Page 5: issues 7 (Point Me at the Sky) and Special 3 (Sysyphus Part 3)

shastab24 on July 9, 2012

I'm putting together a crossover project to run next year through multiple comics and hopefully benefit the Hero Initiative. If you're interested in participating, please e-mail me at karamesser@hotmail.com or PQ me on this site.

Top page: And now we get the explanation of the Swimmer's powers. It was a concept I thought of when thinking about the way it is when I dream (and likely when other people do, as well): physics work like moving through water–any flying in a dream for me is actually swimming through the air and since running in a dream takes you almost nowhere while flying can actually take you places, that also is a lot like being in water. Therefore, I wanted a character who portrayed an ability to cause the world to be that way, at least in her immediate vicinity. Besides, having a character who swam through the air rather than “normal” flying was intreguing to me, and the visual concept seemed interesting, despite my inability to draw it very well. But it also lent me the interesting idea to forego a cape and make her hair act like one, instead. I do like the idea of really long hair and trying to show how it moves with her in the water. As to its practicality, I have thought of how it can easily be grabbed in a fight, and I intend to address that at some point, but “Sweats” here just isn't going to think of it. It's not that she's an idiot, because she does make some good points about how the Swimmer must operate, but she clearly has to put some thought into other areas, too. And the idea of her not being the smartest came from a simple fact: I drew her in a sweatshirt and then colored the first page as daytime. Sometimes characterization comes from error, rather than prior planning.

Bottom page: Why does this page look different? Because I accidentally scanned my lineart in color, rather than black and white like usual. I didn't realize until I started to color it (though the faded lines should have been a tipoff).
Cameos on this page are: Toshubi from Blade of Toshubi in panel 2, walking by. In the next panel is Brian from Drunken Scribblings punching a jaw-less zombie (which I think makes it look a lot like a ventriloquist's dummy–sometimes removing body parts to make a character look more undead just makes them look weird) and Chaos, heading elsewhere (though not leaving the 2008 Halloween Cameo Caper, since he does show up later in the caper). Also, Hogan of the Webcomic Cameo and Crossover Archive shows up in the last panel. I really should have done that one better, because he was supposed to obviously not be able to get through the portal. His zombified state and everything was dealt with in the Caper.