.

So here Barbarella finds herself in the middle of a war, but she’s not intimidated by the Parosian military. She knows her rights. She also knows her ships, and she’s already reading a lot into this military encounter. We get to hear some of the clues she picked up here, and more later when she meets Jury Quire.

Incidentally, I didn’t originally have any sound effects for the scene in which Barbarella’s ship is snared. I added them when I saw how beautifully and playfully Kenan had interpreted that scene.

Re: Barbarella’s outfit: she lives in outer space, mostly on ship-board, so as in the original series she wears a serviceable space suit that covers most of her body – not a spandex bikini or a costume with strategically placed holes in it. She gets naked when she feels like it: the rest of the time she dresses for serious sh*t because it’s generally not far away.

Apart from the boots, of course. She wears high-heeled boots with fold-down tops because her fashion sense was forged in the ’60s.

Page 5:

We weren’t being coy in avoiding the word “vagina” here. Barbarella uses it herself a little later in the story. I just wanted to generate a little curiosity about what Barbarella is supposed to be smuggling.

We did try to make sure the scan as un-erotic as possible, though – by blurring the line between Barbarella’s naked body and her sub-dermal muscle and tissue. At the back of my mind here were the millimeter-wave scanners now in common use at airports, which produce a photographically real image of a passenger’s entire body. I know there are measures in place to make that less intrusive – including blurring faces and introducing a “double blind” system where the scanner’s operator doesn’t see the passenger. It still freaks me out a little that there is now a working version of the X-ray specs that used to be advertised in the back of DC comics in the 70s. What happens to Barbarella here is possible with technology we have today.

Page 6:

Alert readers will see some odd details in this cityscape. They’re meant to be there, and they’re indications that there is more for Barbarella to discover about Parosian society. That’s for issue 2, though. For now I just wanted to give Kenan enough space to draw a panorama. He didn’t disappoint me. He did point out that if I let him have a double-page spread he could have done even more. Soon, Mr. Yarar, soon.

The billboards look like a homage to Futurama, but I was actually remembering those wayside pulpits with their terrible clever-clever messages that are meant to make you think but generally just make you wince. There was one in my neighbourhood that (for many months) read: SOUL-AR POWERED BY THE SON OF GOD.

“She has demonic powers to tempt men’s souls.” Woman as the devil’s gateway into the human soul is a fun feature of many orthodox religions. The Parosians didn’t invent it. In orthodox Christianity, Eve was the one who listened to the serpent and was responsible for original sin, something that medieval clerics never got tired of bitching about. You eat one lousy apple and your entire gender has its cards marked for the rest of time.

Page 7:

I’m not sure where I got the idea of a rifle that fires sermons. I needed to insert some exposition, and I wanted to do it in a way that didn’t seem forced. After all, the defendant in a criminal trial has a right to know what she’s being accused of: the judge in this case chooses the most direct means.

I use a lot of different words to describe the ranks of the Parosian religious hierarchy. Deacons, prebends and lictors are all present. We also meet a number of people like the ship’s captain in the opening scene and the judge here, whose military and civil roles seem to overlap with a religious one. The state religion is the axle tree on which the whole of Parosian society turns – like the Communist party in Stalinist Russia, say; or in the UK, talking about the weather.

Page 8:

“My body is my own concern!” Of course it is. But that has never stopped religious authorities from trying to control what you do with it. Or civil authorities either, to be fair. If this position can still be read as controversial in the 21st century, I don’t hold out much hope that the sort of idiocy embodied in the judge’s reply will go out of fashion by Barbarella’s time.

I like trial scenes. I seem to have written a ton of them in recent years. I would not, though, want to contest a speeding ticket in a Parosian court.

Page 9:

And now we come to the body loom. It’s not entirely clear what sort of physical reconfiguration Barbarella undergoes. The conceptual rifle in the earlier scene talks about “the organs that embody and channel desire.” At the very least, this would seem to imply a clitoridectomy.

There’s a real-world analogue for this, of course, in the female genital mutilation practised by both Christian and Muslim groups in Africa and Asia. I don’t want to get heavy, but this is not a historical curiosity. It’s a hugely serious issue NOW. If you want to learn more about it, there’s a WHO fact sheet here.

Barbarella gets to meet this technician again in #3. When she says she’ll be back, as with Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can take her at her word.

Pages 10-11:

“Whatever you were bringing in, I’d like a taste.” I make no apology whatsoever for this smutty joke.

Quire is a character we’ll see again later on in the series. I wanted a foil for Barbarella who is as strong-willed and resourceful as her but follows a different agenda. Quire’s role as an agent of Earth calls for a lot of moral compromises, and throws Barbarella’s sense of right and wrong into sharp relief. By the way, although we don’t see it Quire’s prison greys reveal that she’s in jail for heresy.

There are other differences between them, too. When Rho prays, Quire dismisses her as being wholly enslaved to her Parosian beliefs. Barbarella is less willing to write someone off on such scant evidence, as her later rebuke of Quire shows. Overall, Quire is an ally – and will shortly become more than that – but she may not always be a reliable friend.

Page 12:

I didn’t have a whole lot of time to draw in the prison regime, so I just hit the highlights. Unremitting hard labour, terrible food and endless hectoring from the prison officers. And the officers are all robots, which just makes the whole thing that bit more alienating.

Someone smart said something quotable about judging a society by the way it treats its enemies. I think we should be judged by the way we treat our prison population.

Pages 13-15:

Sex as political subversion was a big part of the original story idea. I love the idea of Mills & Boon-style romance novels being illegal contraband – and it’s a theme we return to later.

But the true revolutionary act is the orgy, initiated by Barbarella when she kisses and embraces Quire. The salient fact here is not that these are women making love with other women, although the Parosian church would presumably not approve of that. What’s crucial, in my mind, is that they’re prisoners giving each other pleasure in defiance of the state’s attempt to confiscate that pleasure via invasive surgery.

I had to re-read George Orwell’s 1984 recently for a panel I was on at Norcon in Oslo. There’s a scene in that book where Winston Smith describes Julia as “a revolutionary from the waist down”. She doesn’t reply “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it”, but mainly that’s because she lets her actions speak for her. And later in the same book there’s a speech where O’Brien talks to Winston about the Party’s quest to “abolish the orgasm”. Sex is subversive because it’s yours, not theirs. They hate that. [Fill in a “they” of your own choice here.]

Page 16:

We don’t know whether Quire’s body modifications were elective or not. The original script had her wearing a more conventional prosthetic. In my imagination Quire had birth defects affecting one arm and one leg, and turned those physical disabilities into assets in her chosen work. That’s absolutely compatible with what Kenan has done here, but his surreal scrolling flesh makes for a much more powerful visual – and makes it more plausible that the Parosians’ search regime missed the incredible amount of gadgetry Quire smuggled into jail with her.

We also see here how much Barbarella can pick up from minimal cues. It’s easy to forget this in the general whirl of events, but she’s crazy smart and she doesn’t miss a thing.

We want the nudity in the book to feel natural and casual, not titillating. It used to gripe me sometimes when I was writing superhero books and the artist would sneak in a butt shot or a ridiculously cheese-cakey pose. After sex, you sprawl around companionably, or if it’s cold you get back under the covers and huddle, and that’s what’s going on here. Jean-Claude Forest, in the original books, similarly included a lot of after-sex moments, and I had those in mind when I wrote this sequence.

Pages 17-18:

Barbarella thinking outside the box again, and also laying down the rules for the jailbreak. Of course, she regards robots as fully sentient. She has had more than one robot as a lover (in the original books), so she knows what she’s talking about.

Pages 19-22:

The prison break was fun to write. Again, the contrast between the two women is very much to the fore. Quire sticks to the letter of Barbarella’s “no killing” rule, by not firing directly at the lictors and vaporising them. But bringing a wall down on their heads is a fairly liberal interpretation of non-lethal damage.

It would have been cool to see the gorgeous baroque structure of the cathedral in all its glory as Barbarella whangs the top off one of its spires, but visibility was low over Parosia’s capital city that day. “Was that your first act of blasphemy?” I’m guessing not, but Barbarella’s moral compass is a strictly personal thing. She doesn’t define herself against anyone else’s codes. Hence: “I don’t keep count.”

At one stage Kenan wanted the razor-doves to look like modern military drones, but in the end we went with a design that was more in keeping with the Parosians’ weird tech as seen elsewhere in the issue.

I love the coloring on that final panel, and the way the NEXT teaser sits in one of the pieces of falling debris.

Okay, now I’d better think of a way to get them out of this…

The post Writer’s Commentary: Mike Carey on the Important Messages in Barbarella #1 appeared first on Bleeding Cool News And Rumors.

#IFTTT #Feedly

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concorner · 9 years

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Inside Hell’s Kitchen

During our time at Long Beach Comic Con 2015, I attended the "Psychology of Daredevil" panel where I got taken into the world of Daredevil. I got to hear from two of the staff writers, Christos Gage and Ruth Fletcher Gage (who happened to pen the episode 'Speak Of The Devil'), actors Peter Shinkoda and Tom Walker, and Dr. Andrea Letamendi who has a Ph.D. in psychology.

