BODY. DOUBLE. (pages 21-24)

For those new to my $5-tier, I am going through and giving commentary on my 2023 comic BODY. DOUBLE., my 24-page body horror comic which stars Anaïs (it is a non-canon story, but it was my first time putting her into published work, which was very important to me! ☺️☺️☺️).

Page 21 kind of depletes Anaïs of the “power” she gained on page 20, but it was really important to do so to show how capitalism exploits anything from which it believes it can gain. Anaïs is in both a horrified and horrifying state, and all her Agent can think about is money. This and page 22 were particularly challenging for me to figure out, because I knew how much there was to show here, but I kind of compressed some of the storytelling a bit more, especially on page 22, because… well, what I was doing gets the idea across! Hahaha. For this, I think 22 might technically be the weakest page of the book with regard to storytelling, but I still think it does what it needs to!

The lines toward the end of page 21, in which the Agent says, “They might laugh at me — call me senile, even…” is a reference to the Resident Evil 1 remake in which Wesker tells Chris his plans for the Tyrant, and Chris literally laughs in his face and says, “Wesker, you’ve got a senile!” I think this works for BODY. DOUBLE. because it shows not only that the Agent has self-awareness to notice how people think about his ideas, but also that he still thinks he is smarter than everyone else — that he understands culture better than anyone else.

Page 22 shows Anaïs’ deal with the devil 😔😔😔 At this point, what choice does she have? She is a monster now, and she has to survive! And he is telling her that she’ll still be big and be taken care of. Alas…! 😭😭😭

Page 23 shows why the Agent is completely wrong lmao; audiences are not as quick to be swayed as he thinks, and nor are they as simple as he thinks! (My roommate said this point maybe lost some of its impact because I chose to use cinephiles here instead of the general public, but whatever hahaha) The goal was to express that this whole book has been for naught, that Anaïs’ life was changed drastically and only for money and then it isn’t even successful, that capitalism is fucking stupid in how it preys on markets it only pretends to understand. These cinephiles do not know what went on behind the scenes - do not know that Anaïs has been transformed - but the end result still goes to show that what they care about is what they deem good in art; they have their different opinions, but none are here to praise the film outright.

I was very, very happy with how snowy the environment ended up looking; I really like drawing weather, even when I feel like I barely do it. Winter is the best, as I feel the temperature and vibe can literally make you shiver if portrayed correctly. Some of my favorite winter stuff is in Elektra Lives Again, where the gray of the sky meets the slush of the Manhattan streets, where blankets and blankets of snow cover everything in sight. I realized that the best way for me to capture that limited visibility was to actually erase a bunch of the line work I had already done on the background, thus increasing the like “fogginess” of it all! Still think it looks pretty cool! 🥹

Also, the theater was based on IFC in Manhattan. You gotta pull from your surroundings haha. I definitely also had the theater from Breathless on my mind (where Belmondo sees the poster of Humphrey Bogart).

Page 24 is supposed to break you, as it shows how truly broken Anaïs is: this character Christof (named after RE’s own Chris Redfield, and kind of appearing how he does in RE: Village) feels so lost after watching the movie and just gazes up to Anaïs’ face, where we see the tears streaming down her face. His cut-off line - the last of the book, and for which several people praised me lmao - was a reference to I think the second-worst ending you can get in the RE1 remake, in which I think Jill doesn’t make it? Maybe Jill and Rebecca? I don’t remember, but the line is something like, “This case was just too strange. It was just too…” That shit had my roommate and I in stitches when we first saw it, and I just knew it had to go in here, not just as a reference to something else, but because it finishes off the loss of this comic perfectly. Here is Anaïs, France’s golden-girl reduced to pure shlock in the name of the almighty dollar — WE HATE TO SEE IT! 😭😭😭

I hope you all enjoyed this tour through BODY. DOUBLE. My apologies for how long it has taken, but I hope you have all found these and the rest of the notes to be worthwhile! I will soon be showing the pinups that have been made by three different artists for the forthcoming digital deluxe edition (art by Katie Skelly, HamletMachine, and Sweeney Boo!), and I can’t wait for you all to see them! ☺️☺️☺️🙏💖