Comic Report #95 - The Call

Hello!  A new Friday is here and so I have a whole bunch of work report to write up for you.  I ended up doing a -lot- of work this week, both for comics and games,  so I'm gonna type up as much about that as I can.  Firstly, though, I have a big plan for this weekend: poking through my site I found an old mechanic that I can repurpose to put all the minicomics on the main site without interrupting the main comic flow.  I'm gonna be tinkering with that tonight or tomorrow, so if you are subscribed to the RSS you might end up seeing one hundred pings come up.  Sorry in advance about that.

I'll be starting a new chapter in the main comic, which means today I get to establish a fresh new scene!  On this page we get to tie a couple different narrative threads together to set up the next big problems to solve.  I'll walk through the panels as normal.

The first panel establishes a shot of the newspaper office.  All the major vehicles are in the dirt lot next door- Pat's Charger is off to the left side, the Johnny Cash One Piece At A Time car is tucked away back there, but most importantly of all the Omni-Mart truck is settled into place.  This is going to be an important inclusion because it's a refrigerated trailer in a town with its own makeshift electrical grid; this will come up later.  But for now, here it is!  The panels on this page are nice and big, so you can expect a fair bit of talking to take place around them.

Panel two brings us to the meat of the page.  The Mayor is tucked away in his office yelling into a walkie-talkie.  I want to say he's on a secure channel hollering but I'm not sure how to convey that visually, I think the gist of what he's saying would imply it's not on the global channel. This office was rendered prior, on intermission pages 520-522, but they were done in kinda-rough black & white so I get to flesh that out a bit more in proper greytones.  I do have an established reference, though, so I'll have to keep it consistent.

Moving down to panel three, the Mayor swings his chair around and if the dialogue up to this point didn't already give it away he's a bit upset.  Monday is in his town and he knows exactly who Monday is and what Monday wants so he's in panic problem-resolution mode.  Panel four is a classic boss-looking-out-big-window shot as he gets to the "get it done" part of the big dialogue.  Up to now we only catch one side of the conversation, since he's hollering into an electronic speaky box.

...Which is where panel five reveals who he was talking to!  Mr. Head-of-the-Gravekeepers is on the other end!  Uh oh!  In previous pages he has established a bit of conflict with Monday, both when Monday and Lou rescued their friend Randy from the crowd of bullies behind the restaurant, and also just after page 600 in an "I know who your friends are" sort of way after the Omni-Mart crew arrived in Tombstone.  Someone's going to have to persuade a guy like Monday to not be a problem, and that task falls on the shoulders of someone who already doesn't like Monday...

And then we hit the final panel!  Tying the last thread into this knot, Snake-Eye has this new Gravekeeper initiate buddy who needs to put in some work to cement his place on the team!  Pat was seen rolling with the Gravekeepers after news broke of his heroic escapades outside the city walls, taking on three Hornets and a pile of zombies all by himself, so putting the screws to Monday via his friends should be a cakewalk for him. Oh I wonder how this will pan out.

I'll be making progress on this page- I should have it done by the end of the month- but I am trying to juggle a few other things as well.  Thank you for joining me into this new year, I hope to get a lot done!  Until then, take care!