Another Way To Breathe

Spoilers, obv.

This felt like a big issue to us. I mean, in a literal sense it was a big issue. We normally are 20 pages of art (plus cheats). This is 23 pages of art, due to me completely fucking up and writing a 22 page script extremely early, thinking I’d go back to it and work out a way to compress it to 20. Except I forgot I had extra work to do on the script, so didn’t leave enough time to rework it before Jamie had to get it. And then Jamie insisted on expanding a sequence by a page, because he loves you guys, or at least loves the comic.

I don’t really think I could have compressed it without hurting the comic either. I compress the action at the start, and it leaves a reader cheated. I talked about false drama of cliffhangers last time, and if you don’t have at least some manner of satisfying that promise, it’s a cheat, and not in an interesting way people would thank us for. However, at the same time, that’s not what we’re really doing here. Equally, losing stuff from the back of the issue would move it into the next issue… and that is also sub-optimum, for reasons you’ll see next time.

Put it like this: Jamie joked “can we split this issue in two?” and I took it entirely seriously, and started doing the math on making this a seven issue arc.

But no.

There’s also one change which should be mentioned – we’ve gone up to $3.99 from $3.50. Why? Image suggested we should. There are very few Image books that are $3.50 now. The vast majority are $3.99. We’ve had our price set at $3.50 ever since 2006, with the exception of Immaterial Girl. We figured we should listen to our publisher. 50 cents across a decade seems reasonable, especially in an industry where $3.99 seems standard.

Anyway, let’s do this thing…

Jamie/Matt’s Cover
The Norns, and they are kind of core to this issue, so more of a connection between cover and contents than for most of the issue. For reasons that become clear this issue, The Norns and Baal step forward as alternative protagonists for the story structure. They are key.

There was considerable EEEK! Over the wearing of masks.

Nicola Scott’s Cover

Nicola’s wonderful. I’ve wanted a candid photo cover for most of WicDiv, and I’m surprised it’s only turned up now. It’s also delineating Sakhmet and Persephone, which is a key note towards the end of the issue.

The Image 25^th Anniversary Cover

It should be stressed, this was Eric Stephenson’s idea.

You may wonder how we did it.

This is how we did it.

In short: we did it like an episode of Playschool. The lighting being a lamp, gaffataped to a wall is a particular highpoint.

And then Katie-west worked her magic.

All the good jokes on the covers are Jamie’s, which is very annoying, but makes me feel better when I laugh at it, as at least I’m not laughing at my own crap.

Page 1

I love the first panel. I almost put it in the newsletter, but decided we should save that thrill for context. It’s very much in the establishing shot mode, and a promise. Jamie and Matt executing things like Minervas concussive wind blasts out of the swirling body is lovely detail too.

I did have something akin to a NOT AGAIN! As a line of dialogue from Minerva here, but was obviously killed for breaking tone. See later in the notes for other thoughts on that whole sequence.

And by the end of the page, we’ve changed direction entirely. No, this isn’t going to be a straight fight. We have other narrative fish to fry.

Page 2-3

RISING ACTION was basically four issues of straight punchy, with a middle act of woe. We’re not the sort to do that again, and immediately try and make this feel different. That first panel where we get a very human observation of a superhero event. A glance out the window, and shit is going down out there. There is a lot to try and ground this as we go on, even as it escalates…

I suspect Amaterasu’s realisation is one of the cruellest lines I’ve written for her.

Heh. Okay – want to hear another example of me messing up? I knew I needed Amaterasu here, ASAP. But I had also set the scene at night, so her long-range-teleportation doesn’t work. This led to a rewrite to bring in the Woden-designed-arm-piece from Rising Action. And it helps in other ways – we get the interaction with her mum, which says a lot about Amaterasu. I do like the idea of Amaterasu having left this piece of fancy armour lying around on her bedroom floor and her mum tidied it up.

Jamie pushed a panel from page 3 onto page 2, which is obviously a smarter call, letting him keep a steady angle on the three teleportation panels, which nails the effect. The breaking up dialogue to show that things are instantaneous is obviously one of our tropes.

