Comic Report #61.2 - Happy Birthday (Patreon)

Hello!  Here is the final textless version of this page before I get to lettering.  It's about 4am as I type this so I'm gonna be sorta quick so I can post it and get to sleep, but I wanted to share this one with you because it's a very special page!  Way back on March 13th 2007 I put my very first comic page online.  I wanted to pick March 13th so Dead Winter's birthday would fall on Friday the 13th sometimes, and it just so happens that on the 13th anniversary of the comic 3/13 falls on a Friday!  I wanted to make extra sure I got this page done in time to post today so I kinda double-timed it through this week, but here it is!  The Dead Winter 13th birthday page.

This page is pretty dense with background details that are gonna get covered up in Stacy's word balloons, but it covers a lot of places throughout Tombstone that I hope an avid reader of the comic might pick out and recognize.  The fourth panel is set by the big dirt lot where all the school buses that now make up Tombstone's perimeter wall were parked, which is now full of miscellaneous other cars, including Pat's Charger prior to him venturing out and getting stuck.  The fifth panel is that one corner seat at the Jade Garden Stacy originally took Lizzie and Alice to- Nigel and Laura Cooper took her there on her first arrival and in hindsight her taking Lizzie and Alice is her paying the favor forward.  The sixth panel features the Yummy Mart, the old shop that Stacy, Lizzie and Alice all presently live in; I wanted their homes to be kind of cute and memorable so it's a nice place Lizzie's dad had kept set aside just for them.  

The last flashback panel is Gate B, where Pat introduced the gang to Tombstone for the first time.  Deon and Donna.  A fun fact about those two, they made their first appearance all the way back on page 6 of the comic, back in early 2007:

Everyone's come a long way since those old days.

I'm gonna get back to wrapping up the comic, but I wanted to extend my sincere gratitude to you for helping support this project.  I know I say it every Friday but I always mean it, and this week especially.  Thirteen years ago I started Dead Winter as a way to try to escape a dead-end mechanic job and build something that I could grow in creatively, and my art has come very far in that time.  I'd never have been able to do my work without the support of readers keeping me going all the way.  It's been a long road but I have an end goal planned and I intend to see the comic through to its conclusion.  Thank you for helping get us there together.