page 544 – Meanwhile, on the other side of the room
Okay… So, I finally got all the Conventional Wisdom comics finished and online… at 2:30 am… and there was NO Far Out There ready for today. Not even a rough draft penciled up. I mean, I know what’s supposed to happen once Alphonse and the girls do down that shaft, and it’s all stuff that I’d pushed BACK a few weeks because it’s stuff that’d take a long time to draw… and I gotta get SOME sleep before work.
SOOO, I bashed this thing together in an hour… and actually, I like it! I mean, it doesn’t LOOK that great, what with the “in an hour” stuff, but come on! Out of nowhere, Vengeance has lines! Surprise!
(Historical Notes: Man, for something I threw together so quickly, this one got SOOOOO much speculation over ol’ spooky robes. And it’s always weird to see speculation about a thing where I actually KNOW what’s coming next, not still making things up and desperately hoping I can come up with something that lives up to the hype.)
Looking at the SmackJeeves comments for this page (which was misnumbered there, nice to see that got fixed during the transfer), most of the speculation is related to what Vengeance meant about his untrustworthiness, but they didn’t say anything about his black-background speech bubbles, which some webcomics use for undead characters, and that could turn out to be significant later.
I’ll be honest, I originally just did the black speech bubbles because they looked cool, with the side benefit of suggesting a deeper voice than everyone else.
Although later on, I did retroactively realize some potential significance… that I of course can’t talk about yet 😀
The more I read this comic, the more I’m certain that Vengeance ate Layla’s last ice pop 6 months ago and has been carrying that guilt ever since or something like that. Making a call right now that he’s a pretty stand up dude.
As I alluded to above, I normally play coy over this kind of thing because I just don’t KNOW the full details myself yet and don’t wanna say some random thing off the cuff that I’ll have to retcon later when I finally figure out what I’m doing. In Vengeance’s case, I actually DO have the full payoff planned out… and have to be careful what I say to avoid spoiling anything.