“Striking Sparks” — Page Two
I swear, once you start throwing the water effects around, it gets kinda hard to stop. This was a fun page for me, and obviously Max-the-artist enjoyed it too. Anyone besides me thinking they’d like a full-rez version of Panel 5?
Bobservations
Drenched
We actually had a good bit of rain this week, which makes this page particularly apropos. And now the rain is being followed (as usual) by howling winds, which knock over all the trees whose roots were loosened by the mud. Never the trees I want, though. There are some specific trees around here whose wood, when cooked to charcoal, have excellent pyro qualities. You would think that charcoal is charcoal, but oddly enough, not so. Some local wood (like pine and manzanita and locust) make excellent long-lasting sparks, and other woods (like willow and tipuana and jacaranda) make good, fast black powder. So do these trees get knocked over? No. Just useless-for-pyro trees like crepe myrtle and melaleuca which the City plants all over the place because they are cheap and drought-tolerant. Also practically fireproof, especially the melaleuca. So I get nothing from this wind and rain except an incentive to stay indoors and work on my computer. Until the power gets knocked out.
But really, the kind of storm pictured on this page is pretty rare in Southern California. We have them, sure, but not very often and they tend to make the local news and get all blown out of proportion because, let’s face it, if we start talking bad weather pretty much every other place in the world can kick our ass except maybe for straight up temperature. We do reside within a sturdy crow’s flight of Death Valley.
But about the best the local weather can do to you most days is make you somewhat uncomfortable. It won’t actually kill you the way I understand weather in other places has been known to do. I read about people in other parts of the world freezing to death on the way to their garage, or being sucked up into the sky by tornados, or (as recently in the Philippines) having entire populations wiped out by typhoons, and I realize that grousing because my shoes are damp just isn’t Seeing The Big Picture.
So let’s enjoy this page for what it is — a nice rare Southern California thunderstorm with rain and actual lightning and stuff. And mysterious hooded figures.
And lightsabers.
And ghosts.
You know. Just another day in LA.
-Bob out
Artist’s Notes:
Yeah, I did hand-draw a lot of the rain, but the FX from Dad really added some serious wetness to the overall look. So that came in handy.
LA actually gets a lot more rain than people realize. This year was fairly wet, but kinda nicely distributed over time. Usually, it happens all at once, in the middle of the night, kinda like depicted above. Highest rainfall recorded in LA was 7.84 inches in 1900. Seems a bit light to me.
I just bought a house in Studio City, where this story is based (kinda). There’s a concrete channel here that’s known as the LA River, which is where runoff from the sewers collect and trickles into the ocean. Despite the grossness of that description, it’s usually kinda picturesque, in a strange way, with ducks and egrets and herons and even fish living among the reeds. It all washes away in a yearly flood (due any day now). The banks of this channel are marked off to 15′ in height; two years ago, during heavy rains, I witnessed the river crest those banks and wash the feet of nearby hipster joggers. The nice widower at the end of the block told me she’s seen it get as high as the adjacent boulevard, which would be double the volume of the channel.
Point is, we do get this kind of rain in LA, but it all happens at once, and it drives everybody absolutely nuts, because it’s weather, which is pretty foreign us. We slip, we slide, we faceplant into puddles. It’s chaos out there. Best to stay indoors and crank the heat.
-Max
Yep, this is either a relative of Sophie’s or a (very) close friend. I was rather impressed with her (his?) agility until she (he?) tripped on her (his?) hem.
LOL
Ok I have a shirt with a hood that drapes down that far. You know you have practacally 0 vision with that thing like that…. It explains her trip.
Also I can see her pulling it off when she stands up. maybe a bit of blood from her lip or nose.
DEFINITELY wearing high heels in panel 7 (the panel she trips). This makes her earlier acrobatics even more impressive… and her forethought not so much.
Everybody trips. Didn’t you ever play SSBB?
Naw, you can see her boot heel in panel 8 (the second-to-last panel).
In panel 7 she’s already tripping and falling forward.
I dig the Watchmen reference.
Ah yes, the problem with cool dramatic capes. It’s hard to be cool and mysterious while faceplanted in the rain.
More and more intriguing. In the previous page we saw that Sophie is a free-roaming spirit, not merely appearing to Max, but I wasn’t sure that the person breaking in could see her. Now we know that this living person can see her, and they are at least familiar with each other, probably working together. What is going on?
BTW, I’m loving the water effects.
By the way Valkeiper, look at the raised boot in panel nine. That’s a flat heel. You can’t really see the heel in panel eight, or on the previous page. I think it’s just the flex of their foot as they’re stepping that you are seeing as a high heel. I’m not yet convinced whether the intruder is a man or a woman.
You’re right, in panel eight (next to last), it is a flat heel. I was mistaken.
A cape? Have you not seen the Incredibles?
Tripping? Doesn’t look like it to me. The cape hood is still at the top IMO. They are splashing the ghost, which means they definitely see her, and holding the cape forward in one hand. That’s probably to get it out of the way of the splash.
Na in pannel 7 the boot is on the cape in pannel 8 the boots are in the air as the caped figure face plants. pannel 9 is her turning her head in embarassment for him. so the face plant is what it is. Great comic! I really hope the semi affection for Max and Sophie continues. I know she is dead and a ghost and I know that he only sees her as he teleports. But I think it would be cool for them to become partners. Or have him “training” around the office and then sees her there hanging out and they get to talking during those controlled practice sessions.
And I’m sitting here thinking, “Never do parkour when it’s cold and wet. You’ll slip.”
Then she slips, but for entirely different and stupid reasons. Oi.
Sophie totally has this “it’s so hard to get competent ninjas anymore” look in final panel…