INTO SPEAK OF THE DEVIL

During the panel, the cast and writers talked a lot about the 'Speak Of The Devil' episode, as all four of them were involved with it to some capacity throughout production. We got plenty of interesting insight into the writing behind the episode from an interview with Christos.

For instance, the fight scene that plays out during the whole episode between Nobu (Peter Shinkoda) and Daredevil (Charlie Cox) could've been a slightly different scenario. By different, I mean the fight almost wasn't with Nobu at all. The writing staff's first option was a Daredevil character named Kirigi. "...it would've been this gigantic ninja in robes where you can't even see his face and it would've been probably a very similar fight but it would've been against this mysterious silent ninja." It was actually Ruth who decided against it. As the audience was already familiar with Nobu, she believed it would confuse the viewers who aren't knowledgeable with the comics to introduce a random ninja, who doesn't speak nonetheless.

(Peter Shinkoda as Nobu, S1;E9)

Ruth was considered a crucial part of the writing staff due to the fact prior to working on this project, she'd never read a Daredevil comic. "It was so important because when you're doing a TV show, even a comic book character TV show, you have to assume that probably the majority of your audience will be people who don't read comics." In the long run, it definitely helped out.

Christos had a bit of his own advantage for the writers room. During his solo panel for the Eat.Geek.Play. Podcast he shared with the audience that his father was a crime reporter who'd meet with mob informants.

(S1;E12)

"I think that's one of the things Drew [Coddard] found intriguing from the start..." It helped give the writers an edge when it came to the character of Ben Urich. "...when my dad did investigative reporting he could spend months on a single story and the paper would pay for it, and nowadays they'd be like 'that's not budget effective, we need you to cover a variety of stories..." which is basically the case with Ben. '

Speak Of The Devil' is easily one of the most critically acclaimed episodes of the first season. From the panel alone you can tell just how much love went into it. "We were trying to encompass a lot of things that are important to Daredevil; the religion, the character, the inter conflicts, of course an awesome ninja fight... So to hear people say stuff like that and all the number of people who told us this is their favorite episode makes us feel really good."

INTO NOBU & FRANCIS

Aside from getting the chance to dwell more into the writing process behind the series, I also got a chance to talk with actors Peter Shinkoda and Tom Walker. Peter played the role of Nobu, a mysterious Japanese man with an agenda. "From where the starting point of the show was [where] you can see me, I was kind of pissed off."

Peter mentioned during the panel that he was criticized on the portrayal of Nobu as being 'too intense'. "Certainly in Nobu's eyes he's got an agreement with Fisk [and] Fisk obviously has one with him... but as you [can] see Fisk is not taking care of his side and hasn't been previously to my introduction in the show." Intense would be anyone's reaction when their plans all rely on one man and that one man is failing to keep up his side of the bargain. "I don't necessarily think he's a pissed off guy, just kind of gets introduced that way and gets more aggravated."

There weren't too many characters other than Madame Gao and Daredevil who could stand toe-to-toe with Kingpin throughout the series. Nobu was one of those few though, he wouldn't back down in terms of what he'd say or if he came off threatening. "...when I entered in to his little lair, the second time, Tommy Walker's character Francis tried to subdue me or prevent me from going in and I twisted his arm and I told Fisk to get his pet off me." He was definitely an opposing force to Fisk who proposed him with a problem.

(Tommy Walker as Francis & Peter Shinkoda as Nobu, S1;E9)

As I mentioned we also got to talk with Tommy Walker who played the role of Francis. If you may not remember him, Fisk beat the crap out of him after discovering the death of his dear friend Wesley. The odd thing about this is Francis comes back to work for Fisk as if nothing ever happened. "I think fear definitely has a big factor because, come on, I think Fisk has this... you know, as the Kingpin's lore goes, he's not just a man, he's a presence, an entity that somewhat takes over the city and in the Daredevil history we all know that when you hear his name... They built a mythos around him."

Tom said, and I quote "I think you probably nailed it..." when I added that Francis just may have understood where he sat on the food chain in this situation. "He does understand where he sits on the food chain but he also got kind of like a promotion by default, so he also understands that." Francis can be seen at the end of the series with Vanessa before she takes off on a helicopter. With that said, we may even be seeing more of Francis in season 2.

(Tommy Walker as Francis, S1;E13)

INTO D'ONOFRIO

"Like the first day you know, he doesn't know me. So he gives you a little nod, the next day 'hello', then the next day it's 'Good morning, morning Tommy' and you're like 'oh, he's got my name now'. He's a joy once you get him talking and he's telling stories and he's so loose and so cool. He's like got this hippie mentality in some ways, like he's such a cool laid back dude... So he's nothing like Fisk in real life, absolutely nothing like Fisk. He's very good to everyone... very aware of everyone else on set... polite, but not in that like 'I'm being polite because I've been in this business 20 years, 30 years. He's actually very polite, he does appreciate the little things and he's so much fun to watch work. It's like a masters class watching him do his thing. It's cool." - Tommy Walker

"...one thing that they kept that was really relevant to me was as soon as he (the director) yelled cut I'd get back to Tom and we'd discuss 'my god man, you're standing toe-to-toe,' maybe a foot or two under D'Onofrio and they would shoot it to make me smaller than him, they'd shoot it over his shoulder. This is like three and half, four pages of intense slow burn dialogue with him and there was a few takes where Vincent was physically menacing in his eyes and I can't help it, sometimes he actually moves off of his mark and come up and intimidate [Nobu] and there's this part where he goes like this with his lip and his eye was twitching like he was about to choke me out so I'd have to counter that with [a look like] 'oh, you gonna make a move' so you know it was very intimidating but I can't slip out of character, I have to stay just as focused, just as intimidating, and just as op-positional to him as he is to me." - Peter Shinkoda

Written By Patrick Sullivan

#Long Beach Comic Con 2015 #Patrick Sullivan

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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July 1st-July 7th, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from July 1st, 2019 to July 7th, 2019. The chat focused on Obelisk by Ashley McCammon.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Obelisk by Ashley McCammon~! (http://www.obeliskcomic.com/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Remember, though, that while we allow constructive criticism, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic. Below you will find four questions to get you started on the discussion. However, a new question will be posted and pinned everyday (between 12:01AM and 6AM PDT), so keep checking back for more! You have until July 7th to tell us all your wonderful thoughts! With that established, let’s get going on the reading and the chatting!

QUESTION 1. What has been your favorite scene in the comic so far? What specifically did you like about it?

QUESTION 2. Why do you think Evelyn isn’t fond of David’s new fiancee? As the wedding approaches, how do you think David’s changing life status will affect Evelyn? Further, how will it affect her relationship with David?

Eilidh

My favourite scene is... Many of them But one that sticks out is just the one after David reveals he's marrying Alice when Eve says to herself "Your brother is getting married. And what are you doing...?" With her expression on the last panel it just... It conveys the feeling of being queer and feeling different so well to me, just by the dialogue and expression. I can recognise how she feels and I know I've felt that way in the past, and that's good storytelling.

Eilidh

As for why Eve doesn't like Alice... have to think about that. But I get the feeling it's related to her having been the big sister and looking after him for a long time, and now that's changing (another feeling I can indirectly relate to) and she's not sure how to deal with that big a change? And Alice could be seen as the cause of that

draculing

My own favorite scene is probably the whole end of chapter 1... finally being able to give people a peek into Margot's private world but I made all of them so I have a bias

Eilidh

That's definitely a very good scene

I just... Eve's quiet panic about normality just really hit me as something I've not really seen so well shown

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. At the moment, who is your favorite character? What about that character earns them this favor?

QUESTION 4. What do you think Evelyn’s father was up to regarding the properties with missing documents? Is it just Margot’s property, or do you think there are more out there? How could this come back to help or hurt Evelyn?

Zidely

I'm kind of like David a lot. Perhaps because is the litle brother, but also the his personality, linda bubbly to me. And Evelyn of course! A modern woman indeed.

Absolutepsycho

At the moment it is hard because it's between Eve and Margot. For Eve it's really understanding where she is coming from especially dealing with all levels of grief ( loosing a parent, her only blood family getting married) on top of recognizing and being herself through her queerness. ( i hope that makes sense). I also understand the anxiety of like figuring it all out as an adult and having it together.

As for Margot it is really the representation piece cause i love spooky things and it is so refreshing seeing someone who looks like me or i can relate to take on a spooky role. In addition, someone who is self assured and confident and doing her thing. I love Margot for bringing that forward.

As for q 4. I really think her dad was working with all sorts of people ( supernatural included). he could of just been helping out people who couldn't afford properties and who knows maybe be someone's familiar and we don't know that yet. But I am pretty sure there are other properties out there that fall under the vampire category. Margot can't be the only Vampire in all of NYC, but ultimately I think it can both help and hurt Evelyn. As with any decision especially in a horror sense it can be in a grey area.

