Looking over this one after some time away, I’m a little worried I didn’t quite carry the sense of activity between panels well. Any graphic novel is going to have things happen in the space between panels, that’s just how the medium works, but I don’t quite feel like one panel properly flows from the next, here. That’s something I’m having to work on, through this whole graphic-novel-based-drawing-practice-thing. Luckily, the next several action scenes have given me plenty of practice.
Life’s getting the better of me again. Have some art while I sort things out. Eventually, we’re going to get to the point where I start realizing I need to make text larger to show up on screen. I look forward to that day.
Transcript
Panel 1
AGLA: That’s what this is about? You abducted me over a video game?
Goon: Don’t play dumb. We’re not the Japanese police, we won’t fall for that. Our citizens have been disappearing directly after playing your game, and nobody knows how your machine works.
AGLA: That’d be more a failing of American engineering than anything else, right?
Goon: Do you even realize the trouble you’re in? If we’re not happy with the info you give us, you’ll be spending the rest of your life in a prison on the ass-end of the Earth! Now, what is your game doing to our citizens?
AGLA: Are you a man of faith, Agent Smythe?
Smythe: Answer the question. What has your game done to our people?
Panel 2
AGLA: Do you believe in Heaven? Hell? Valhalla? Hades? Different worlds the soul travels to after death?
Smythe: Are you refusing to answer the question?
AGLA: What about the Garden of Eden?
Panel 3
Smythe: Refusal will have consequences.
AGLA: The paradise God cast Adam and Eve from when they gained the knowledge of Good and Evil, and lost their purity.
Panel 4
AGLA: God left a guardian there.
I’ve mentioned plenty of times before that drawing a story takes sooo much longer than just writing it, and that’s changed my approach to storytelling. Oftentimes, I ended up mentally developing the characters as I’m writing them, rather than having them all planned out in advance. That happened with AGLA here, who, later on, turns out to have some minor importance to the plot. He’s not completely out of character in this page, but the way I’ve written him since, he’d probably say the same things in a different way.
Also, no dialog breakout this time. All the words are on the page.
LadyHate: Wait…
LadyHate: Does that mean you’re sending me a present too?
LadyHate: You asked if I hadn’t gotten the package “yet”!
AGLA: Well… yeah.
AGLA: I sent packages to all the Midknights.
LadyHate: That’s good. I was thinking you were maybe getting a crush on Annie.
AGLA: No, that’s not it.
AGLA: No offense Anke, I just wouldn’t want to make Silver jealous 😉
LadyHate: Hey!
Lorelei: Silver and I aren’t together.
LadyHate: I thought I was the only one who could speak smileys!
AGLA =^.^=
LadyHate: O.M.G.!
LadyHate: How did you do that?!
AGLA: I’m cheating a bit.
AGLA: I’ll have to tell you later.
AGLA: I’m kind of under the gun right now.
AGLA: I’ve got a couple favors to ask.
Someday, I’m going to need to invest in a scanner. This camera work isn’t doing anybody any favors.
Anyways, as I attempt to get my life back on some sort of track, figured it’d be time to throw another one of these up there. This one took a little longer to get ready, because I actually had to go back and re-draw this. The original one, I had put together some time ago, had some really bad dialogue that I just couldn’t stand making public, and I got bored with it after finishing up with the sketching pencil, so you couldn’t even see the lines in the picture. I’m a bit happier with this one.
Transcript:
Panel 1
LadyHate: Annie!
Random mook: You!
Panel 2
LadyHate: I thought you guys weren’t going to play!
Lorelei: Next target. Wonder how far this game will let me go. Let’s see what mechanics we have here.
Random mook: It’s been too long! You’re going down!
Panel 3
LadyHate: I guess you haven’t figured out the dchat yet.
Lorelei: Ranged attack. I can throw. What about magic?
Panel 4
LadyHate: Hold on.
LadyHate: I think I’ve got this teleportation thing.
Lorelei: One way to find out.
Lost to the Aether 