Annotated 6-3
Phil proposed diagonal panels to highlight the unusual quality of the action here, I thought it was a great idea, and, well… here we are. Erica did have the latitude to do as she saw fit with suggestions like that, but I wish we’d discussed this one a little more.
On the other hand, the current layout does work well, and I’m taken with Erica’s rendition of Byron’s conflicted face in panels 3 and 4. He really looks like this decision cost him a couple years of life, but this is arguably his greatest single moment as team leader. Sometimes the right choices are neither popular ones nor ones you can feel good about afterward. Romanticized fantasies aside, he just saved his teammates’ lives.
Phil, Erica, and I did not know this at the time, but a later retcon would establish that Gastonia’s intentions for the orcs were no nobler than the trolls’.
The alt-text didn’t make it from the original page to this one.
On it! Thanks!
Gravedust: “Mm.”
Gravedust’s internal monologue: “Oh yes please I haven’t punched anyone in ages.”
Interesting. I was imagining him thinking: “The red-haired one is thinking with her giant, metal schlong, as usual. Should I call her out in it? Nah, I’ll let someone else do it.”
It’s interesting how the same, stoic expression can be read so differently by different people.
Whereas I read it more as a “RAGE TAKING OVER” kind of look. Because this isn’t just getting to punch things — this is getting to punch EVIL IN THE FACE WHILE EXPRESSING MORAL DISAPPROVAL. Which Gravedust is all over on so many different levels.
I like that Bandit held onto this moment, even past the epilogue.
How so?
Because Bandit’s post-epilogue activities include anti-slaver activity. She doesn’t like it right now, and she continues to do something about it, all that time later.
What is wrong with the diagonals?
I get the clear impression that you don’t like the end result, but … whatever it is that’s wrong doesn’t seem obvious to me.
I think it’s got a pretty good rhythm to it.
First panel expresses surprising revelation very simply.
Then there’s the big panel, showing the surprise development in all its horror.
Then there’s a long panel, picking up momentum…
And then there’s a asskicking interruptus panel.
Of course, it’s one of those pages that have to be on the right-hand page for best effect, if it was in a paper book.
It’s cool as is, I just wonder what it would’ve looked like if we’d gone with the diagonal layout that was in the script. I’m not even sure it would’ve been better, but I wish we’d discussed it.
What could’ve worked better would be a depiction of these supposedly unbeatable odds that Byron talks about moments later. We see just two guys wielding whips. How many were there supposed to have been, twenty? Two hundred? How many trolls were supposed to guarantee a TPK?
I suppose we could just make the assumption “There are enough trolls to not only have subdued an entire population of orcs enough to actually put them in chains and haul them off, despite them really really not wanting to be hauled off”.
Ah, I guess I missed the “These were supposed to be diagonal, and aren’t”.
I had to look up what diagonal panels would have looked like : https://www.google.fi/search?q=Diagonal+panels+in+a+comic&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=JokWfvGWn_ZflM%253A%252CHLeFwCGh4zda4M%252C_&usg=AI4_-kS68ruZvqYe-sxGPyHo0EtHzQKOBA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwippLzj87jeAhUjl4sKHeOaBNYQ9QEwAHoECAAQBA#imgrc=JokWfvGWn_ZflM:
I guess one problem there would be that they would be fairly cramped… especially the one we’re now realizing doesn’t have enough in it, even when it’s the biggest panel on the page.
I guess it could be done, like … having a semi-symbolic background of wall-to-wall Trolls and the slaves being paraded in front of those…
But that strikes me as the kind of stuff we see much later in the comic, not really fitting with Erica’s style.