DISTRESSED DAMSELS: "Rose & Lily vs. Troops," pt.2!

ALL CAPS AHOY:  A FULL 5-DAY WORKWEEK OF PATREON POSTS TO FINISH OFF THE MONTH KICKS OFF TODAY!

Following up on an earlier post, here are more pages from a commissioned Dirty Pair comic story in proto-Empowered format, created back in 2003 during a time when I assumed that I wouldn't be drawing comics professionally any more, due to my disenchantment with struggling through conventionally penciled and inked comic pages.

In retrospect, I clearly still wanted to draw as well as write comics at this time, but not via the slow, grinding, miserably tedious work process I had largely abandoned; only a year or two later, I would belatedly figure out that I could, in fact, publish comics in this pencil-based "tight layouts" format, and Empowered would result.

So this final, quite lengthy damsel-in-distress commission wound up being this close to a real Dirty Pair story, as it included many more of the "techy" elements from my actual DP continuity than most of these DiD pieces, yet still featured the rather unlikely situations, heightened cheesecake levels, and distinct costuming—that is, the high-heeled boots—of a damsel-y DP scenario or simulation.

However, this story also wound up being weirdly gritty and distinctly unpleasant, as poor Kei and Y—nay, Rose & Lily—not only start out the comic having had their butts kicked in a failed mission pitting them against a bunch of nameless, geared-up "Troops," but spend the rest of the pages struggling desperately against these frequently cruel if not outright sadistic goons. In fact, I'm going to skip a latter section of the story in which the a-hole bad guys take matters way too far (though they do pay a dear price for stepping over the line, which you will see).

A few words on the unpleasantness:

A scene of torture, basically. Ughhh. Well, this story was never intended for publication, but I nonetheless find this choice quite skeevy in retrospect.

OTOH, I do rather like the comlink interaction between Rose & Lily on this page, with the latter valiantly hiding her unfortunate status from the former. A nice moment, but doesn't quite negate the creepiness of Rose getting zapped by a-hole bad guys.

Obscure bit of art trivia in panel 5: Around this time, I was occasionally experimenting with giving several characters with Asian backgrounds (such as Y**i/ Lily here, and Skaya from the defunct Cannibal Sun comic pitch) nasal profiles based on photoref of Japanese models, hence the slightly anomalous convex curve to Lily's nose as seen from a side view.

Alas, I'm no Rick Mays—who displayed a truly impressive skill at depicting Japanese characters who actually looked Japanese in his Kabuki: Scarab miniseries with David Mack—so I soon abandoned this vague stab at profile realism.

Panel 3: Lily stammering in fear and anxiety within her g-d thought balloons is a bit of a stretch, but again, this commission wasn't intended for publication, so I felt free to break the rules a tad.

NEXT TIME ON "ROSE & LILY VS. TROOPS": Our next installment goes up on either Friday the 28th or Monday the 31st (so hold off on cancelling that pledge early, folks!), featuring a surprisingly solid fight scene pitting bedamseled but plucky Lily against this increasingly aggravated and ornery bad guy. Yay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: As mentioned at the top, I'm posting 5 days a week to finish off January, so something will be posted tomorrow. Enjoy?