Comic Report #62 - Bunkmates (Patreon)

As the comic numbers have drawn nearer and nearer to that big 600 mark, I've been pacing myself to land on a specific moment at a specific time, and with Lizzie's mystery-solving job established I have a bit of narrative time to relax and decompress.  Throughout the comic I've paced out days in the timeline with some sort of night-time page, but a lot of those pages have focused on Lizzie and Alice, who have kinda gel'd in a way I didn't plan from the start of the comic.  Monday and Lou have their own kind of chemistry, so for this page I wanted to shift focus back and touch base with these two as I wind down towards the page prefacing the 600th.

This page turned out to be a combination of some old things and some new things.  An old thing I haven't drawn in a while is a Lou chatterbox moment.  I love to write his info splurges and I often do a bunch of research on my own to make sure it is factually-correct, especially with regards to Roman history.  When I write a Lou chat I don't have the specifics planned in advance, I think it's kinda more organic to just write it in the moment when I'm at the text phase, but I do plan his energy and the reactions of those around him to make sure everything fits together.  My current notes for this page's Lou script is he is going to talk a lot of filler, but somewhere in the monologue I want to slip a little thread of a clue connected to the bigger Who Killed Sheriff Tanner plot arc in between everything else.  I won't say what that detail is but I will say I am planning to kinda hide it in there somewhere.

One of the new things about this page is Monday's eyes.  We've seen his eyes before in a few fleeting shots, but this is one of the first pages where his glasses are just entirely off and you can see his eyes plainly the entire page.  This, weirdly, makes him a bit more expressive than he's ever been- from the outset Monday had always been intended as a kind of emotionally-reserved perpetual grimace, and hiding his eyes behind sunglasses helped keep him from being too expressive.  He is not a good person but he is still a human being who needs sleep, so this page is a bit of a window into a more vulnerable state for the character.  His eyes aren't hidden and he isn't on his guard, he's trying to sleep in the room he shares with Lou in Randy's house, so it's a glimpse into a situation he hasn't really been seen in in the comic before.

Planning what their bedroom actually looked like, I wanted to make it distinct from Lizzie and Alice's.  When I was younger I had a similar sort of bunk bed to this one, with a wooden railing that rested alongside the top bunk, and one which I have ended up rolling underneath and falling on the floor from a few times growing up.  I figure in the negotiations Lou would call the top bunk and Monday wouldn't fight him for it, because the bottom bunk is a more defensible position, or rather one he could more readily roll out of in the event of a sudden threat.  Despite them living in a peaceful, secure town one of the two of them insisted on putting a chair under the doorknob.  There is still some trust and insecurity issues present reflected in the layout of the bedroom.

This week I will do my best to get as much done on this page as I can.  I've been staying indoors and trying to prevent myself being a vector as much as possible.  Be safe out there, stay home as much as you can.  Wishing you the best, I'll catch you next Friday with something new to share.