The lettering on this sequence involved some messing around with layers to get work, and to make the fade in operate. Nice work, Clayton. This is also an area where my suspicion of sound-effects was entirely over-ruled.

Page 4

And hulllllo Baal’s family.

This strikes me as a very WicDiv take on a reveal. It could have worked with just a reveal of his family – we’d want to see that. But to reveal that, and juxtapose it to the creeping monsters, so mixing the excitement of meeting new people with the fear of losing them? That’s WicDiv, innit? Sigh.

This was also the page which went through the most colouring notes. Getting the exact level of reveal on the Great Darkness creatures, of how much they’re in the light or not took quite a few takes. We’re very happy.

Page 5

We are totally not rated PG.

Page 6-7

If you follow me on twitter, you’d see me doing a crowdsurfed suggestion for a line of dialogue for someone to say when they’re pulling someone out of the way. That was this page, and Persephone pulling the tentacles. I decided that any dialogue was too much. It even makes it jokey (clearly not the intent) or slows down the action. Even a “NO!” felt too much for me.

We’re heading more towards action here, and doing a beautifully rendered fight-scene in someone’s garden. This feels a very us thing to do.

I believe I described the Amaterasu laser beam shot in the mode of a Quietly moment, that sense of a still moment in time. Jamie and Quitely don’t have a huge amount of overlap as artists for me – Quitely is all about the 3D space of a shot, which Jamie simply isn’t – but this captures something really furious. The colouring from Matt on the heat vision is particularly A+.

The push and pull of Amaterasu is very much her thing. Her bravery is an open question, as is her capacity for anger and violence. From Persey-Poo to incinerating her foes in a couple of pages doesn’t exactly make me feel comfortable about her. So nice work, J ane M.

Also Good Job Baal’s Brother on spotting the baddies.

Page 8

Jamie and my debate on exactly how to (er) Biggify the Darkness creature was quite a thing. Of course, the creatures are granular. We can’t just make the grains bigger.

We were a little worried that Persephone firing red thorns being a little confusing, when red is Amaterasu’s signature. We may end up tweaking them green in the trade. Not that we’ve seen anyone complain about it.

I think Amaterasu’s living-Darkseid-stary-beam is my favourite regular power signature in this book.

Lots of careful unpacking on what is said on the phone, to ensure clear storytelling. That we never actually show the Great Darkness Creature back at the shard defeated is an unsusual choice… but we need to make sure that people know it HAS been defeated and Minerva rescued. Equally, we come back to the nature of cliffhangers we mentioned earlier. We’ve promised a fight against the Great Darkness, but are much more interested in introducing Baal’s family, showing Amaterasu’s complicity in this, Persephone’s powers, etc. So you DO get a great darkness fight, just not the one you were expecting, which is hopefully okay as the one you were expecting is a lot less interesting than this. Hopefully.

The Phone is a Woden design, as referenced later in the issue. Baal can’t just go down any phone. You’ll see one on his living room table in last issue.

Page 9

This is the sort of page I’d have ended up cutting if I tried to reduce the issue… and why would I want to do a thing like this?

There was a discussion of whether ALL I DO IS WIN was too much. It eventually worked around to obviously it’s too much, but WicDiv is too much, so that’s all fine.

This is a lovely set of colouring from Matt here. The white and purple is just a delight.

Notice tiny Scarab-esque thing shooting off in the top right panel. In a moving medium the Great Darkness’ nature would be a lot cleaner, but we do stuff like this.

Page 10

And we’re back to grounded colours. Just turn this page and see how things change. Isn’t that a delight? Matt Wilson For Eisner, etc.

Yes, Baal’s name is Valentine Campbell. Obviously we chewed it over a bunch. Valentine has so many connotations seemed to be useful.

I find myself thinking that in the first half of the issue Persephone is almost back to volume 2 Laura. She’s primarily an observer, one who is taken places and sees thing. That does tend to make Amaterasu’s final line particularly pointed.

