“Striking Sparks” — Page Sixty-Four
It’s a supernatural showdown between the determined detective with the Spirit Guardian and our hapless hero’s Defending Angel!
This is one of those “frozen moment” scenes like in the Matrix or the show Constantine (when the angel Manny shows up.) Time has stopped for everyone else, but Letoa, Manaia, Sophie, and Max are all still functioning — though Max is too damaged to move much.
Since this is a comic and we don’t have the benefit of movement (or lack thereof) to create the effect, we’ve utilized lighting and color to try to accomplish a similar feel. Everything in Panel 3 is being experienced by our main characters, but the Chief and all other emergency personnel are excluded and unaware.
For this particular page, Max-The-Artist decided to portray the ever-shifting Manaia as a sort of tentacled nautilus; possibly going into defensive mode. As for Sophie, she’s definitely coming into her own; it would appear she’s starting to get a handle on this whole “being dead” thing, and woe betide any woman who threatens her man!
BTW, Sophie’s “wings” are actually flamethrower bursts; I had fun going through the footage frame-by-frame looking for particularly winglike billows, which Max-The-Artist then color-changed to a more spiritual blue and tweaked a bit to enhance the winglike aspect.
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More below!
Bobservations:
This was a hard page to crop. We always make them oversized so that we’ll have “bleed room” for eventual book form, but occasionally Max and I forget that we do that and end up filling the page with art and/or effects. In this case, every attempt to crop it 6 x 9 as we normally do chopped Letoa off at the ankles, which is a compositional no-no. Sizing it down caused the pentacle to bump the border and made the text too small to read easily, especially on a smartphone. I eventually sized it up slightly — which is to say, I didn’t shrink it down as much as we normally do; the actual cropped art is 3000 x 4500 so there’s plenty of leeway. In any case, this allowed me to crop Letoa at a more compositionally pleasing mid-calf. But for those who might like to see the full page as Max turned it in, you can find that here.
Yet Another Shameless Plug
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— Bob out
Definitely was not expecting that.
…and it is beautiful.
Tonight for dinner, Sophie will be cooking up a delicious plate of Manaia calamari. Yum!
flaming-flaming! FLAMING CAT!!OHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
its a show down things are getting HOT down here!
who`s ready for a cat fight!!
hehe joke aside. cool panel man. you really succeded in displaying what you were going for. kudos to you ^_^
And there we have another badass moment.
Sophie got an upgrade. *Cheers.
At first I was wondering whether or not the chief could see the ghosts, but then I noticed the differences in color and assumed he was frozen in time.
And! I deduced this before reading the commentary. Yay! You two did a great job conveying the effect!
Same here, it’s easy to understand at a glance. What I don’t really understand is WHY Manaia want to arrest Max so much even thought she was told that he is dead? Does she already knows that death can be a temporary thing for him? Is there a mystical reason to try to restrain a vigilante who can teleport?
Also Dat last panel. Full of awesome.
I think she wants him because she knows he can teleport and her spirit guardian is interested. Him being dead means nothing as he’s shown so many other oddities that him being a solidified ghost may be the rational explanation.
She may have a suspicion, if Spirit McTentacles hasn’t seen and told her. We’ve seen her looking at footage of his previous escapades and heard (read, whatever) some of her deductions already. She’s smart and perceptive. Combined with her training and her powers it’s fully possible she suspects death can’t hold him.
Really glad to hear the “frozen moment” is reading clearly for you guys – though I guess I should also thank the movies and television shows that made it such a recognizable concept!
Was wondering the same thing as well. Especially since the fire chief isn’t looking in the direction of the spirit.
I do wonder what the thing of the right is though.
Have inferred the good detectives.. totem spirit? guardian entity? is connected to the water element, and so thought we are finally seeing who she is having her conversations with.
Heh. Kehua means ghost.
I find that to be an interesting reaction. Not “Oh great now what” or “what is that” its “GHOST!”
She’s quite in the know. Sadly, unless she communicates she’s in the know, then Max can happily ignore her for a while (aka I’m hoping the science team can keep doing research before the cops get involved. Yay SCIENCE!)
http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/search?keywords=kehua
Wow. I love everything about this page, but the blue “firey wings” have got to be my favorite part.
What this page DOESN’T show is the frozen moment before this one, where Sophie rushed over to her emergency stash to put some clothes on. Don’t you just hate it when you think you’re alone in the house, enjoying an unofficial casual (pantless) day, only to turn around and see your roommate\better half\mom standing in the door?
I’d say “Bad Juju!” But this Juju is of the decidedly good variety.
Somehow I imagine Sophie’s voice like the “command voice” from Dune (the movie with Kyle McLachlan) (even though that was kinda wrongly done).
Maybe we learn later, but I’m already curious about the pentagram: I’d assume that it needs power and knowledge. Sophie got an upgrade indeed, probably for being a hero herself when she protected Max, there’s the power, but – how did she know what to do and how to do it? Has she been into supernatural stuff when she was alive? I wouldn’t be very surprised, knowing her dad and the people who work for him.
Well, she has had several weeks/months to learn stuff, since Max’s neck wound from the bank job shoot out is healed.
Probably multiple months maybe a year, how long to heal from a bullet wound? I mean think about it, he healed from the bank in the hospital. He has been shot multiple times since then, there was the hostage situation, and then the armored car hijinks. Unless they have some super human healing thing going on, those would still hamper his muscle function. They don’t need to cause more trauma digging for the slug, but the flesh and internal organs still need time to recover.
He still had the bandage on his neck at the start of issue 2.
(Somehow I tend to end up here a day early rather often…)
From where or from whom would/could Sophie learn something, being in Limbo?
I thought of whether she had learned something while being alive. Maybe not much, but something specific, something not everybody would find. Sort of halfway to what Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had learned. (Not really that but something of half the size.)
And while time may not matter in Limbo, I rather think of a few weeks, otherwise the team would have kept a really low profile.
(And if I may say something about the vote incentive – it somehow reminds me of Gil Elvgren’s style 🙂 Congratulations! (Also, may first thought was that it’s a good example for why I prefer cold white LEDs over warm white ones ;^) ) )
Thanks RockB! Indeed, Gil Elvgren is the master of the pinup.
My reaction to the art was “Oh wow.” repeated with more enthusiasm upon seeing the full version.
The fuck?!@ Well, here’s the pivotal moment: how to explain this …
That was just plain awesomeLL
This page is BOSS! I’m really enjoying this comic, keep up the good work.
*pulling stuff from the orifice I shouldn’t use to talk with…*
Sure; al the healing Max needed took up plenty of time, but more: As she appearantly can “skip” time(first trick, mastered?..) she likely could’ve used that neato trick to gain more time to hone her skills.