Page Commentary No. 297

NOTE: There is a page previous to this one where the hug actually happens, its commentary will go up next commentary day! Sorry for the inconvenience.

Gunwild: Ohh, I've heard of hugging it out, but someone's just hugged themselves out of a job!

Psu: Ya know, I feel like "hugging themselves out of a job" happened more often than we might expect. I mean... I've seen cold war movies, and I've definitely seen lots of cold war parody movies! You can't be seen with your enemy, let alone hugging them.

Gunwild: I can't remember if Tom Hanks hugged that guy in Bridge of Spies, but maybe he should have! Also it's not rude to talk about your troubles over pizza. Pizza is nourishing.

Psu: Under the right circumstances, you could call that pizza a work expense. But I think we both figured that this was the wrong circumstance for Maddy. We basically set her up by having Russ wanting to find her, a few pages ago. And so of course, he did.

Gunwild: I like when we set things up! Also, you can't blame him, he just wanted to say something nice so everybody there would know he cared, then duck out of the party early because he's not huge on gatherings. Finally, this comic has a hero!

Psu: Or at least a figurative party pooper. Anyway, I like that we managed to give him JUST ENOUGH of an arc that the readers could discuss what he was gonna do. I suppose it was never in question whether or not he would turn Maddy in after witnessing this, but at least he'll feel bad about it!

Gunwild: Yeah! Hm, also, seeing him droop in his stance is new. He's normally the stiffest of stiffs! It's nice when you can bring in really fresh ways of emoting to a character who hasn't gotten to use them before. Not that he's big on emoting at all...

Psu: I try to pay attention to the little things! Well... okay honestly I don't always get it right. But all things considered there aren't TOO many appearances for Russ, so whenever he did appear I would remember to draw him standing tall and at attention. Also with his hat. But this page well... it seemed important to say a lot without words.

Gunwild: If only those two had done their dramatic, plot-forwarding antics indoors!

Psu: Yeah but the staging with the moon and the stars and everything. It was a nice night outside. Speaking of staging, it really was a tough thing to balance just how visible Russ should be. I would say that if you look at the panel in isolation, Russ is way too obvious there. maybe Maddy and Cassiopeia should've seen him. But I think I'm just hoping you'll give me the benefit of the doubt, theater craft style. The reader needs to be able to see these things even if the characters do not.

Gunwild: Well, they were being very self-involved... especially Maddy, who maybe isn't that way enough.

Psu: True, she probably couldn't see THROUGH HER TEARS. And Cassiopeia would be like... who's that guy?

Gunwild: "He's prolly fine, it's a party!"

Psu: So... this is the last page of what is a pretty climactic chapter. We discussed whether or not it was time to pull this card out, cause we knew Maddy and Cassiopeia had to have a moment together. But we worried how it would change all their adventures from here on out. I would say now that we're a couple years out after this, it really did change the status quo of our book completely.

Gunwild: True! But y'know, that's good. Some stories can last forever playing out similar situations over and over again while slightly varying the stakes, and that's fine for them. But this one's ours, it's a story that actually changes as it goes, and that's been good for us as the folks making it, too.

Psu: We just have to be thoughtful about some things. Because not all changes are things you can just take back.

Gunwild: Don't turn this into good advice for real life. You know I don't learn lessons!