Lovely pair of expressions in that final panel.

Page 11

The title for this was originally ONCE MORE, leading directly into Baal’s first line, and hitting the beat again. That changed when I realised I wanted to do the whole sequence as a nine panel grid.

This is the first time all the surviving gods have been in a scene together, and it’s a circular table. Luckily, when I mapped the gods to the seats, the ones who are most important to interact are actually sitting beside each other – imagine how difficult it would have been if Baal and the Norns weren’t seated by each other.

(We’d have done something else, clearly, and had the Norns standing like Persephone is.)

So I was trying to work out how to panel all this political-meeting style chat, and hit the bit where the gods vote. And I realised that as there were nine gods voting, it’d work really well as a nine-panel grid. That rapidly expanded to… wait, especially with Baal/Norns sitting by each other (so minimising the need for wide shots) I could do the whole thing in a nine panel grid. That allows you to cut between individual characters speaking, and not have to worry about the interactions for most of it.

That unlocked the way to best dramatically sell the Persepone’s final line. If we build a structure, we can get an aesthetic effect by demolishing it.

It’s not the first time we’ve done a Nine Panel Grid in our work, but its’ certainly the longest. And if we’re doing Nine Panel, it brings it back to Watchmen, which means that we should highlight that. Hence, the title altering to THE WATCH, which obviously has all kinds of connotations.

I go through this to primarily show how much fun this job can be. Stuff builds on top of other stuff, and you eventually end up with something much more full than the original idea. For me, pretty much nothing is as good as writing is when it’s going right.

Which is the sort of thing I’ll get depressed about if I think too much about it, so let’s not for now, eh?

Page 12

If we’re going to do the nine panel thing, we need to establish the scene properly. Two panels, built on a nine-panel grid superstructure.

Obviously this was a heavy described panel, as we had to cram in all the character beats for all the people. Baph’s slouch is particularly on point. The coffee that Dio is hanging onto for dear life another. The Norns not getting a seat.

One thing I particularly like about this page? It forefronts the visual element of the table with twelve gods around which people may not have noted. This, on a page after a big title saying THE WATCH is more obviously a clock face.

Yes, Watchmen was a big influence on me as a writer. Did I mention it? I may have mentioned it.

Page 13

Oh man – look at Matt’s use of shadow here. Baal in the darkness on last page was great, but passing from the shadow to light in the first panel.

When I first saw Jamie had put Minerva in plaid I worried for him. “Er… Jamie. Drawing Plaid is a lot of work.” He noted that as there was only a few panels with her in, it’ll be fine. Jamie is not entirely foolish.

The page does show one of the things about the nine panel – as in, you get more beats… but you have to be pretty particular to choose those beats. 9 panel is good for a writer, for certain things (most important: timing), but you can do less with any one panel. On the plus side your beats are more deliberate, more delineated.

In this case, showing Persephone’s is relatively “expensive” in page space, but clearly necessary – Baal is saying the stuff he’s never said before. We need to see her response.

And yeah… Baal finally lays out his main motivation. I suspect for close readers or re-readers, things make a lot more sense.

The seventh panel is one of four two shots I can see in this whole sequence, to get an idea of how sparsely we tried to use them. Maybe 5 if you include the one with Woden asking “Does she get a vote.” Though I say this having only skimmed quickly, and am sure I must have missed one..

The non sequitur panel of the 8^th is one of my fave things you can do with a rigid panel like this. Drop a silent panel and break it up.

Page 14-15-16

Honestly, this kind of shit is stuff I love. Just lock characters in a room and let them argue. Political dramas. Legal dramas. It’s just a fascinating writing challenge – who speaks next and why. How to delineate the information, how to lampshade information is questionable, etc, etc.

I mean, in some ways this sort of debate is pure exposition – here are some statements – but the fact that each is immediately interrogated turns it into something else.

Basically, if left to my own devices, I’d have just done a 40 issue series in the style of 12 ANGRY MEN called 12 ANGRY GODS.