It can help her build resources and allyship but it can also be a downfall because one wrong move and it could lead to a disaster or even her demise

Attila Polyák

Let's see... Favourite scene. That's without a doubt when we're entering a vampire's lair shop. Even if that place was not related to a vampire, it's still brimming with the mysterious, so it's a place I'd like to see more of. I might be really off with relationships and all, but I kinda feel like Eve's major problem with Alice is that the marriage will also mean the end of her Big Sister status, which is mostly what her life seemed to be since their father, based on the flashback, sees to be someone who chose work over family. Donno... I'm probably off here.

Attila Polyák

Also favourite character: Pete. No bullshit, just getting things done. On one hand I'd like to see him moved by some supernatural stuff happening, on the other I totally expect him to be like "Been there seen that, nothing special." which I totally expect to be the case since he does have a connection to Eve's father and all... And then talking about her father. I'm pretty sure he dealt with the supernatural a lot and that's also the reason why some documents are missing. When supernatural events happen in a story it's often being intentionally kept hidden from the general public, as a matter of fact I have a sneaking suspicion that his work was directly connected to keeping all sorts of magical being within human society but still under cover. I think something might have gotten awray while dealing with either Margot or some other vampire he was dealing with before he died.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 5. What has been your favorite illustration in the comic so far? What specifically about it do you like?

QUESTION 6. What do you think brings Margot to Evelyn’s town? Is it just a typical move, or do you think Margot is there for a specific reason? Further, what might Margot’s status as a vampire have to do with anything?

Eilidh

Illustration: the last page of chapter 1. So striking, the way Margot's hair isn't distinguished from the shadow is just mmm it's good

As for why she's moved.... She doesn't seem like the type to start and army of the night, so maybe it's just easier to hide in a big city. And the more people there are, the less obvious it is when they start dying

Favourite character... Dean. Mostly due to word of god information such as his dream is to run a bakery which I support wholeheartedly, he deserves it

Eilidh

And I think there's definitely more "missing" properties out there, I wouldn't be surprised if several of them belong to Margot (there's enough Dracula vibes going on after all) The supernatural lettings agent theory is pretty neat... I was personally thinking he's working mostly with normal human clients but somehow Margot got involved. Whether he was okay with this or got dragged into it, I'm looking forward to learning. But I definitely wouldn't be surprised if Margot had something to do with his death, and I definitely think his death is among the reasons Margot is now in NY.

I'd be inclined to say the missing properties are deliberate or the work of someone else since we're told that Eve's father was the organised one (like Eve is), so it seems less likely that someone with a reputation for keeping things in order would just lose a bunch of records. Then again, working with Margot or other supernatural clients might have started taking a toll... Who knows

Eilidh

That all said, he was involved with Peter Murphy who as well know, is no good

I'm just rereading some pages and I'm getting pretty certain that Peter Murphy is either well aware of what he's doing or doesn't care

Like... Margot knows Eve's father is dead, I know Eve mentions it but Margot knows him on first name terms and no one else has said his first name afaik, and she doesn't seem surprised at all. Someone had to have told her, and Peter is their "mutual associate"...

RebelVampire

@Eilidhan You definitely read that scene way differently than I did. I didn't get the impression that Margot knew, more that she just didn't care. I got more the impression that she's so used to being a vampire, some mortal dying isn't really that surprising or a big deal. But my point being I enjoy the alternate interpretation.

1) My favorite scene is the one when they enter the shop. This is largely due to the dramatic tone shift when Margot starts affecting Dean. Like both between the illustration work, the suddenness, and so forth, it really added this great horror vibe that put me on edge. <3 2) I think there's two things going on in terms of why Evelyn doesn't like Alice. Part of it I think is as everyone else said, it's kind of destroying Evelyn's role as a big sister, and nobody likes change all that much. The second thing I feel is going on is that maybe David just isn't that into Alice. Not to say he doesn't care, but for someone getting married he was immensely and overly casual about it. Like he was telling Evelyn he was getting the oil changed in his car. So while I don't think they have a toxic relationship, I kind of get the impression that their relationship lacks passion and David is with Alice for other reasons. Reasons that Evelyn knows and hates because of societal expectations. I don't think it'll have much affect for Evelyn though anytime soon, mostly cause she has vampires to deal with at the moment.

3) Dean, because Dean is a sweet boy who just wants to help his family. But then keeps meeting all these shady people. He's like an innocent blossom waiting for the innocence to be sucked dry from him. 4) I think Evelyn's father was straight up just helping supernatural people, mostly vampires, get properties under the table. Cause I imagine as a vampire even if you have money, you don't necessarily have identification or anything else that most realtors would want. So Evelyn's father took pity on them and helped them get some properties and kept law enforcement off them. Definitely do not think it's just Margot's property though. There are gonna be more properties an more vampires, probably also not just through Evelyn's dad. Inevitably, I feel Evelyn is gonna be in a lot of danger. Because Margot seems pretty ready to hurt Evelyn, or at least expose her to a world Evelyn is prepped for.

5) Definitely the page for the end of chapter 1. I really the bold usage of the red and the body language of the victim. There is something horrifying about it all together, which is definitely the mood I want to feel when vampires are involved. 6) I kind of think Margot's presence is just for the mundane reason of neeeding to move. Cause I can't imagine as a vampire you'd stay in one place too long, so moving around a lot is for the best. So it was just time for her to show up.

Attila Polyák

5, Favourite illustration. Hmmm... Margot's portrait image on the cast page, if you don't know why, just hover over it. ^^ 6, As boring as it sound I don't feel like there's anything special here. Needs to move once every while, since... You know... Being a vampire and not aging and all... Kinda' like in Man from Earth.

draculing

the hover animation on the cast page breaks very often because wordpress hates it, so I'm glad to know it works at least for some people ^^;

draculing

I love when people love Dean just because he's a sweetheart, and I will confirm the word of god Q&A thing that not everyone may have seen, that he does want to open a bakery one day

if only there weren't vampires happening

Eilidh

Okay so the hover animation has NEVER worked for me so I just turned off my adblock to check it and nearly jumped out of my skin(edited)

RebelVampire

QUESTION 7. Which characters do you enjoy seeing interact the most? What about their dynamic interests you?

QUESTION 8. What role do you think Dean will play in regards to Evelyn’s story? How will his brief encounter with Margot continue to affect him? Further, what do you make of Dean’s phone call with Angie who is estranged from the family? Why is Dean still helping her?

Eilidh

I really love Eve and her friends

They just have a really authentic feeling of trust and caring and I really enjoy it

draculing

Ooo an Angie question curious what everyone thinks

I really love including Eve's friend dynamics... making sure there's a sense of queer community/safety in a historical setting is really important to me as a creator

RebelVampire

QUESTION 9. What sorts of art or story details have you noticed in the way the comic is crafted that you think deserves attention?

QUESTION 10. How do you think Evelyn feels about her place in life and the society she lives in? Do you get the impression she’s an outcast? Regardless, how do you think these feelings have and will continue to influence her actions?

Absolutepsycho

Eve and her friends has to be my favorite dynamic thus far alongside the one scene with her and Margot. It just sets the mood of how their dynamic is going to play out and and the interesting part about it is that it can go so many ways, which makes it great.

As for Dean I feel he will be a center or semi-center part to her story, for the sole fact he is somehow connected to Margot. I have this gut feeling Dean is going to become a familiar that didn't want to be one in the first place. As for his sister, I think Dean is trying to bring family peace or trying to bring her back because he gives off 'family guy' vibes and he is such a wholesome cinnamon roll. So of course he would want to mend things because he loves his family

to answer 9. Not sure if this counts but I would love to know how Vera, Bess, and Eve met since they are so close. Friendships and normalcy within horror contexts are probably one of my favorite themes

10. Evie I see that she feels like she belongs but at the same time she feels doesn't. We see that in the first few pages of ' oh what are you doing with your life?' It's more than the anxiety of figuring it out, but the fact her only remaining family is going to get married and while she could find a partner and do those things it isn't widely accepted or would be 'odd' cause she is queer. While queer folks thrived, in that era it wasn't as visible and Eve could be feeling that 'outcast' notion. While she has wonderful friends to support her and is very head strong those feelings are may influence her actions to work harder, which is good and bad.

