COMIC: Space Camp, Day Two (again)

This third draft is hopefully the final revision* of the Day Two chapter from Letters From Space Camp, which will be the sample pages I send to potential publishers. The very first version can be read in its entirety here and the second pass of it can be read here.

A big problem with the last version is that I began the chapter as if the audience had already the first couple chapters before that one, which established who the characters are and what the scenario is. However, the submissions screeners at the publishers are only going to read this one chunk of pages, so they need to get all that crucial story-establishing information in them.

With this in mind, I added on a fresh beginning and end to the original chapter to turn it more into a self-contained story that will stand alone and, hopefully, be compelling enough that the publishers will wanna pay me to make the whole book look like this.

One note my agent encouraged me to follow through on was incorporating my garden into the story more, especially as a metaphor for starting in chaos and recovery. So, in this version of Day Two, we start outside my house, showing the disarray  of my yard as a subliminal reference to the state of my unwell mind.

Additionally, Matt pointed out that my story would have a stronger visual impact if I fully drew the backgrounds and non-patient characters, while leaving myself and my fellow in-patients as stick figures like I've done this whole time. By leaving us, the program participants, as stick figures, it shows how removed and flattened we are from our surroundings and community, while fully illustrating everything else will ground us in reality and create a clear distinction between people who are in Space Camp as in-patients and everybody else who are not, including our instructors and such in the program.

Of course he's right. But it also means... redrawing everything. (Except some of the pre-existing stick figures, I can probably copy-paste some of them)

So! For those of you who have already read the previous two versions of this chapter, well, HOPE YOU LIKE IT THREE TIMES AS MUCH THIS THIRD TIME AROUND.

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* UPDATE: December 23, 2023

LOL, of course this wasn't the final revision of this page. Originally I drew page 1 with a slightly different look and then, today, I've gone back and tweaked it. Below is the original page 1, for posterity.

ORIGINAL PAGE from November 16, 2023:

Aaaand here's a comparison between the two: