Another Way To Breathe

Spoilers, obv.

I suspect this may be shorter than usual. Or maybe not? When you’ve been working (and thinking) on something for a long time, you work past the need to talk about it. I’ve said it to myself so many times, I don’t really need to externalise it. Whatever “it” is, is in the book.

I suspect this is going to grow as we progress across the final year. In a real way, we’re at the point of the degree course when we’re easing off. It’s your project now. Make of it what thou wilt. Easy answers are a long way behind us. But there are answers, at least.

Jamie’s Cover: with solicits going out earlier, we’re always worried about putting something like this on a cover. Ideally, we’d want it to drop after Imperial Phase II dropped, so at least people would be suspicious of Minerva.

But it’s a lovely image – I love what Matt’s doing with the light, what Jamie’s doing with the expression. Great stuff.

Yoshi Yoshitani: More great stuff. The playfulness of Persephone, the pose. It’s just total joy.

Page 1-4

This looks familiar. Once more we return, again, right?

We were obviously planning this from the start, but by the time we’ve reached this point, Jamie’s style has evolved to the point where the extra panels we need to add to the sequence would break the coherence entirely. So Jamie insisted on re-inking the whole sequence, and updating the Minerva panels (as she’s seen in more panels later). I did say that if we were clever, we’d have drawn the whole thing back when we did issue 1. Jamie noted that he’d never have been happy printing four years old art in a book.

So yes.

I was originally thinking that this sequence would actually be the opening of Year 4, but when I did the tight plotting for this arc, I realised that you had to really start way back around 4000BC, to set certain themes in motion. I had the option to switch them until quite late though – they’re similar lengths, and abstractly can be switched, with a few changes.

I didn’t. It’s the way to go. And it’s a good way to make issue 2 hit hard, right?

It’s an interesting thing to think about that those who are following this in singles will have read the 1923 special before this, so know exactly why everyone is here, while those following with trades will learn it in the NEXT trade.

Page 5

For those who follow the idea of page budgets, this counted as a half page.

When writing this first time I got the order the wrong way around, so Amaterasu survived rather than Susanoo. Always check this stuff.

It’s another tour de force for Matt here, in terms of the intensity of effects going on. I feel terrible for all the people involved. Thinking through the psychology of this was always going to be the hard one. To pull the trigger, who had the hardest job?

Page 6

Yet again, just look at the reds. I’ve got an issue with a bunch of fire in, and this is really making me look forward to it.
Susanoo is a sweet one. Poor fucker.

Minerva saying “Necessity” feels like a necessary beat, right?

Page 7

This counts as a ¾ page for page budget.

Was waiting for the “Minerva emerging from fire” money shot for 34 issues (plus specials) and Jamie doesn’t let me down. Had me thinking of “Figure covered in fluids” being one of those recurring beats in Jamie and my work. Persephone in the fourth trade, America in issue 13 of YA, Emily in Phonogram and so on.

It’s the billow of the skirt, innit? Nice, Jamie.

8-9-10-11

Oddly, lettering this so you could work out who was speaking and who to was trickier than you’d think.

Set still getting her digs in now is very set. And, yes, I’m sure people will have a theory on who the fourth head is by now. If not, don’t worry, we’ll get to it soon enough.

Getting a little quality time with Ananke/Minerva was one of the writing challenges here – this is a scene which is pretty much showing methodology. When the pages came in for this, Chrissy said “I’ve been trying to make sense of what you meant by this for four years, but now I get it.” So I hope it hits the core beats for most people.

I do love this push and pull between Ananke and Minerva though. It’s quietly horrible.

Pop-art head death there, and a return of the flying eyeballs. Also, looking at the various expressions of the heads in the backgrounds on page 9 is pretty impressive. Set in the third panel!

10-11 is the ritual. Trying to work out how much space for this and what you actually needed to show was key. Plus the timing of it – there’s an argument you could have taken this longer, or pushed it shorter. Two pages felt right.

Good eye-to-camera at the end, which allows us to…

PAGE 12

…Have an interstitial…

PAGE 13-14-15-16-17

…and segue to Minerva’s eyes in the present day. Linking sequence between scenes.

Due to the repeated pages in the first half being “free” (They weren’t – Jamie chose to kill himself) this means that the issue is considerably longer than usual. Even so, there are a lot of fish to fry. This is obviously the problem of the structure of this arc – yes, there will be past and present content in every issue. Balancing what we do in each is basically the key… but it also means we have to choose our scenes very carefully.

Anyway – Minerva and Woden, facing off. Just letting two characters push and pull against each other – and, for the first time, really being behind the curtain “with” Minerva. Previously Minerva has been presented as a supporting character, based on her interactions with others (1923 is an exception). Here, Minerva is protagonist, and we get to see her work.

Minerva! Love the dyed bangs. Strong look. Also, great thoughtful expression on the end of the last page… and her making her move on the next page.

Woden calling her “Sweetheart” seems to be a minor peak Woden move.

This sequence is making me think that Minerva would be great at playing the party game Resistance. Tricky thing in this sequence is actually signalling lies to readers. Lies are really hard in comics. Like irony (as in, characters saying things they don’t believe) there’s certain parts of the readership who have huge problems with it. Signalling what you want to do is paramount, and tricky. I’m not sure there’s a right answer.

