Page Commentary No. 98

Gunwild: I feel sure I've mentioned this before, but I am terrible with all languages, English included, so if I used the wrong form of "good evening" for Lefyne there I apologize. I also think I've mentioned elsewhere that the joke about French being a little-known language in the future was based on kind of old information... when I was a kid, both Star Trek and Futurama made similar jokes. At the time, the population of French speakers was on the decline. Now, thanks to population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, it is rising again.

Psu: If we wanted to be fair to ourselves, languages change a LOT over time. And plus, at this point in the story, it could have been all part of Lefyne just exuding airs and making a show of things. Something we'll get on a little more. But in any event, I'm really happy with Kitty with a beret.

Gunwild: The noises animals make in different languages are fascinating, I enjoyed researching them for this. You know in Mexico the roosters say "quiquiriquí" in the morning?

Psu: That's now what roosters sound like to me... on the visual story telling of this page, it's another one of those multiple poses in the same image panel! I may be biased towards it working but I'm glad it seems to read okay. I can easily picture how the "camera" works if this were a movie. But I like to think the information conveyed to the reader gives them exactly what happened without showing the exact moment where Cassiopeia shoves Lefyne off the craft.

Gunwild: Yeah, it definitely works as an off-panel thing. As does Lefyne kinda popping right back to his feet...  it happens appropriately quick, just in the flicker of your eyes back across the width of the page.

Psu: I've taken to heart this bit of advice I usually see attributed to Jack Kirby. But you usually don't want to show the actual moment of impact. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it's great emphasis. But for a comic to read smoothly, what you really want your two panels to be are the windup and the result. So you've got a hero flexing ready for a punch. And then in the next panel the enemy is flying away and the punch is alread at the end of its arc.

Gunwild: If it's something hard to nail... stick it in between the panels! The reader will probably fill it in just fine.

Psu: Readers are smarter than they seem! Anyway, I do like the feeling of the epilogue here. There's something nice about them practically riding a shooting star out across the desert. We double down on that feeling in the next page but I really liked the view of the city here. I may have mentioned this to Gunwild, but I had actually driven across the desert through Las Vegas once. We didn't really get to stay, we were driving across Nevada to reach California, and it happened to be in daylight. But something's interesting about that part of the world where Las Vegas really is just this mysterious city growing out of the desert. The implication for Planet Fortunato is that it's still a really big Casino city but so much of the world is still wild.

Gunwild: That's about as Nevada as you can get, I think...