EMPOWERED & SISTAH SPOOKY #5 thumbnails, pt.1

 Whoops, forgot to post these in September!

Above are my thumbnails for issue #5 of 2018's Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell, a six-part miniseries written by me, drawn by Carla Speed McNeil, and colored by Jenn Manley Lee.  Previous roughs from issue #4 are here; and more info on the overall project here.

 Now, with the previous issues, such as #3,  I posted the thumbnails only in their original "quad" format, as seen  above.  Howeva, it's occurred to me that the roughs might be more  appealing if I cropped 'em to show a single page at a time, as seen  below. 

Note that page 1 above was intentionally deceptive. If you've read the actual book, the page seems to feature a scene of the Infernal Service Provider trying to browbeat Theresa into "going blonde" when granted magical beauty. Ah, but the punchline is that this is a different character entirely, who does wind up knuckling under to the ISP's pressure; the payoff to this scene doesn't occur until the end of #6. Not sure if any readers figured this out in retrospect, though.

I'll attach Carla's actual page (with dialogue), so you can see the deception more clearly:

And back to my thumbnails:

Yeahp, as we'll see, Ashlee above was the character from the page 1 flashback.

Injury to eye motif. Ouch!

Ouch again!

Ehh, not sure the reflection bit with the water worked out as well as I might've liked.

Emp and Spooky touching in a comforting manner? Quite a change from their first interaction in the very first Empowered story.

Ehh, the single image of duct-taped Emp in panel 1 above isn't quite enough to justify using the "damsel in distress" tag, I think.

Yeahp, the Infernal Service Provider's getting a tad frustrated.

Included some side notes with the cropped thumbnail above.

The "collective pool of magic" image, which recurs throughout this issue and the next, was a great way to visualize the functioning of the shared magic between Spooky and her ex-classmates. Just wish I'd thought of the riff a few issues sooner!

Above is the first of a series of one-page scenes depicting Emp and Spooky under magical siege by different blondes. I'm rather proud of the 11-panel(!) page above, with poor Emp getting stuffed into a locker and Spooky suffering the surprisingly common nightmare of being unable to recall her locker combination.

Note that Carla's final art below made locker-stuffed Emp's distress look much creepier:

Huh. Maybe I should've been posting Carla's pages accompanying these roughs all along, for better "compare & contrast" purposes?

Anyhoo, stand by for the rest of issue #5's roughs next week. I might continue the "thumbnails vs. Carla's final art" riff, if you fine folks find it interesting or helpful.