RebelVampire

7) Honestly, this is gonna be a strange choice, but Evelyn and her dad's old co-workers. Cause this is just flat out a subject I never see explored. When people die, stories almost always focuses on close friends or family and how the death affected them. Yet, there are a slew more people affected that are never talked about. So the fact we get to see through Evelyn how her dad's co-workers are holding up in a business setting and learning about Evelyn's personality that way was really novel for me. 8) I feel like Dean is gonna be the one to raise red flags and say, "Hey Evelyn. Margot over there is a vampire or something. Maybe lets not and just hide." Cause Dean strikes me more as the type to be the voice of reason in the face of things that scare him, compared to Evelyn at least. Thus he will be a grounding force in her story to kind of spell out the dangers for both her and the reader. As for Angie, I assume she did something culturally and societally unacceptble. Like fell in love with someone the family didn't like. Got knocked up as a teen, etc. etc. As for why Dean is helping her, probably he just has a more modern and progressive viewpoint than his parents (for the historical time at least). Which is generally how life works and society progresses. So instead of being mad, he just says whatever man this is

9) I really love the use of red in general in this comic. It's always used in such a bold way that really stands out. Plus, nothing like having a mostly black and white comic show some red blood. Drives that terrifying nail right into the soul. 10) I feel like Evelyn exists in this weird purgatory of belonging and not belonging. Since it's obvious she stands out in certain ways for the society, yet I think most people wouldn't think anything of it without getting to know her. But regardless, I think that makes her feel lost. But also helpless, cause I feel like she also has no clue how to address these feelings emotionally. Thus just buries it in other concerns so she doesn't have to confront her own personal feelings or consider the future or anything like that. As such, I kind of think this will be a driving force as the story continues. As she takes risks and does other things, just so long as she has some escape from having to think about the question of what she's doing with her life.

draculing

Eve definitely sits in that kind of in-between space! for a woman in the 1900s she fits quite a few kind of stereotypes appearance-wise, too, which.. adds another little layer to things

Burying your problems in work, and other tales as old as time

Attila Polyák

7, I'm a bit thorn on this, either Eve and her friends or Eve and her father's co-workers. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I'm not really sure why, I can't really express what I liked about their little banter, but I was quite fond of those pages. 8, Dean is probably going to be fairly important later on and for several reasons. First he kinda has become intertwined with the evens because of Margot, but even if that wasn't the case his interactions with Eve and the fact that he's the only connection she can reach that has anything to do with the house with no documents are more than enough reason for him to be around plotwise. Aaand since he and Pete moved stuff there and the entire situation gave him the creeps and kinda legit suspicions, this looks like the perfect situation for him to intentionally or not, push Eve into a direction where she'll be more interested in the supernatural. And I totally expect that she will some way pull him alongside herself while plunging into supernatural business, a bit like an unwilling sidekick.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 11. What do you think are this particular comic’s strengths? What do you think makes this comic unique? Please elaborate.

QUESTION 12. Do you believe that Margot and Evelyn will meet again? If so, whose terms will it be on? If they do meet, do you think Evelyn will be safe, or will Margot aim to harm her in some way to keep secrets hidden away?

draculing

What if they never met again...

Eilidh

They'll definitely meet again, I think it'll be on Margot's terms (after her "she wouldn't just forget it, would she?" comment, a bit ominous)

Absolutepsycho

11. The strengths that this comic possesses is telling a fantastic story through a historical, horror, and queer lens. Mixing genres' is a challenge, but the story seems to balance them all so well that it continues to pull it's audience back in.

12. Oh they are for sure going to meet again, because Evelyn is trying to piece things again and while Miss Margot was not to friendly Evelyn is persistent to get the information and her work done correctly. As for her doing that no doubt Margot will grow annoyed at her and may plot to attack her or set up plan 'kill her' because secrets are meant to be kept as secrets. However, if she does make a plan i feel it will ultimately may fail, because maybe an agreement will be made. We will see(edited)

RebelVampire

QUESTION 13. What are you most looking forward to in the comic? Also, do you have any final thoughts to share overall?

QUESTION 14. Overall, what obstacles do you foresee Evelyn having to face in the future? Given the comic is classified as a romance, what do you see in regards to Evelyn’s future prospects (if any)? What other things do you hope to see as the story continues?

RebelVampire

11) I think the comic's most abundant strength is tone shifting. Like one minute you're just in a quirky in silly scene but then whoops, serious emotional drama or terror or something else. Be able to pull off sudden tone shifts like that is extremely hard, especially in the face of trying to make something seem like a consistent story. Yet this comic pulls it off spectacularly because of the story context and the balance between the tones used. 12) I mean Margot seems bent on hunting Evelyn so umm, yes. And it will definitely be on Margot's terms. She'll be like "I want to apologize over totally not dangerous tea" and Evelyn will be curious and agree. I don't think Evelyn will be complete safe. I think it'll work out where Evelyn will leave in tact cause conscience will stop Margot, but I don't think Margot will let the issues drop so quickly.

13) I am looking forward to seeing Margot for because I'd like to get to know her more. Like right now we see suave and spook vampire, but I'd like to see the more vulnerable and, for lack of a better word, human sides that must exist within her. 14) Obstacles wise, I think I've mentioned it several times, but I do believe Evelyn is gonna get pulled into more supernatural danger. And part of it is just going to be because of her own desires to avoid her problems using distractions. However, I think she's gonna run into other problems too. Like maybe finding out she super really didn't know her father as well as she thought, maybe dealing with the fact businesses are not easy to maintain even with help. In the terms of hopes to see, I really hope we get to see Evelyn interact with the historical setting more, if that makes sense. Both in mundane and serious emotional drama ways.

draculing

aw man @RebelVampire I'm really happy to hear the tonal shifts work for you! I feel like horror (and really any story, but horror is sort of.. an extreme) really needs this.. sense of normalcy, almost boredom or banality to it. Characters need to have their boring, every-day "normal" in order for something abnormal/supernatural/frightening to really have impact later on

plus I love creating goofy little interpersonal moments in general :>

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Obelisk this week! Please also give a special thank you to Ashley McCammon for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Obelisk, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://www.obeliskcomic.com/

Ashley’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/obelisk

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Ashley’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/draculing

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kierongillen · 7 years

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Writer Notes: the Wicked + the Divine 455

Spoilers, obv.

The specials have been quite the time, having several ways to stress everyone the hell out. The amount of work that goes into a special is far more than any single script can justify in cold commercial terms. It's lucky that I'm only choosing periods that I'm interested in researching to death.

I suspect (or at least hope) that in terms of background reading, 455 is the most. 1831 was hard, but is a relatively tight period I looked at in depth. 455 basically involved researching the whole of the Western Roman Empire. This means the work was a much broader sweep. In the same way I suspected the 1831 story would be about Frankenstein, I knew this would probably be about what happened at one of the sacks of Rome. Not definitely – I've always got room to change tack if something more profitable turns up in the research – but likely.

As I started work, I realised the main advantage of the sack near the end of the Western Roman Empire is that it means you can do a swan song for the whole thing. Everything has already happened, so you can use it all. Thus we've got something which feels a little like a Roman Greatest Hits story.

Simultaneously, there's the awareness that while I think a lot of this is relatively well known, even the most basic facts aren't. Early readers made me aware that even basic ideas like Julius Caesar being dead for 500 years by this period can't be assumed – a level of historical literacy equivalent of not blinking if Joan of Arc turned up in a WW2 story. That's just audiences, and the vague sense of “Rome stuff” fills about 1000 years of people's imagination. As such, that our story is acounter-history required the introduction of what the real history actually was.

As I knew this was coming along way off, the research was a slow boil. I knew Rome, in various periods, relatively well. From the Punic Wars to Augustus is stuff I've read about many times – Carthage is something I've always wanted to do a story about. What I was looking for is a long sweep across the whole thing, to live with it a while, and let me think along the way. The actual device I used was The History Of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan, which goes from legendary prehistory to about 20 years after 455. It's about 60 hours of stuff, by my rough match, which I worked into my listening routine – which is mainly when working out, running, travelling or doing the dishes. I listen to my podcasts at 1.5x.

That was for most of 2016. After that, it was digging down into specific texts, the majority which happened in December/January. Trying to play with various theories about the decline of the Roman Empire was paramount. Everyone has one, and be suspicious of anyone who gives you one reason. The book which generally was most influential in terms of how I chose to present Rome was The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History by Peter Heather, which basically forwards the idea that Rome fell due to trade across their borders creating increased population density of Barbarian tribes which (as opposed to earlier periods) the Romans were unwilling to integrate into the fabric of the Empire.

I went with my own counter-theory, of course, which was that an Old Lady Did It.

(The Old Lady Did It is a Roman Trope of long standing. I'm a proud owner of a Livia Did It T-shirt.)

Anyway – too much research, and I'll try and drop some things I'd wanted to use but didn't as we go through it. Suffice to say, there's nothing comforting about reading about Rome in the current political climate.

Anyway – Andre! I'd first encountered his work in Avengers AI, written by my friend Sam Humphries. That weird, neon-infused Cyberpunk vibe was a big part of the book's appeal for me, so I started following him. I believe we started talking properly around the time of his own Man Plus, which was is a Otomo-does-Akira-In-Portugal kick, and was another thing which made me file Andre in my “Sci-fi artist file.”

