page 723 – Again with the Interruptions!
See, this is why you shouldn’t have this many different plot threads going on at once. They keep getting tangled up until NONE of ’em can lead anywhere.
And the sad thing is, this is actually speeding things along! My initial instinct was to have this be two separate pages: one focused entirely on the physical comedy of Stilez jumping at Ichabod, and the second being all about them getting blasted before he can start talking. But, as you might have noticed, it’s taken us a LONG time to get this far, and I’m trying to speed things up as best I can. Not sure how well that worked out here, since I pretty much had to do it without a rough draft. If I had time to do it over again, I’d rearrange stuff on the top half, and try to work in some more of that “bounding headfirst right into Ichabod” visual humor that got lost.
Also, we’ve got a new Voting Incentive that’s… well, kinda far to the bittersweet side.
(Historical Notes: Oh, there is SO much I don’t like going on here. Pacing or no pacing, this absolutely NEEDED to be two separate pages. Stilez just suddenly standing there without any visible leap is a maaaaaaaajor let down. A full-on head-first dive NEEDED to be a punchline. Worse, though, just look at that ugly screen tone in the third panel. Sadly, I couldn’t do anything to fix that or anything else, because Past Me saved over the master copy of this page with the web-sized version. This is going to come up several SURE TO BE INFURIATING times in the future, too…)
Hey, the action between the first and second panels could easily be seen to be just displaying how fast Stilez can be, moving from the ship to next to Ichabod in half a second. I cannot come up with an excuse for the third panel, though.
That’s kind of how I justified it at the time, though, but even THEN the “suddenly Stilez is right there” moment would need to be the punchline at the end of the page to fulfill its comedic potential.