Page Commentary No. 185

Gunwild: THIS ONE IS GONNA MAKE ME SAD.

Psu: Oh yeah. Wow okay we already got to this one. Do we want to talk about all the behind the scenes stuff here? We had a few contentious conversations over this storyline actually.

Gunwild: Well, I think most of it was about the ending, which you kind of insisted upon and I still honestly am not 100% comfortable with. But I found a way to make it work for me and wrote it. Mostly though I think I just had a hard time scripting a genuinely upsetting story about a sad little kid. It's too real. Where are the lasers and jokes about butts?

Psu: Yeah, I think it might be fair to say I did more writing on this story than any other at this point in the series. It was the first story I developed for Cassiopeia Quinn so I think I got very defensive about it. I had the idea on  a weekend and I felt that the story about Quinn’s time as a runaway was one that was important to tell. So I sketched up about 3 or 4 pages and thought they were some of my strongest pages yet. The ending was still only a  loose idea but I wanted to share the progress with Gunwild, and propose it as our Holiday storyline.

Gunwild: It's pretty darn good for that purpose, no arguing that.

Psu: If I’m being honest, a lot of our differences on this one really were about whether or not this was too sad. Or what did it add to the overall plot. Or whether or not this was too much. I don’t remember all the conversations on it, but I wanted to make something good where we can help fill in the gap from runaway kid to running away space grown up.

Gunwild: You just watched "Bart Gets an F," right? I'm still not exactly comfortable with my memories of being convinced that I'm a bad kid who messes everything up and should just stop trying. Especially not since I still feel that way a lot. But, eh, we got the pages out. And if I remember right I liked this part a lot, it's the Maddy bit that we argued about for at least a week.

Psu: Yeah, I was just going over some of the storyline issues that we had. But I did present a few pages as a whole and then I had to deal with the difficult feelings of rejection! Not unlike Beebot. AND Cassiopeia! This whole thing was laden with feels. I think, for my part I was drawing from memories of various rejection letters for things I applied to. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get to know the circumstances around it. But a lot of the times, you’re just wondering if you’re not good enough. And Cassiopeia’s a kid who was an orphan, never adopted by anyone, probably in trouble a lot BEFORE she ran away and started stealing things. So here she is, getting ready for the holiday with a couple toys she wrapped herself and opened on her own. And they none of that filled the sense of not being worth something. And well, she accidentally lashes out at something that thought she’s the bee’s knees.

Gunwild: Did we mess up by not giving Beebot knees?

Psu: Panel 4 might not have been as cute if Beebot was kneeing her head... wanna talk about the letter?

Gunwild: I dunno what there is to say about it. It looks like so many rejection letters we've gotten from things we've sent work to. I tried to use a lot of the same words. It's depressing just to look at it.

Psu: Okay, normally we could call it there, but I think it’s worth talking about the art a little. I wanted to play with a looser style than the comic usually does. Eagle eyed readers might see that the lines are thicker or rougher. I was using a digital pencil here instead of my usual digital pen. Ironically, I thought it would save me a ton of time because I could be looser with the page. Instead I just ended up spending a lot of the time on getting the colors just nice and soft and perfect. Because dangit, even when you’re an adult you’re always worried the page isn’t good enough!

Gunwild: But it's good though...

Psu: You’re good too.

Gunwild: Get outta here!

Psu: bop

Gunwild: That's a good sound effect.