However, after we got talking, he showed me some of his other in-development pitches, which included historical and fantasy work. Which made me go “Hmm.” He's got a mass of gifts, but I had one image that I knew I needed for 455 – the Roman Triumph, with a God in the chariot. That demanded a certain sort of artist, namely one who was happy to actually draw a triumph in all its ludicrous glory. Andre, someone whose work had more than its fair share of city-scapes and crowds, seemed like someone who'd nail that – plus the confluence of European and Manga influences in the work would gel interestingly. We'd get Rome as a place, and that's what we needed.

He was working on Generation Gone with Ales Kot, but they talked, and Andre took as month off the preparation for that to do the special. Thanks, guys.

Colours are provided by Matt “Eisner For Matt” Wilson, and seeing how the two of them worked together was definitely one of the more intriguing parts of the process.

Andre's Cover

Done early, before the script was actually completed, which meant we were more conservative with the choice. The Laurel reef being lowered by elderly hands, the arrogance of it. A call back to the head-shots of the first year of WicDiv too. Also, compare and contrast Matt's colouring choices here with his ones in the issue. This is a much more subdued, chalkier mode. Or that's wot I think anyway.

Jamie's Cover| We were originally talking about statues of multiple gods, but as the script was still in process we didn't want to tie down any of the cast bar Lucifer. Equally, we leaned symbolic on the cover – the flames of Rome, the statue, the grafitti's Chi-Ro in paint (or blood)? Symbolic is good. We like Symbolic.

The Chi-Ro is an old Christian symbol. It's what they say Constantine had his soldiers paint on his shields to ensure victory. My fave thing of Constantine from the research was that while he was more responsible than any for the Christianization of the Empire, he didn't convert until just before his death. I enjoy the theory that it's because the idea that baptizing may have been a one-time “clear all your sins” opportunity. The idea of confession and absolution wasn't around as much. So if you convert and then commit a mortal sin, you're off to hell. But if you commit a mortal sin and then convert, you're fine. So Constantine may have just been gaming Christianity to ensure the best chance of a good afterlife.

IFC

Oh god. Looking at the last paragraph makes me think this could be eternally long if I just keep on stopping and telling you fun anecdotes from memory. Also, factually dubious, as they're from memory, and my memory cannot be trusted.

Jamie designed the icons, and had to work out what vibe to give it. I suspect he was grateful to me for having most the cast already being dead so saving him work.

The Inverted Chi-Ro isn't a real symbol anyone used, but our best way to make a Lucifer. The biggest historical cheat in the series is using any Lucifer figure like this in the period – as far as I'm aware, the idea of a singular satanic adversary in this mode simply wasn't around. But it dovetails with our mythology.

I get asked whether any special will happen earlier in the cycle. The tendency to lean towards the ends is basically the same urge which pushed towards a Roman Special at the fall. Ends let you write about the whole thing. It's only at the end where you can say with any hope of being correct what was really happening, and even then it's only a hope.

But the 1920s special is a little earlier than the end, if only because we've seen the actual end in issue 1.

(More on the 1920s special soon – there's been a few changes in my planning on that.)

The text on the page is the standard WicDiv one, but the final two lines, briefly explaining the history of the Vandal sack in 455 were added at lettering to provide the necessary context to a reader.

Page 1-2

Steady angle shot, three panels on each page. The issue has been compare to Uber by several readers, primarily for the volume of the violence and the detail of the historical focus. It's also a little like it in its storytelling like this – this lingering attempt to make a scene very normal. We don't see the battle against the Vandals – instead, we observe from a distance. We try and make it documentary, with us an observer.

The animal being gutted is a goat.

An example of an earlier tweak, the shepherd's first line was “Wh...who in god's name are you meant to be?” This could read as that our Lucifer actually is Julius. Changing it to “Dressed up as?” brings the artifice closer to the surface. While the nature of lucifer/Julius is explained in a few pages time, it's not meant to be a mystery. Creating a false uninteresting question is just a distraction for the reader.

I kind of laugh at the idea of Lucifer wandering around near Rome, trying to find an army.

Ave Atque Vale! Is a quote from Catallus, related to death. Originally was Ave in my first draft, which of course means “Hello!” so makes no sense to say when he's heading away to the shepherd. If you were generous, you could say he was greeting the Vandals.

The first pages which Matt coloured were these, and when I saw them, I knew it was going to be something special.

Yes, panicked sheep in the second panel of page 2 is a star.

Page 3-4

WicDiv is about many things, but “The fucking obvious” certainly rates highly. Triumphs are one of the big core Roman rituals we think of, when a general is given a personal parade. They're rare and hugely important. The slave whispering “remember you are only a man” to warn against hubris is the detail which everyone loves. Clearly, in WicDiv, the resonances are all kinds of fun.

In terms of how comics panels are not one moment in time, have a nose at the last panel. You read the line, then the Oh!, and then the response of the slave seeing something, and then you look at the miracle, the smug, painted face, of Lucifer, and his Heh. That's a little journey.

The red face paint is ceremonial, to be akin to Jupiter. Bear that in mind for later, obv.

The big triumph is the first issue money shot – after 3 pages of very low atmosphere, we have the sprawl of Rome. Choosing the direction of the march was key – I gave Andre the best guess route of the triumph, and he chose his angle. By luck, he would enter via the gate here Lucifer is dragged out at the end of the issue. The triumph also ends at the temple of Jupiter, which is yet more fun subtext for those who really like digging into it.

We tweaked the colouring on the crowds, to try and get more of the cosmopolitan nature of Rome. The majority of legionnaires are white, but that's because most were Germanic in this period.

The triumph was originally planned for a spread, but I decided I needed another page later in the comic.

Page 5

Title drop, and a bleak laugh. The idea of calling a story IMPERIAL PHASE which isn't in the actual Imperial Phase trade came from thinking of Julian Cope having his single World Shut Your Mouth not on the album World Shut Your Mouth, an idea he in turn got from some sixties band I haven't time to look up.

The date was tricky to decide exactly, due to the timeline of real world events I wanted to get in. Clearly, for full trash-Roman pulp, I'd have pushed this story March, so I could Ides of March it, but alas, no dice.

Page 6

Nice atmosphere in the first panel, in terms of going from the chaos of the Triumph to something a little more contemplative.

Enter Dionysus/Bacchus. Flashback colours and... one of the thoughts of Matt was that the SFX budget for God Stuff would be lower back here. So the god powers aren't quite as SFX-y as they are in the present day. Not that there's much here, but I'm reminded by how low-key this is. The intent here is that he's done his god thing on stage and come off... but he could just be an actor, which is about as close as WicDiv gets to a 1:1 thing.

The nature of art in Rome (or “Rome”) is key here, and talked throughout. Actors were the underclass. To act was to be disreputable. The “actress as sexworker” trope arrives in Rome, I believe. I reference Lou Reed in the panel descriptions, in terms of these being a Walk On The Wild Side Romans.

Falerian is a type of fine wine. Mithras is presumably one of the other gods – Scythia being a place.

The nature of Imperial Phase has been about women involved with women, which has nagged. Having the humanising part of the story be a love story between men felt timely. It was a place we could do it, so we should. Though more on that later, in terms of the specifics.

There was the obvious worry of doing it, of course – where Lucifer ends up. Lucifer is not good representation. I haven't seen anyone pick up on that angle. We spend a lot of time worrying about stuff no-one picks up on, which is why we spend all that time worrying about it.

The word “play” is, of course, loaded, as are the name changes. Story about identity, we are in it.

Page 7

The best thing about the specials is definitely getting a chance to write Ananke again. She is a fun time.

If I had more space, I'd have almost certainly done more with Lucifer's adventures during the day. It's worth stressing that by this point, I believe Gladiatorial fights were no longer actually happening in Rome, due to Christianisation. My research has went straight on from Western Rome and barged into Byzantine Rome, and the story of the chariot races there is a delight.

Page 7-8

These scenes are very much me getting my I, Claudius on. Very limited set, two actors going off at one another. Of course, all of this will resonate with anyone who's been following the main series.

Panels 3 and 4 on page 7 are the bit of tight acting I like most from Andre here – it's all about the actions, and the space, with us positioned a little back from it.

I smile at Lucifer referencing something that was said of 2014-Lucifer in the first arc. Ananke has been doing this for a very long time.

A quick buzz through various other gods' fates in the first panel on page 8. There's a lot of historical reference packed in there to unpack for those who wish.

The Inanna/Attila The Hun panel is, I think, the largest panel description in the issue. Well... not true. The Rome Triumph one is much longer, but that's a splash. This one included a potted history of a bunch of Hun-related information for Andre to play with, in terms of deciding the looks, etc.

It was also the most discussed panel at the stage of pencils – avoiding objectifying Inanna here was key.

Attila The Hun died on (one of his) wedding night in the real life.

The “As I understand” is pretty key in the captions, as is other distancing effects. Lucifer would not have been a god when Inanna did this. It is very early in this pantheon's time.

I think this may be a place to have a word about Pantheon times through history. 455 doesn't seem to fit in one of these 90 years, if you follow that strictly.

