Comic Report #46 - Turning The Page (Patreon)

This week we're back in comic mode until the next page is done.  I want to start off with a quick disclaimer: next week I'm going to be traveling to Seattle to work on some gamedev things and also to visit ECCC, so I won't be able to type up a Patreon post next Friday.  I'll be home again on Saturday, though, so I'll get to work having a more meaningful update the Friday after next, rather than rush an update off a half-week of travel.

I'm approaching an action scene in the comic, and when that happens I tend to find myself thumbnailing further ahead than normal, to make sure my action sequences coordinate well as a whole, so I spent a bunch of this week plotting the build-up to the action.  I tend to not post my thumbnail segments because I don't want to give away the comic too far ahead, but they all more or less look like this page's:

The concept for the page is to move out of the bus-sneaking section and expand on what the clue under the seat was, while setting up a complication in the stealth mission.  I block in the first panel as a bus exterior shot, so I can skip my temptation to draw Lizzie crawling back out of the window and faceplanting on the ground again- I already drew one faceplant sequence when she entered the bus so a second would be redundant. There's a shot of the zombie used to boost up to the window in the first place and Lizzie is plucking up her mop again, which conveys that the last scene is over and we're moving on.

My idea for a clue for finding out who was hiding in the bus is to have one of those bookplates with the book owner's name on it. I could put a name on there that I've never introduced before for some unknown person and the next step is finding out who that person is, so that's what the bulk of the middle of this page is setting up- "Who the hell is Ethel Mulgrave?"  That's a hook I can play out the next part of the story with so I want to plant it now and then shift focus elsewhere to let it simmer a bit.

The focus shift comes at the end of the page.  At the start of this sneaking adventure I put something like a twenty minute timer on when Lizzie could safely go outside the wall and come back unnoticed, and sneaking to the bus window, getting in and getting out has been pretty quick and uncomplicated.  On her way back to her boot-weighted rope the complication makes its appearance: three scouts in yellow ponchos have found the rope line over the bus wall while Lizzie was busy inside the other bus.  I'd introduced Yellow Ponchos as a sort of parallel to Tombstone back before Tombstone was even a thing, they're a more aggressive band of survivors who led an attack on the Omni-Mart.  It's been a while since I've had a proper action sequence so now a trio of Yellow Ponchos are at Lizzie's lifeline, and hugging the wall of buses keeps them out of sight of Alice and Stacy's cover fire.  With clue-finding resolved, the next problem to untangle is getting back into Tombstone safely before the next shift of gate watchmen show up.

I'm leaving Wednesday for ECCC so I'll spend as much of this week working on the new page and try to have as much done as I can for the Friday after next.  Thank you for your patience!