Annotated 7-1
GUEST COMIC BY GRAVEDUST DESERTHAMMER. The original plan was for this sequence to begin with the journal as a voiceover, while we saw a few flashbacks to Gravedust preparing for his pilgrimage to Gastonia. It was Phil who decided we needed to focus our visual attention on the journal itself throughout this sequence. The words on this and page 4 are mine; 2-3 are Phil’s.
I got kind of defensive about it at the time, but we should’ve found some way not to use computer lettering here. It’s a strange irony that as some parts of comics production have gotten much easier, tricks that rely on the old techniques, like producing a handwritten journal that could’ve belonged to one of our characters, have gotten far more difficult. However, it does feel right that the lines are imperfectly centered on the page.
I like the illustrative style Erica adopted here. The first illo here almost feels like it’s taken from some ancient religious art, while the second nearly has the tone of a political cartoon.
I’ve never read the “Five Ghosts.” Is the illustration at the top inspired by the deaths of the five ghosts in the story?
Nope! Sometimes these images that I put alongside the annotations acknowledge a source of inspiration, but most of the time, they’re just things that the page reminds me of. The Image Comics series debuted some time after we published this page.
The bottom illustration needs more labels to be a political cartoon. Every spear and/or soldier should have a label. The dwarf’s axe, shield, helmet, shoes and beard should have labels. Some of the labels could also have labels. That’s how you do political cartoons. Or so I’m told.
//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js
I tried
Er, hm. That didn’t work.
https://imgur.com/FLIF0KY
That’s what I’m talking about! :D
A machine it turns out that would be piloted by a 10 year old brat!
Two reactions:
It stands out when he writes Dwarves instead of Savasi.
I kinda want to see cartoon Savasi plushies now.
“Dwarf” is the word for the species, while “Savasi” is the name of Gravy’s tribe. “Savasi and humans” wouldn’t make much sense; “Savasi and Gastonians” would make sense, but apparently he didn’t want to be that specific.
I took it to be their endonym. Why would a species call themselves dwarves, after all?