The short version is, as seen in the first scene of WicDiv which ends the 1920s pantheon at Dec 31st 2013 and we start our story about 6 months into the new Pantheon on January 1st 2014, the question of where the 90 years is measured for has to be (to some degree) flexible. Gods appear over a period of a year or so in our 2014, and die at their own rates. You can assume that the “true” length of a pantheon can wiggle a little – some would be less than a year, some could theoretically stretch across 4 calendar years. As such, it's hard to predict exactly on which year any given recurrence could occur – even from the data we have from 1831, 1923 and 2014, we know that.

I suspect before the end I may give hard dates for every Pantheon. I suspect, anyway. I know where it would appear.

Page 9-11

You know, I suspect Page 9 – for an action scene – is one of the most story-beat laden of the issue, in terms. Lots of great Andre stuff here – the casual-ness of both the burning and the brutal-ness of the kick. Matt goes to town on the colours too, the reds taking over. Obviously the fire is a key thing with Lucifer, and his flame grows and ebbs as we progress.

There's some difficult hard cuts here – page 10 to 11, for example. We just have the “Ananke leaving” beat there, then moving to Dio and Lucifer in bed.

There is a tendency when discussing the ancients to be a bit blasé in terms of writing about their sexual habits. This normally is based around us mapping our readings of sexuality onto the past, while erasing their own social mores. I've ran with some of the information on page 11 before, when doing THREE, specifically the politics of different sexual roles. Relevantly, the status elements Lucifer alludes to here – in terms of being a bottom is always dishonourable. I could ramble at this at length, but I'll spare you.

Lots and lots of stuff here, in terms of trying to set up thematic elements here, but let's just say none of it would matter at all if Matt and Andre hadn't nailed the last panel.

Page 12-13

Lots of historical bits and bobs here. Perhaps the implicit question we don't answer is “what happened to the last Emperor?” He was cut to pieces a few days before this and thrown in the river, because he'd pissed off the Vandals enough to have them invade.

You may notice how thin the senate is populated. That's because the majority of the population of Rome have fucked off to hide. Rome's population is artificially lower during this point in history, which is a thing which tries to lend a little credulity to the Ananke/Geiseric cover-up.

The main tweaks here was making sure the exact nature of Lucifer's slip was tricky. Someone getting mixed up in the time-line requires making sure the reader understands the timeline. I half wonder why I went with Crassus rather than Pompey.

Anyway, let's hope that Lucifer manages to keep on the straight and narrow.

Page 13-14

Well, that escalated quickly.

When planning the issue, you start doing maps of time and space, and I rapidly realised with 25 pages, and so many other essential scenes, there was no possible way to show a slow descent.

The story's structure immediately suggested itself.

While the Triumph was the image we needed to enter the world, this is the one that will be remembered. People reference my Crossed work here – which is true, to some degree, in that it was also about turning flesh into art. I suspect I was more thinking of Banks, and a certain beat involving a certain object of furniture. I say, dancing around spoilers.

The influence here which gets kind of buried is Domitian, who threw the most goth parties of all time. Have a nose at this here, in terms of Things Emperors Got Up To.

Page 15-16

We've already namechecked Caligula and here comes Nero, the other of the most famous Roman Bad Emperors. The elements about Nero here were the closest thing the research unveiled which made me want to reposition the story to a different period – Nero interacting with the gods would have been fascinating, for all the reasons described here.

We had a reader question the direction of Imperial Phase, in that the insanity-leading-to-murder trope that appeared to be coming and the inherent ableism in that. It was a usefully timed question, as it made me dig more sharply into the exact choices we were making in explaining the idea. This isn't about going mad. This is – as Dionysus puts it – about excess. I'm thinking of Bowie living off cocaine and peppers. We lean into it pretty heavily in this issue, and hopefully it delineates the aim.

Just looking at my script, and found the anecdote about the time I threw up a handful of blood slipped in there. I'd forgotten that this page was autobiographical. Comics, eh?

Look at what Matt's doing with the colours here – the whole panel is bloodshot as we progress.

Page 17-20

In terms of buried research in the comic, that a hole was knocked in the roof of the Temple of Jupiter during this sack of Rome is the one which makes me laugh. Behold! Let team WicDiv present the true story of how the temple of Jupiter got a dirty great hole in it.

(I also like that this makes the sack of Rome much more efficient for the Vandals.)

This is an actor making a soliloquy scene, perhaps obviously, recalling both the stage and the Passion. While this issue is heavily in the research, it's also doing ahistorical work. Shakespeare's fingerprints is all over this, to state another obvious thing.

The “Emerge like an Eagle” thing is very much Roman Pagan belief.

I mentioned Nero, Caligulia and Julius. The other Roman Emperor who is in the mix with Lucifer was Julian the Apostate who was the last Pagan Roman emperor, and tried to revive Pagan Rome before dying early. A “What if Julian had lived?” is a counter-factual history which is always a fun one to swill around your mouth. He's the one we don't reference, but much of Lucifer's thought comes from mashing Julian with someone of lower birth and more melodramatic tendencies.

This is the sequence which I cut the page from the Triumph earlier to expand. Clearly this could happen quicker, but we need to let the death sequence come out, in all its horror. Also, the collapse on the page turn seems essential.

I'm almost surprise Et Tu Jupiter reached the final page. We were always wondering whether it was too funny. In the end, it was decided it was, but in juxtaposition with the art, sufficiently bleakly to not break the mood. Especially before the collapse on the next page, which is very much human stripped by the divine.

Clearly this plot beat, is the biggest one for close followers of the book. I suspect at this point of the story, there would be strong suspicions that the “you die in two years” isn't true. Unless this sequence is deeply deceptive, it is true. You die in two years, by yourself. We place the specials pretty carefully, in terms of what they reveal, so this being half way through Imperial Phase underlines what could await our cast.

In terms of craft, going silent for a page after the monologuing seemed key. I mean, Ananke's fundamental disrespect in terms of how she's carrying Lucifer says everything.

Page 21-25

Out the gate towards the Tiber. The names listed are famous Romans whose bodies were thrown in the Tiber so that they could have no honourable end – and in the case of Marius, that there was no place for his followers to gather. The man who did that was Sulla, btw. Marius was dead, he dug them up.

The “Pagan burial, but a shit one” is very much Ananke at peak “I will tell you the truth, but you really have to pay attention to the details” mode.

And here's Geiseric! Looking good. The Vandals have been in Carthage for 20 years, but we decided to have him be kind of pallid so as not to confuse people. Stories like THREE were all about the pure-historical aspect and risked (and often did) lose people by doing things in line with the best research rather than common belief. WicDiv has a slightly different set of priorities, especially on secondary aspects like tanned Vandals.

Heh. Story starts with butchery of a goat, and ends with butchery of Lucifer. WicDiv is a very subtle comic.

Sulla's an interesting dude, and I think the use by Ananke here seems pretty fair. The future she's pointing towards never happens – the marriage is there. Germanic hands ended up ruling what came after the Empire, but that's not really what is going. Of course, Geiseric is also entirely right in recognising he's being manipulated.

They're a fun pair, actually, in terms of the fencing. I kind of realise this is the sort of conversation which is going to be key in Spangly New Thing, which makes me excited about writing it again.

I smile at the Vandal line. People have wondered why I didn't do the earlier sack, so I could have had the goths. Well, it didn't really work for the story, which is about the end of an era. But also it would have been perhaps too much. I did have a joke take, where Ananke is debating which Germanic tribe to manipulate into invading Rome. “The Goths again? No. No More Goths.”

But 455 isn't that kind of book.

The final image! Lovely, in its bleak and awful way.

Page 26

City of God being Augustine's book, written primarily in response to the crisis of faith in the Empire over the 410 sack of Rome by the aforementioned Goths.

Anyway – thanks for reading, and thanks for Andre for joining us on this beast. We're back (eek) tomorrow, with Imperial Phase II. Onwards, etc.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #andre lima araujo #matt wilson #Writer Notes

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comicteaparty · 6 years

Text

May 24th, 2018 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on May 24th, 2018, from 5PM - 7PM PDT. The chat focused on Nwain by Terrana Cliff.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

COMIC TEA PARTY START!

Good day everyone~! This week’s Comic Tea Party is now officially beginning~! Today we are discussing Nwain by Terrana Cliff~! (http://nwain.com/) For those new or in need of a reminder, discussions about the comic are freeform, so please feel free to bring up whatever you wish. However, every 30 minutes I will be dropping in a discussion question to help those who would like a prompt. These questions are totally OPTIONAL to answer, and you can pay them no mind if you wish. If you miss out on any though, they’ll be pinned for the duration of the chat once they’re posted~! Remember, constructive criticism is allowed, but the primary focus here is to have fun and appreciate the amazing comics that the community makes~! As a bonus, each chat a top comment will be picked and featured in the archives and on an ad for CTP! All that being said, let’s get started and have a great discussion!

