Page Commentary No. 290

Psu: I really like the swooshy swooshes on this page.

Gunwild: Most of this page is Wrenn here being pushy and adapting Tolkien quotes to disparage Maddy. But the swooshiness, the way the sword trail thing changes direction? That's the star of the page! It's implying some really cool things about how fast all this is happening between panels and the pace of the story.

Psu: Oh I think the dialog is doing a lot of heavy lifting too, how you knew to use the dialog talking about Maddy being very good on top of her getting into a fight over "valor." This is a good page! I think we're pretty proud of this one.

Gunwild: Also we haven't mentioned in-comic up to this point that Maddy is unable to arrest Cassiopeia at this location. So... thankfully that hasn't taken the wind out of the scene by this point.

Psu: I think we succeeded in making this about something else other than arresting Cassiopeia. I know we talked about this a LOT when we were writing this scene but I think we both sorta knew that Cassiopeia couldn't get arrested after this. And if we knew it, maybe the reader knew it. So this had to be about something else and something more personal for Maddy. And ya know... maybe it's enough that she's just angry. I think that's what I wanted to get across with this scene, making it look so aggressive and one sided. It catches Cassiopeia by complete surprise.

Gunwild: Well yeah, after all since last time they swordfought Maddy won a big ol' swording tournament by being a bit unexpected! Uh, and also by default. But she was still pretty good! 

Psu: I also made sure to like... really paint their combat styles as very different even in just three panels. Cassiopeia is being all fancy, doing table flips, and giving an e'garde! Action scenes, even dramatic action scenes, are always a little fun for her. But Maddy's not having it. She doesn't take her eyes off Cassiopeia, and never shows her back to her opponent now that the fight has started. And she's just gonna rush down and end this as quickly as she can.

Gunwild: Yeah, I think the script said something about how she's treating this like she's trying to do a fun Errol Flynn movie fight, jumping onto tables and flipping. If there was a chandelier, she might swing on it whether she needed to go anywhere or not! I think that was a possibility I floated. But one, they're on a lovely open-air balcony, and two, that would have been super-complicated to draw for not much added effect!

Psu: If they were Jedi I'd have them jump on some random low hanging droids. But then that might take away from the actual heat of the moment. Let alone, it would take away from the time we get to spend with the rest of the party. It's very important that we get to use that Nintendo Switch that Theira brought in this comic!

Gunwild: I had not played a a Nintendo Switch when we made this comic, but I now understand that opinion better.

Psu: It's good for being anti social AND social because you can share it when your new found enemies!

Gunwild: I don't know how to get across... that I think it works really well to give the feeling of voiceover and an interspersed scene, which comics often do really well but can easily mess up, just like any medium. And I think it was effective even considering that we didn't go labeling the captions to tell you who's talking when they're off-panel, as some comics now do.

Psu: We can probably just include this in the commentary and let our readers figure it out. It's an honest commentary! This doesn't have to be 100% brilliant insights.