Annotated 2010 Preview
I debated whether to include this now that you’ve seen everything it’s previewing, but it’s solid Erica art and fun to discuss.
In the late 2000s to early 2010s, I tried to establish a tradition in every comic I worked on of preview pages like this at the end of the year, to keep readers engaged in the low-traffic post-Christmas period and to clarify my own story goals for myself. We definitely didn’t have the next six chapters pre-written at this point, but we had enough of an outline that I knew we’d hit these basic beats: there would be a pirate airship, Best and Byron would fight, Harky and HR would be big bads, and Syr’Nj would fall in love or at least start crushing (and at this point we knew it would be for Byron, though we also knew she’d have a brief interest in Best, so that preview’s more of a trick than the others).
Phil was never really into this whole idea, though. He felt it gave away too much, and resisted anything that would “lock down” the story to make certain points and bits of story pacing mandatory. This was the first hint of much bigger disagreements about pacing to come, which would soon make these previews entirely impractical.
Today, I might agree with Phil about the first two frames (some hints of Taro and the berserker curse would’ve been more intriguing without giving away the store) but I do think the implied promise of bigger villains on the horizon and the bit with Syr’Nj were probably good for reader interest.
Hah, I’ve forgotten that from the original run, did Harky really no-sell Frigg’s mace? That’s pretty badass.
I think if you had given hints of the Berserk here and waited so long to drop it in-story you’d have real Berserkers in this forum before long.
And apparently Harky would never be this happy again.
“without giving away the store”
I think that last word should be “story” instead.
It’s a turn of phrase for a bad deal. You didn’t haggle a sale, you gave away the store.
Did Erica ever draw HR’s face? Not in the comic, of course, I mean like early concept art or something?
Speaking of which, I was nearly certain that you guys posted some of her concept art of the main characters right after the story ended, but I can’t find it. Is my memory failing me?
I think Axemas kept our interest piqued just fine.
Is this the first time the alt-text of the rerun has differed from what it was originally?
Almost, and before this the differences have been slight. I don’t want to create a ton more work for myself. But it seemed weird not to update it in this case, and I got a good idea almost instantly that we obviously couldn’t have used before.