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

not my favorite but i do want to say of all the animated scenes i really liked the opening few pages best. i forget what page it was but there is a shot of nwain on a cliff and the animation pans up to show the town. i thought between the lighting, the motion, and everything else, it was immensely beautiful and breathtaking.

snuffysam

the opening shots were beautiful, for sure

i forget the page number, but there was a page where you could click on the different locations and get a little interaction. that was super cool

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah i remember that! i have to say that was definitely the most creative page. cause man, cannot imagine the work that went into that one

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I have two takes on this, which can be seen somewhat independent from the animation style... a favourite scene and a best scene.

My favourite scene was probably the one where she first did the teleporting and actually phased between the panels. Super cool. Sticks in my head.

snuffysam

the teleporting panels are all great

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

What I'd say was the best scene was when Nwain was put in the stockade near the start and offered up the line "what are you in for"... I felt like it captured the comic excellently. She does something heroic, but due to circumstances, ends up in trouble for it, and yet there's humour to be found in the situation too.

And yes, the animation style with the panning blows my mind. I know the one with the clicking on locations that you meant - just, whoa. You could even click on them again and they'd retract. Mind blowing.

snuffysam

putting aside the artistic talent and effort put into the comic - the technical skill is extremely impressive. getting all these different pages working is a huge feat. like, there's not a single bug to be found

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I can see why it takes a month to put together a couple pages. Even that feels fast.

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Greetings!

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I think there was one panel once where the dialogue ran off the edges. I couldn't tell if that was intentional.

I shouldn't be nitpicky.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i really liked the stockade scene cause i think it demonstrates nwain's imperfections as a person. like shes not this perfect, stoic, and regal knight. shes just this person who has some fighting skills, makes some boo-boos in life.

hey super~!

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Nwain often seem to be messing up, honestly. But it's done in such a way that it's easy to relate to, like, I might've done the same thing in her place.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

tbf some of the messups arent really her fault. like a lot of stuff at the tournament makes sense cause shes not from the time period. how was she supposed to know some game rule was declared illegal O_O

my favorite scene is actually probably the one where she throws the favor and uses it to win the race. because it was the scene that i didnt know where it was going to go. i knew she was going to aim for the favor, but i didnt know for what purpose. was she going to go for it seriously? use it to take over the world? and then she used it as a distraction and laughs were had

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Well, yeah, true, it's rather situational/owing to circumstance. Still, she ends up needing to apologize.

Hm, I wasn't sure she was going for it until she did, and as soon as RoyalPerson (I suck at names) said it was the oldest trick, I was like, ahh clever.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

wait a second math how is your favorite scene not that one where they said a bunch of puns

snuffysam

OMG that scene!!!

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Heh. I did like the cloud puns, but I don't call that a mist opportunity.

I think my favourite LINE would be "pun pals". Did not see that coming.

Also, Princess G, fave character.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i was surprised how many puns they could make for clouds XD

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Water you talking about?

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Late, but hey Rebel!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

since you brought up fave character, i really like the magician.

snuffysam

i love mousebot. she's a friend.

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

The magician's really interesting! Is he (for lack of a better pronoun) an artificial life form?

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah thats what im understanding about the far listeners. that theyre robots. or at least one character called them robots. either way i think theyre the most interesting people so far. and of course mousebot is adorable

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

(It's weird, using "it" feels impersonal, because of society. Fascinating use of gender in the comic, incidentally. Lots of backstory there.)

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Also can I just say, I love that the comic has animated bits every now and then

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I like how the magician was going to bring in these life forms as champions and they have this big off button. "Why do they even have that?"

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 2. Nwain’s home, Sundial City, has been lost to the present world for almost 200 years. What do you think happened to the city that caused it to disappear in the present day? Was it something the city folk did, or was it some sort of natural disaster? Do you think Nwain will be able to reach Sundial City? If so, what do you think Nwain will find? Will there be people there, or will only ruins be left? Speaking of Sundial City, do you think the events hinted at in Nwain’s past have something to do with the city’s current state? If so, how do you believe they factor in?

snuffysam

well, they liked to experiment with time travel

i think the city just... left, somehow

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I feel like the City just kind of cut themselves off from the rest of civilization. (A bit like Tarn Vedra in the "Andromeda" universe, if anyone's seen that show.) Possibly accidentally (owing to the whole time silk problem) but yeah. Unless they're out of phase.

Meaning they're making some great phasers.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

when you say left, are you saying that maybe they time traveled the entire city and like, the city hasnt shown up yet cause it went a bit farther in the future than nwain? cause that was my pulled out of the hat theory.

snuffysam

yeah that's what i'm thinking. currently it's 200 years in the future. the city went to, like, 1000 years in the future

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Interesting. I hadn't considered that as a possibility.

snuffysam

or maybe the city went to one minute in the past, then ran into itself and exploded

whoops

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

There must be some residual effects left behind though, since that's what the Magician was able to read with his device.

I've done that with my time travel stories. Good times.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i feel like the time silk has to have something to do with the city's disappearance. since i mean, its not like nwain was purposely trying to travel with time. idk if it could time travel the whole city, though id believe it if it time traveled a lot of the people. if there were any left. cause i mean nwain left after that place pretty much burned down or something from the flashbacks. so maybe there was just so little left its inconsequential

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Seems like the "magic" they knew back then was pretty damn dangerous too though. Maybe in trying to rebuild the city after the fire they cut a few corners and whoops, we kinda sealed ourselves off like Sleeping Beauty or something.

snuffysam

the city going away for centuries is kind of sleeping beauty-esque, huh?

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

There is that too, I suppose.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

does this mean nwain is the prince who has to roll on up and smack it awake?

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Yeah, as for Nwain returning... I don't see that happening. Because I feel like that would end the story. She has no real desire to return, and we never saw her leave (except in flashback) so narratively speaking, it's in the past (literally). Bringing it forward feels like it would bookend the whole thing, somehow.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i do want to call shenanigans on sundial city's magic being more dangerous though. that seems like one of those stigmas that comes about because nobody knows what happened to the city. so thus they blame a scapegoat and it just becomes a common accepted fact with no basis.

snuffysam

i think she'll try to figure out what happened, but i don't think she cares to return yeah

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i think shes gonna at least find the city in the present though. i think shell give up on time travel tho. unless she tries and whoops, winds up even further in the future

the subtitle of this comic is "the knight who wandered dream" and that makes me wonder if this is gonna be the comic that fully embraces the "it was all a dream cliche"

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Except Nwain herself was pointing out that safety's a necessity with magic when doing the tutoring, and had a story of someone who befell bad things.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yes but my point is i doubt its more dangerous

than current magic

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I don't see time travel being a major component. Unless it becomes a factor in those portals somehow too.

snuffysam

"dream" is something to do with the magic i think? like inside the worms was dreamstuff or whatever it was called?

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Ehhh, fair, might just be different dangerous, but I still think that could have played a hand in things.

snuffysam

so perhaps she gets trapped in the dream world at some point?

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I feel like it's too random to be a dream. Like, why would Nwain dream that board game rules became illegal?

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i doubt its a dream. but i feel like the title has gotta be something

maybe

they tried to teleport the city

and it got stuck in the inbetween

snuffysam

i feel like the story has been foreshadowing someone or something getting stuck in the inbetween

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Maybe she is the dream.

Everything is just a figment of Shade's imagination.

Oh, I like that theory, Rebel. Only lost people can find the City.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah i mean its at least a specific detail to mention. thats theres an inbetween. and sundial city is the missing thing right now.

snuffysam

it's something that's been mentioned multiple times too

rule of writing. setup, reminder, payoff

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

regardless tho i think nwain is....not gonna find any people at the city.

and have to accept lonliness

snuffysam

yeah i think they're all dead

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

They were all turned into catgirls. Or catyith. Or catomith.

snuffysam

if they all teleported into the inbetween and didn't time travel, they've been cut off for centuries

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

But for them, maybe only a few months.

snuffysam

is that how the inbetween works?

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

D'you think they were the ones keeping the Crimson Empire in check?

It seems to have flourished since that time.

I have no idea how anything works.

snuffysam

the crimson empire didn't exist at all back when sundial city was around

maybe they were preventing any one power from rising up? i dunno though

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

the crimson empire is sundial city. they just changed their name after that fire. were reborn like a phoenix and left their old life behind. but they dont want anyone to know so they erased their past and hid the city

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I was never great at politics.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

more seriously, if the inbetween is like a dream realm i could buy that time doesnt function like in the real world

snuffysam

they took the city and pushed it somewhere else

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

But did they build this city on rock and roll?

snuffysam

that would make sense, rebel. it's also possible that time passes faster in the inbetween, so it's been 10000 years for the citizens

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

We don't know the lifespan of people either.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 3. In order to earn star maps, Nwain’s current dilemma is participating in the Tournament at Lacefort. However, numerous ups and downs have occurred during the course of the story. Who do you believe will be the ultimate victor of the tournament, or do you think something will prevent the tournament from concluding? Will Nwain earn the favor of the Margravine, whether by accident or on purpose? If Nwain does earn the favor, what do you think may happen? Will things go as the Magician predicted or will the Margravine have a change of heart? Do you think the tournament will end with Nwain getting the star maps, or will something drastically alter that course of action?

