Annotated 1-5
This was the first page I ever wrote for Guilded Age, and it did not come easy. I’d been pushing my comics-scriptwriting muscles pretty hard in the years leading up to this, working on numerous other series as a self-publisher and freelancer, partly to build on past successes and partly to spread my net wide for the next big thing. Guilded Age, right from the first, had a good chance of being that next big thing, and we had the chapter outlined and the series planned, but when time came to put my fingers to the keyboard, I came down with one of the worst writer’s blocks I’d ever experienced. It felt like a physical migraine.
But thankfully, it was over more quickly.
Part of the problem was that I was trying to approach Frigg’s story by focusing solely on her last day in the nunnery, and that would’ve fit the “adventure in four pages” format neatly, but it also would’ve been fairly predictable. It’s a surprise that Frigg was part of this order, but it’s not a surprise that she got out, so after a big jolt on the first page, the reader would just be awaiting the inevitable. Once I hit on this “unknown unreliable narrator,” we could spend a few pages really establishing the Sisterhood and their brand of “civic service,” which would pay rich dividends down the line.
Gehrman would be proud.
I do like the “unknown unreliable narrator.” And I also appreciate how little you used them once things got rolling. It’s a very tempting tool. Gravedust’s journal takes up something of the same space, and has the same temptations.
“Our Lady of the Perpetual Bloodshot Eyeball” sounds like it belongs in Anhk-Morpork on the Street of Small Gods.
Especially with what looks like a smoldering cigarette serving as a smokestack
Not only that, but the way they run their “business” and the fact that they’re allowed to keep doing it is… pretty much what you’d expect from a city that has a perfectly legal guild of assassins. ^_^
Vetinari would never allow a religion to go about killing people for being sick. Not without a physician’s guild license.
I believe the implication is that they went and slaughtered a bunch of unicorns, not the afflicted families. Could be mistaken though.
It somehow took me until seeing it now — even though I also have this in book form — to see that they murdered *unicorns*, not the family with unicorn flu.
I mean, unless the family with unicorn flu eventually became unicorns and were then murdered. Also possible.
Looks like there might have been a transformation involved, yes…one of those skulls has human-looking dentition.
Heck, look at panel 2, with that one poor sod who’s got a horn growing out of his forehead.
I was wondering about that one; meaning the skull about center-right of the last panel, yes?
It does look a bit human ish, but it strikes me as perhaps having had the snout (do we call those snouts on horses?) broken off, like how you often see Longhorn skulls.
I wondered about this myself.
Is it still AMA time? Because if yes: T – what was the intention here?
Original script had butchered unicorns, which seemed extreme enough to me at the time. I’m not sure Erica meant to subtly take it further, but I wouldn’t put it past her.
If there had been a case of Blue Flu, no doubt the sisters would have killed every single law enforcement officer.
The cathedral art is striking and unicorn flu is hilarious. Great page.
I actually had a hard pointed growth start on my face, about the size of a large rice grain (gross) – my doc said it was a precancerous spot from too much sun exposure, and it was called a “cutaneous horn”! He cut it off and that (thank God) was that.
Outside the fact that my libido is back to normal since I’m not constantly horny.
“He’s here all week, folks, but we’re working on it!”