Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #8 (Patreon)

This has been a productive week for me.  I drew three minicomics last weekend- all in one 24-hour span, in fact!- and that put me up to 32 strips!  And since #12 went up today that means I'm officially just flatly 20 strips ahead, I've hit my target buffer!  Also, being able to do all three in one day is probably what afforded me enough time to just knock out page 606 of the main comic.  These strips have always been meant to be cheap and quick to do so they don't impede on the comic's progress, but for whatever reason I've just been fast this week.  So without further ado, let's get the new batch of strips up.

#030: This was actually one of the earliest strip ideas I wrote down on my list.  The line of thought here is, if people are rich they must have a fun or interesting place to work, so when the nurse and the waitress go up in the skyscraper they find it's actually a lot more mundane than they imagined.  This strip is also the first time snow has been drawn in Dead Winter- in the game we have a plan for a snow level, and the idea is the center of the city is the skyscraper expensive area, and for whatever reason it's always snowing.  Some theorize the ghosts of the departed are huddled in the center of the city and that's what makes it cold enough to always be snowing, but we definitely wanted a snow level.

#031: Frank's back!  He's actually in the page that went up today, #012, but this time he shows up with the pipe he has in the game.  That pipe is actually the one that he got cracked in the face with in the comic and it's his phase 1 weapon as a boss in the game, in case you are curious why he has a pipe.  Lou is a big boy playable character, but in the big Frank fights in the early part of the comic it was Alice hitting him with a pan and Monday going toe to toe with him, in addition to his fixation on Lizzie for abandoning him at the diner.  Frank doesn't have a direct recollection of Lou, however, which makes the idea of playing the Frank boss fight as Lou somewhat interesting.  I wanted to have another speech bubble where Lou is like, that's actually my pipe you're using, but it felt too crowded to belabor the joke that much.  Also: a fun thing about the minicomics is I can place scenes in fun new parts of the city, like here we're in the subway, which hasn't been a thing in the main comic before.

#032: This one was written in my notes as "kids kick someone in the shin and chant something weird".  Tombstone has a bunch of halfpints who show up here or there and there's not a lot for them to do in the town so they've been making their own fun.  Pat still has his Hero sash for bravely rescuing Lizzie and Alice from the wastelands, and bravely defending Tombstone from the raiders in yellow, so he makes a compelling target for inscrutable kid pranks.  Long-time readers may be able to pick out two important kids in particular from the crowd, with some fun implications attached to them being there.  Pirate's honor!

Anyhow, that's it for this week's batch of minis.  I could do two a week and maintain my desired buffer but I like drawing these a lot so I'll probably have three more next week.  Thanks for supporting the comic!  Have a nice weekend.