What the hell, let’s talk about this interstitial image too.

“G-Day” was when we announced a passel of new features that meant more work for me and Phil, including the Guilded Age forum (which didn’t really last because people very much preferred commenting on the main page), Guilded Age Plus (a for-pay set of annotations like these, which would last about three years– but we’re going all the way with these annotations, baby), and a leaner, streamlined interface (which we retained to the present).

We got a few mild complaints that this wasn’t a “story image,” but I think it served a little purpose: it announced who the main characters in the series were at this point… and HR wasn’t one of them. Important as he’d clearly be to the finale, we wanted the emphasis on Our Heroes and to assure readers who’d waited patiently through Chapter 9 that they would return– especially Bandit, whose mysterious absence would continue for two more chapters.

Had we been thinking a little further ahead, we might’ve put E-Merl, Rachel, and Scipio’s silhouettes into the background, but we weren’t even working on their designs yet. Phil was pitching some pretty solid ideas for them by now, though.