Double Cross Scene Compilation - CH3 Pgs 52-55

Hi, y'all!

Time for another scene compilation with "DVD-style" commentary. I'll be posting these scene compilations weekly until I start getting the completed pages from Gabriel and Vero for Fallen Chapter Two soon.

On the personal front, there's been a lot of management of Mom's health stuff over the last couple weeks, but no major crises, thank goodness. But as anyone in this situation knows, as things progress, even the day-to-day care can take a lot of time. There's not a lot to report outside of that right now, but I'd love to start getting into the spirit of the season. And I've found one of the best ways to do that is by watching Christmas movies.

So... any recommendations of Christmas movies I should check out? What are you favorites?

Anyway, in this scene comp, Flyboy and Teen Spooky try to figure out what their night together means, if anything.

Check out what happens under the fold!

These pages were first published way back in December 2020 (so pretty much exactly 4 years ago!). If you want to read the previous scene compilations (and, even better, read the whole first two chapters all at once), you can find them on the TYP:DC Scene Compilation Collection page. 

My DVD-style commentary is below the comic pages. And the pages themselves are full-resolution here on Patreon, so feel free to zoom-in!

Let's get honest!

 Welcome to Dreamland!

This is a short scene, but it does some heavy lifting. Let's get into it!

The-Morning-After Conversation

Even though Mitch and Spooky didn't technically have sex, what they shared was very intimate—and very much not planned. And how they are handling it is both similar and different.

What's different is that while Flyboy would choose to avoid the topic until he had completely sorted out his own feelings, Spooky isn't the type to beat around the bush. After spending a year in Hell, even if the news might be bad, he wants it out in the light of day so they can deal with it. These character traits are very much in line with who we know them to be in the present day: Flyboy keeping his super-heroing a secret, even from his friends, while Adult Spooky has no filter.

But what's similar is how they both don't know themselves as well as they think they do. Not at this point in their lives anyway.

Flyboy is surprised at his own behavior

Mitch has very high standards for himself, and the reason he starts off cool towards Spooky here isn't because he's angry with his friend—he's mad at himself. And a little baffled.

This is another one of those things that I drew on from my own past. I also had very high standards for my own behavior as a young man, particularly when it came to things like sex. And I was surprised at how quickly that could change if the situation was charged enough and the guy was hot enough. (Perhaps some of you can relate?) I had a lot of growing up to do around this, including the discovery that there was a point-of-no-return where, despite my best intentions, I would wind up making a very different choice than the one I planned to. Once I realized I wasn't made of stone, I took that into account, and made sure I didn't put myself in situations where I might regret what I did.

Mitch is just beginning to figure that out, but he hasn't learned the lesson yet. He still believes that this was a one-time, heat-of-the-moment slip-up that he'll be strong enough to resist in the future. But the way he can't help peeking in as Spooky starts to get ready for his shower says different.

Spooky believes he can be totally chill about what happened

Spooky, on the other hand, quickly lets Flyboy off the hook in terms of any emotional fallout from what happened between them. He says it was "just kissing"—true, in terms of their actual, physical actions; not-so-true in terms of what it actually meant to him.

To be clear, Spooky does believe what he's saying here. Just like Mitch, there's a picture in his head of how he wants to be around sex and relationships—chill and accepting of whatever. And perhaps as an adult, that's how it's been for him some of the time. (As we know, though, it's not all of the time.)

But as we'll find out in future scenes, Teen Spooky is dead-wrong about how little what just happened means to him. Mitch is the first person he's opened his heart to like this since he got back to Earth. And he really likes Mitch.

Flyboy might be okay with compartmentalizing what happened and sweeping it under the rug. (Even if it happens again.) But that's not going to work for Spooky, which will lead to some very charged scenes later in the story.

They both see each other more clearly

They might not be reading their own hearts very well, but this is a moment of clarity for both of them in terms of understanding each other. Here is where Flyboy truly accepts that Teen Spooky is, essentially, a completely different person than the Spooky he knows in the present. And here is where Teen Spooky starts to see Mitch for who he is, not just a admirable hero but a real person with warts and anxiety and all the rest—and he decides he likes what he sees.

The Posters on Spooky's Walls

So, that's the heavy part of this scene. But one of the lighter aspects (which you might have noticed on earlier pages) are the movie posters on the walls. I wanted to show Spooky's love for the film noir genre (inspired by Cassidy introducing him to it), but this is an alternative universe (and one where I try my best to avoid stepping on other people's IP.) So, I sent Adam a bunch of photo references of old movie posters I wanted us to riff off of, along with variations of the film names that I thought would fit for our world. He added his own ideas and we had quite a bit of fun coming up with these.

If you know your film noir, you could probably figure out what movie from our real world each of these posters is referencing... :)

Dreamland

Of course, the biggest visual splash in these pages is the establishing shot of the abandoned amusement part where Shades is holed up. Here, both Adam and Vero really outdid themselves. So many cool details! And even with all that information, I still think it reads very clearly.

What might not be as clear is how much work Adam and I put into designing this space. I'd already finished the script for this chapter, so I knew full well all the action that takes place here, and it was a lot. This space had to make sense as a real amusement park, but it also had to work for each of the action set-pieces I had planned. This is where Adam's detail-oriented nature really shines. I had, of course, roughly planned out where our heroes needed to be for each of the big action beats, but it was up to Adam to make it feel real. And, even more challenging, all of that needed to be baked into this establishing shot, before he even got into any of the action. He came up with a number of set-designs—each one representing hours of work—before we settled on a final layout that he'd use for his Dreamland reference.

There's a lot of pre-planning that goes into all our pages, but this one in particularly had a lot of back-and-forth between us. And that's a big reason why I made the preceding pages relatively simple in terms of design—because I knew that the next scene was going to be a doozy!

Let me know what you think!

Anyway, those are the things I was thinking when I was creating these pages with Adam and Vero. Please let me know your own thoughts below. It's your feedback that makes it fun for me to create these, so please jump in and share!

And thank you, as always, for making this comic possible. Sharing these scenes with you helps remind me of how much I enjoy creating this story. And it's only possible because of your support.

I hope you all are having a great December, and have lots of things to look forward to as we approach the New Year. Big hugs to each and every one of you!