In terms of my outline, I knew that the pantheon would have a schism at this point. Until Brexit happened, I didn’t realise that it would be by something as clear and true as a simple democratic vote.

The hand on Cass’ shoulders is the sort of thing I’d have only done in a nine panel grid.

Yes, Baphomet, there was a time for jokes, and it was in the first arc.

PAGE 17

This issue, for reasons which we’ll get to shortly, had some consultants’ eyes on. That bit was fine. The thing which was tweaked then, and tweaked time and time over is trying to delineate the sides. The first draft simply hadn’t sufficiently. Hell, the second or third lettering tweaks didn’t do the trick completely. At least from the comments we’ve seen, no-one seems lost, so the effort seems worth it.

The problem is that each member of the debate wants to phrase their position in the best way possible and their enemies in the worst way, which actually leaves it hard to say what’s actually go on. This led to Baal in the final panel actually bringing it together – the PRIORTISE THE GREAT DARKNESS vs STUDY is the key thing. ANARCHY had to be introduced explicitly by cass to describe someone else’s position as a label before it could be used here too.

In terms of minor fact drops? One of the things people always ask is what’s going on with the skulls. Here we just let people know they’re ornaments.

In terms of the nine panel grid, I think the single hardest decision was letting go of showing the Norn’s response to Sakhmet’s threat. Alas, everything else is more important.

The second one would be Baal doing something like counting people around the room, to ensure that the reader knows that Baal thinks he’s won. In the end, we highlight that later, and with the ellipsis  in the eighth panel. And, of course, as always a Jamie McKelvie expression goes a long way.

Er… I’m writing too much about this stuff, but I hope it’s useful for people who think about comic craft. And to double-triple stress, as always in these notes, I really am just telling the surface level storytelling basics.

Page 18

And the vote page. As said earlier, was where the 9 panel grid came as possible.

These lines were especially tweaked to sell the positions and why.

And Dionysus, for the first time in the scene, speaks. Obviously a key issue for Dio, where we move him into an explicit new position in the plot.

Page 19

Man, I don’t even want to unpack this page.

But I can easily imagine how both Baal and Cass are feeling in the last panel. Uh… wait…

Page 20

Formalism doing its formalism thing.

This was written in a nine panel grid, but with descriptions of which panels are covered by Persephone’s hair.

Page 21

And then we go into our quick cuts to move to the new status quo, the nine panel.

It’s very much our aesthetic that we show the break-up but don’t show the getting-together.

I suspect it’s the sort of scene I’d like to talk about further down the line, but not now.

The gold prize for Jamie here are panels 3 and 4. For me, that’s comic, and that’s why I love comics.

Well, one of the reasons, anyway.

Page 22-23

Cass continues to be a gift for those who like reaction images.

The strangest rewrite of the issue for me was the “What’s the saying about stopped clocks?” line, which was originally a lot more suggestive and less explicit. But 2 of the first 4 people to read it didn’t get it in its more suggestive form, which meant that I was always going to dial back for clarity’s sake.

So, yes, this is a Cass/Dio/Woden team-up for the Study side. Splitting your cast into smaller narrative units is a good tactic in a team book (I sort of learned it properly when I was writing my 9-core-person Uncanny X-men team). You also see it all over the place – if you listen to Community notes, you’ll see how they split their cast into different arrangements and see how the characters interact. Having three characters who, on the surface, appear to have very different priorties come together under a larger banner is an interesting one.

In terms of the explicitly delineating at least part of the sexualities, this has been considered for a while. Let’s start with Cassandra.

Early on in WicDiv, I saw a random comment of someone annoyed with something I’d said. Specifically me saying something akin to “I sometimes need room to discover a character’s sexuality.” Her response – and one I completely get – was annoyance with suggesting people don’t know their own sexualities. The “No, I know I’m Bi – don’t say it’s a phase. Don’t say it’s something I’m discovering.”

