page 1388 – being discreet is hard for everyone
Uh oh. I’m having to resort to posting an unfinished draft to save time again. Sorry about this, gang. To provide some context, the version of the page you see before you is virtually unrecognizable from the original rough doodle I started with. At first, the format of this page was going to be a series of panels with silhouettes of the main characters talking to each other on the sides, and the gag was going to be the boys walking past the gap in the middle with comically larger piles of luggage in their arms. Then, in an entirely separate page later, Tabitha would be brought into the conversation to discuss what to do next. But then I thought “Wouldn’t it be funny if she was just already present in this page, and it wasn’t until the last panel that anyone noticed?” And suddenly the whole comic was entirely different. That’s the creative process for ya, baby! Of course, the big problem that that was, now, I had no rough draft of the page layout to work from, meaning I was putting this thing together entirely from scratch. And the problem with working without a net like that… well, ONE of the problems, is that it requires a whole lot more editing after the fact, and thus takes longer, and here we are.
So, yeah, check back later this afternoon for the finished version of this page. The writing will pretty much be the same, but the art will be significantly more polished, and everything will be colored in, and blah blah blah.
EDIT: Uh, well THAT took a lot longer than expected, huh? Yeah, sorry about that. See what I mean about these pages taking way more time to finish up when I go into them without a proper outline to follow? Well, hopefully the new TWC Voting Incentive won’t take as long to finish (especially since my work flow for the rest of the week is now officially borked). In the meantime, here’s the original version if anybody wants to see what it somehow took OVER AN ENTIRE DAY for me to finally finish.
EDIT EDIT: Success! New TWC Voting Incentive is up!
Tabitha you’re a… sanity-optional scientist. What’s possible for you to build from a set of materials isn’t related to what a normal person could do. It’s also obvious that Alphonse is uncomfortable, probably because he knows he’ll be responsible for stopping the kid’s escape pod. Or that the escape pod leaving is going to make this area dangerous (vacuum of space and all that)
Yeah, but the first sign of being nuts is always the inability to recognize that one is nuts, so there’s that.
Also, it’s funny that you mention all the reasons Alphonse could be worried, because I was just thinking he’d be conscious of what a socially awkward situation Tabitha was creating right now. Lord knows how worried he’ll look when things REALLY get serious!
Actually, I have to ask two questions unrelated to my previous comment:
1. How much of that luggage being carried by Hiro and Tarkus is Avi’s?
2. Where’s Lynne in this page? My suggestions are: still at the room (packing the other dozen bags) or at the escape pod (acting as a guard).
1. Probably a lot, though I’m also tempted to suggest that he might actually have less luggage because he just borrows a lot of the other three’s stuff without asking.
2. I mean, the REAL answer is that he’s just “somewhere out of frame” because there wasn’t room to draw all four and have things be legible (see my previous comments about this page not having a proper rough draft) though the in-universe answer is probably that he wound up at the front of the line because he’s carrying less than Tarkus & Hiro (though sill more than Avi) and is walking faster.
Lynne seems to be the practical one with at least a tiny amount of common sense, so I’m going to say he’s much further ahead because he actually bothered to go get the hovercart to put all the luggage on. (which would likely be conveniently available for anyone who needs one seeing as the Exposition is a passenger liner)