Comic Report #28 - All Hands (Patreon)

Here's the sketch phase of the next comic page.  It's one of my patented two-thread scene shuffles, blending what Lizzie is doing with what Alice is doing. In a couple pages the intertwine will come together and tie off into my next plot jump-off point.  This page is actually exciting for me to work on for a couple reasons, so today's post will be about those reasons and what I'm aiming to achieve.  

Since the beginning this comic has always been about peoples' job skills translating into adventuring skills, but for the bulk of the comic the characters haven't actually performed their actual jobs, save maybe for Monday. There's maybe only been one page where Alice was in a hospital environment, and then once in an intermission page.  Letting Alice be a professional again is something I wanted to explore in this arc of the comic, so I'm excited to get to the point where I can do that.

If you recall a little while ago I revamped my cast page, and there are two blank [?] spots in the Tombstone section.  This page introduces the final two cast members as Tombstone's expansive medical team.   I'll be updating the cast page as soon as this page is finished and posted.  

One of the characters I want to introduce is Dr. Parker, the woman in the white coat we see above.  I figured Alice being the sole survivor of the city hospital is a bit dry, so reconnecting her to one of her coworkers can expand on the world and her character a bit.  Part of Alice's backstory is that she wanted to be a surgeon but circumstances prevented that from happening, so working directly with Dr. Parker may help broaden Alice's scope of practice, if things pan out...

The other character introduced might not seem like much but he's someone I wanted to put in the comic for a long time.  One of my oldest and dearest art friends is Lucid TV's John Keogh, whose powerful inking I've always admired. I was very fond of his alternately-competent doctors and since one of my cast members is a nurse I've been looking for a chance to give one a cameo for probably six or so years now.  Alice has talked about her past employment a number of times and she mentioned both St. Vincent's hospital (a real place) and J.B. Memorial hospital (the Lucid TV place). On page 535 Alice reports learning that one of her "old coworkers" was in town and the assumption would be "someone else from the city hospital", which was true, but the actual setup was that Dr. Pfeiffer is here and now she gets to work with him again. It's not a very large role but I wanted to include him out of respect for my friend's work, and after literally more than half a decade I can finally draw him in my world!  Sorry John.

One of the other things I wanted to explore with this page was the nature of how a makeshift hospital works.  The town has a very limited amount of electricity and the two priority buildings to get electricity are a) the Jade Garden and b) the City Herald-Gazette building.  I can imagine a store room being fitted with a couple of beds and some metal tool cabinets, stacks of boxes and a handful of side rooms converted into exam rooms, and that's about it.  Alice increases the medical staff by 50% and their actual working supples are phenomenally limited or non-ideal alternatives, like the hacksaw on the table on the right side of panel 2.  They might have bleach and I do have plans in my mind for how the town handles hot water and laundry (tangent: the makeshift steam electric generator in the yard near the big crane that pops up in external shots is fueled by zombie bodies wrapped in linen sheets and the water heated by that fire is also used for laundry and other things) so the handful of scrubs they have will show discoloration from prior procedures, and the bedsheets would be in the same circumstances, so there is a story to be told in these environmental stains they have no real way to actually 100% remove or replace.

Anyways, those are my goals for this page. I've long wanted to extend my interest in juryrigging and makeshift technology into the medical field, I've wanted to expand on Alice's life and her skills a bit more, and I wanted to include a cameo for a character belonging to an artist I admire. This page is all interior shots, mostly, so it shouldn't take me quite as long to finish up from here.

I'm going to switch back to gamedev for this coming week to round off the very last animations I need for the game's player characters, specifically being Lou's special ability animation, and then the week after I'll try to wrap up this page and get it out for you.  As always, thank you for sticking with us.