As I said, I get it, but that’s not what I meant. I meant characters. Writing often feels like excavation. Not always, but sometimes, and especially in a book like WicDiv. You get to know them by writing them, sometimes in actually fundamental ways, ways which were always there but now come to the surface. For all my planning in WicDiv, it’s also a living creature.

So when starting off, I always had a few feelings about Cassandra. There was the possibility that she was actually asexual. It would fit with her for a few ways, and the evidence for a reading of that was certainly there. However, I rapidly realised it caused huge problems inside the narrative in terms of what it was saying about asexuality. One of Cassandra’s primary traits is that she doesn’t experience the performances. If she’s asexual, that implies that it’s linked to that – especially when the performances have been linked so strongly to sex at various places in the narrative. I thought that’d be true even if we had another asexual character in the primary cast to show the contrary. I continued writing her and thinking, and having an awareness of the various potentials I saw in her. I didn’t have to make a choice yet.

The flashpoint was issue 20, where I realised that it just was untenable for her to be asexual. Because if performances are linked in the readers’ mind to sex, that eventually Cassandra does response to a performance is a sign that asexuals just haven’t met the right person yet.

No. I’m not writing a book that suggests that.

There is also the real world thing that trans women are viewed through a hypersexual lens or an asexual one, which is certainly one feeds into the final dialogue on the page.

So everything re-arranged and solidified in the other way I saw them – a stable lesbian polyamarous triad. I saw with Imperial Phase ahead, that felt more and more necessary. WicDiv is… not a book where relationships are healthy. Every single romantic relationship in the book is openly dysfunctional. Relevantly, there is a lot of people doing polyamory very badly. It comes to a point where it looks like the book saying this behaviour is bad rather than this specific practise is bad. The Norns would be the counter-argument. In this issue, we show them in an private, loving supportive relationship that’s arguably more unconventional than any other in the book.

We don’t get to see any of the sex, of course, as it’s none of our business and they’re not there for the readers’ pleasure. But with them in our story, it shows there’s nothing implicitly wrong with kink, or polyamory or anything else… as long as you don’t act like sentient burning trashcans.

That was the thinking. Some of it, anyway.

Oh – on the note of discovery, I only realised that she’d lean submissive as I wrote the page. It was a surprise to me as well, but seemed to align with everything else and make a lot of things make more sense.

In Dio’s case, it was there as a possibility even as I first wrote him into the bible. I see myself writing around it in my notes, saying that I just didn’t feel like sex was a big drive for him in the way it was for so much of the cast. The problem eventually came for the place to introduce it, and how, and in the same action where we move Dio towards the centre stage (or at least primary supporting characters) seemed to be it.

We’ve had a lot of supportive messages about both of these, so thank you. And thanks again to our consultants, who we will continue to high five at the slightest encouragement.

Page 24-25

This was originally written as a page, but Jamie insisted on MOTORBIKE DRAMA!

And how could we resist that?

I actually wrote a first draft of this, and wondered if it was too much, and then did a completely different end scene based on Persephone leaving the Shard. Arguing it over with Chrissy, we came down strongly on this. It’s WicDiv. We crash motorbikes into walls for the sake of it.

Worth noting: this is a return to a non-cliffhanger ending structure. The “read the next issue” comes from the whole of the issue rather than a specific beat. This is about leaving it with a mood.

Favourite thing in colour – the circle of light on the wall, a half second before impact.

I’ll give you one for free: Persephone is on the phone to one of her people, probably an agent. I could have put an explicit call in that to the dialogue, but it was too crass and fake, and the specific identity doesn’t really matter that much. It’s just someone who’s clearly going to get her a new bike.

Also: the main reason why I wondered whether this scene wasn’t too much, is because it is literally the lyrics to Icona Pop’s I LOVE IT.

Page 26

“Hey, C, is referencing Kesha too much on the interstitial? It sort of is a trashy pop take on Watchmen’s encroaching apocalypse feel.”

“No, that sounds like exactly the sort of thing you do.”

“Cool.”

See you next month, where we reach the penultimate part of IMPERIAL PHASE (I). It’s just being put to bed, and we like it a lot.

Thanks for reading.