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Nwain having the favour is awkward. If she doesn't end up with it, all I can think is that she gave it back to Margravine in secret. Meaning... she has to marry herself? IDK.

snuffysam

now, that all depends on the difference between holding the napkin and actually having margravine's favor

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Owlgirl/Penny has a whole plot that needs to happen at some point though. So I feel star maps are inevitable.

snuffysam

like, margravine does seem to like nwain somewhat? though mostly as entertainment i think

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Oh, right, I suppose the favour could be rejected. Well, Nwain's more than a novelty now, she can teleport people and all.

snuffysam

probably not on a mass scale, though she can do some teaching

and watch as they all make the same mistake that sundial city probably did

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i do feel the story has been building up the margravine's like for nwain a lot. so i could see the favour not being rejected somehow. and then ya know, the entire political system being uprooted and there being massive strife. and then the magician headdesking wondering what horrors they brought upon the world

snuffysam

yeah or worse, someone else gets the favor, and margravine rejects it because she prefers nwain

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

The favour of the month.

Maybe they can spin it as a way to stop the drought.

snuffysam

well i guess that would work? since nwain having favor with margravine means the magician gets closer to making that water deal

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

now thats a path i could see happening more. someone else gets the favor and the margravine is like "nah nwain is way cooler did you see how she teleported me."

ah!

i could not actually remember why the magician was there tbh XD cause we havent gotten to see much of the dealing for that water deal

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Also all the tears of joy shed over two ladies in love.

snuffysam

one lady and one laidth

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Truth, my bad.

I show my age at my difficulty coming to grips with the gender fluidity.

I love how it's just this matter of fact thing though.

snuffysam

that's just how her culture be. still not great because adult laidths don't have that great of a standing in sundial society

or, didn't, i suppose

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah whatever nwain's social standing, its a new day and a new life

as for who wins the tournament, i feel like nwain is too far behind in points. unless they give it to her cause she helped with the elemental giant situation thing

snuffysam

how many rounds are left?

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Don't forget the person with the favour gets two additional points.

I believe this was the last round. Because they said they'd settle up the favour thing at the end of it.

Of course, I don't know how many points you get for coming in second and stuff, if any.

snuffysam

she won the race iirc, and i don't think anyone has more than three points. so that means she won

...assuming she counts as having the favor

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

idk. this is assuming all events are awarded equally. not to mention how do they deal with teams? like...a team event seems like a poor last event. XD cause youd have to know you were already going to lose by that point and that makes for poor team members

snuffysam

the rules really weren't explained. but that's fair because we're seeing this from nwain's point of view. and she was just pushed into the ring and told to do her best.

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Which reminds me. She has a ring. So she was married once. That could throw a wrench into everything. (Did she even hear the Magician say 'marriage' that one time? Seemed like no.)

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

That can only go so well IMO

snuffysam

nwain was?

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yes. nwain was married but i think her family died in the first?

fire

i can spell

snuffysam

well then, good news

marriage is done

so that problem's solved

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

maybe not tho

at the very least

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

They're stuck "in between".

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

when shes asked "hey were you married?" she says "i was."

so she considers it past tense at least

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

That has a familiar ring to it.

snuffysam

most marriages aren't designed to last past the 200 year mark

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I wonder if she was married to another yith.

snuffysam

it's possible

given the social standing thing especially

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 4. At current, Nwain is focused on helping two individuals: Owlgirl and Princess Joza. In regards to the former, do you think Nwain’s idea of taking Owlgirl to see the harpies will work out? If not, what exactly will go wrong? Assuming it goes wrong, what do you think the two will do then? Will Owlgirl stay in her current form, or will Nwain find a way to fix her? In regards to Princess Joza, do you think Joza will be able to learn the magic Nwain is teaching? Given how dangerous the magic is, though, do you think Joza learning it is a good idea? Lastly, do you think there will be political fallout for Nwain teaching Joza, or will everything be fine?

snuffysam

Joza is 100% going to mess something up

she's not an idiot, but she does seem moderately reckless

just a bit

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Everything will not be fine. But it will go pear shaped in unexpected ways.

Joza is eager.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

im not sure if id say joza seems reckless, but i do think joza is overly bold and overconfident

snuffysam

yeah, that's what i meant. overconfident

anyway, as for what the fallout will be - been a while since nwain's been in the stockades

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

When they're in the city, they're over everything.

The Penny storyline has been very much in the background. I'm starting to feel like it's a side quest.

snuffysam

it does kind of have that aura about it. a villager mentioned penny offhandedly. nwain came across her by accident. and she'll get around to helping her once she's done with this tournament business.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah i agree it feels like a side quest. but that almost makes me suspicious itll amount to more somehow. tho im not sure what

maybe the harpies know the truth about sundial city

and thats what this is an important questline

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Maybe the harpies can teach them to play harps and they form a touring band?

Along with the cymbals on that one car.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i dont think the harpies know how to plays harps O_O alas

im actually seriously assuming theyre dead XD and that owlgirl is gonna be stuck with nwain forever

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Hope that'll be owl right with her.

snuffysam

that would suck if everyone was wrongly afraid of the giant owls, and then they all died before they could be redeemed

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

maybe the giant owls are the people of sundial city

nwain journeyed for nothing

they were there all along

snuffysam

that would explain the shield symbol

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

That'd be a hoot.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

Owlet you keep making your owl puns.

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

One of the things I like, btw, with the animation style is how sometimes random extra panels appear. Like a bonus. The one coming to mind is when Joza's learning magic and there's the worry about the random snakes.

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Don't give a hoot

snuffysam

it's always cute when that happens

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I gotta go owl in.

snuffysam

besides looking cool, the animated panels make it so that you don't know any of the actions that happen ahead of time

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Could there be random ladders with the random snakes?

snuffysam

which can lead to some funny moments

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Powel Up

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

snuffy: That's true, interesting point I hadn't considered!

I sometimes just marvel at how people blink and stuff.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

on the downside tho the animations make referencing things hard cause you gotta remember which panels had which story bits. so can take a while to find things sometime. XD

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I'm pretty good at remembering stuff like that. ^.^

Actually, when I first saw it I thought 'oh, neat, some panels will animate'... but it's ALL of 'em.

The little circles help with knowing to click on too, not just the blue borders.

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea thats understandable, Rebel

and good for ya Math

snuffysam

i do like the little circles that show the dialogue progression. the comic really excels with UI design along with everything else

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah, technically speaking its executed very well. i found the interface to be pretty intuitive for getting through the panels.

snuffysam

i can't even imagine how much time/effort it takes to do each page, but dang is it worth it

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

It give it a creative edge over your usual comic

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

ah so since i didnt say it before, i actually think nwain might suffer some political fallout for teaching joza magic. at the very least i can see a plot line where joza goes to the crimson empire and joza's mom throws a fit XD

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Not saying every comic should have things like animations and interactive elements

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

It's one of those things that really takes advantage of the digital medium. You can't exactly do that with a regular comic book.

snuffysam

i think nwain has the potential to cause political turmoil every time she takes a breath

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Rebel, yeah, I agree. Though it could be that it gets Joza out of trouble, like if she'd been able to teleport away from the crazy snowball.

So perhaps all is forgiven.

Snuffy: Truth. It's a skill.

snuffysam

she has a tendency to drop the ball a bit. or at least, there's a tendency for the ball to be dropped in her vicinity.

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

yea

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah. i doubt nwain will be in serious trouble or anything. just gonna get an afternoon in the stockades again O_O

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I also like the nickname Spoony.

Superjustingo of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Agreed with ya there(edited)

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

It's soup-er.

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Anyway, guessing the current arc will wrap soon, be interesting to see what happens. Impressed how long the comic's been going too, years!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

COMIC TEA PARTY END!

Unfortunately, the scheduled Comic Tea Party time is now up~! Thank you everyone so much for reading and joining this week’s chat~! We want to give a special thank you to Terrana Cliff, as well, for making Nwain and volunteering it for our reading queue. If you liked the comic, please be sure to support Terrana Cliff’s efforts however you’re able to. All that being said, if you would like to continue discussing this week’s comic, we highly encourage you to do so~!

For next week, Comic Tea Party will focus on Dawn of the Dad by AnitaComics. As always, please use the next several days to read as much of the comic as you would like. We hope to see you next Thursday on May 31st from 5PM to 7PM PDT for the chat~! Until then, happy reading~! Comic: https://tapas.io/series/Dawn-of-the-Dad

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #bookclub #comic bookclub #webcomic bookclub #start faire #startfaire #comic tea party #ctp #nwain #terrana cliff

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