Comic Report #56.1 - Tension (Patreon)

Real quick turnaround, here is the textless version of the next page.  I say "textless" even though there's no dialogue on this page, I on-purpose omitted a "hmmh" from Marv in the bottom left panel that I'm going to add after this goes up before posting the page online.

This page is all about stillness and tension, but I didn't want to just draw characters standing stone-still for a bunch of panels, I wanted to capture the energy of stillness in between the panels. Two of the ways I chose to do this are effects in the character glow and the panel glow.  For the character glow- the light outline outside the black outline- I put a few little horizontal lines coming off their silhouettes, and drew some little floating embers in the air.  I wanted to capture the wind blowing through the scene, like Marv said, "you, me and the breeze".  The characters are so still in this moment that the wind is the thing that is drawn moving around them.  I think it captures the feeling I'm looking for.

The other effect I mentioned, the panel glow, I've used before.  I think the last time I used it was on page 547, where Sheriff Tanner bites the dust, to capture an increasing sense of tension as the panels got thinner.  For this page I only used them in the closeups on the characters' eyes; by glowing those panel interiors it feels like those panels are closer forward than the others, so the shots between the panels have some kind of layer to them. The other panels I used the glow in are in the bottom right panels, where both characters are drawing.  I only used them on the opposite corners of those panels, because I wanted those shots to feel like the stillness is breaking and the guns are coming out, so each corner has a "pull" in its own direction.

I'll leave it at that for now, I have to write in "hmmh" real quick and put this page online.  The next update after this one will be real special, something unprecedented in the comic to date.  Thanks for sticking with us! I hope you enjoy the action scene as it draws to its conclusion.