Last two panels of 15 are particularly good for Jamie and Matt – firstly, we get the time based upon the sun coming up, which gives it an odd atmosphere. Guns out in a room? You’d think nighttime. But no, it’s something else.

Secondly, with the steady angle, with Minerva having her back to Woden, we get a chance to see her think about what lie to tell. That’s an “Okay – Woden knows about the heads. How could he know about the heads?” think…

Then over the page, making the lie, expression hoping she gets away with it… and then relief when she’s called it right. Great steady-angle work by Jamie and Matt, and the sort of performance you can get from them. I wouldn’t write this for almost anyone else.

(Favourite detail – look at the shoulders. From Woden’s perspective, she’s not moving at all. She’s only giving facial tells.)

This sequence was also particularly picked over with C, in a line by line way, in terms of what information is being imparted. Minerva and Woden are both absolutely drilling each other for all the information they can get, so what IS being implied.

I laugh at Minerva bundling over to the computer the second Woden is gone. Plus great final expression there by Minerva.

18-19

In an issue that’s set half in the past, and the half the present day stuff is with Minerva, we’re in danger of losing our lead – so I definitely try and write Persephone particularly present where she gets it. This is an advantage of the captions coming back in – we can slow sequences down and make them feel like they last longer.

It’s fun to do Persephone captions. Well, “fun”. You get to hit certain things directly that normally I’d only ever approach obliquely.

The weirdest thing of rewriting was Jon’s line about being trapped underground – which was originally “Buried alive.” The question was whether anyone would take that literally, as the lab hadn’t 100% been established as being underground.   (and the stairs from the giant machine that lead to the lab go upwards, even though the whole thing is all underground.)

In short: in a plot as dense as ours, it’s important to not confuse in any area except where you have to.

20-22

After a scene earlier of lying to someone’s face, using the modern communication to do something exploring the same sort of thing seemed interesting. Also, efficient. For those following Page Budgets, the repeating panels of the phone aren’t quite “free” panels, but they’re relatively low energy panels. Plus it gets a LOT of information exchanged in a direct, quick way. Instead, we spend the effort on the expression panels, to show the journey that’s NOT on the screen.

It’s not stuff I’d do constantly, but I do like that we do it.

Nice Verðandi-shoulder-touch silent panel too. Yay Jamie and Matt!

23

I believe I originally wrote this for two pages, but with no captions. Jamie felt it was unnecessary, and they’d get a similar effect in a single page. The reason why I did it with two pages is that I wanted to slow the reader down in the process of discovery – there was a little bit more akin to the Rorschach scene in Watchmen, with the procedural exploration of the environment and trying to find a way in too.

In the script I said I may add captions at lettering, but reduced to a page, that felt like a necessary thing. It slows the eye, and lets us join Persephone in her internality.

(I actually wrote most of this as the opening of the next issue, before realising it didn’t fit, which was nicely timed, as I realised that with some edits, it fits perfectly here.)

The mural introduced in issue 4, as coloured by Nathan Fairbairn.

Laura’s glimpse back on panel 4 is one of my favourite minor moments – Matt’s magenta behind the image really adds to it.

24-26

Minerva, in an issue of deniable manipulative shit, this is your most deniable and manipulative thing. Astounded, and I wrote it.

Last two panels call back to Imperial Phase I, for reasons which will become obvious.

Due to the way the pages moved around, Jamie suggested moving the reveal of the skulls to the previous page – they were originally on the final one, but the angle was nearly impossible to pull off, and worked better brought forward. You always want BIG information to be revealed on a page turn, but in this case, the panels are small enough to not register unless you’re actively looking at them, plus the REAL meaning of them is only really get-able by those who recall a scene from issue 4.

Hence the flashbacks, to ensure people do recall them. We don’t do a lot of this kind of thing, but as this has been a long time back, we felt it was worth really laying out the key facts, step by step. Also, free panels, for the page budget purposes.

(Of course, not for Matt, who is doing a really cool treatment here – the reds and blacks in one timeline, and the pink and blue dots in the flashbacks. Astounding. Give that man another Eisner.)

The “…but everyone else should be” has been sitting in my hard drive all that time too. Odd to hit this stuff as well.

I think I’ve said that Baal is one of my favourite characters in the whole series. Obviously much more to come here, and probably down the line. He was a character who was always going to become more central the further we got into this – you know I talk about knowing the characters arcs, but not always when the plots come to the top of the mix? There’s certainly a take on WicDiv where this is revealed near the climax of Imperial Phase II along with the rest of it. I suspect that would have overloaded it – it needs space, and I’d hate to leave more than a month between this reveal and the What’s-Going-On.

It always surprised me that more close readers didn’t jump on a “Baal is Baal Hammon” argument, as there’s stuff which I considered considerably more obscure that people were all over. He cries fire in issue 12, for example – though a lot of people were noting that 1920s Baal wasn’t much like 2013 Baal after the Special. This stuff is fascinating, from my perspective.

Yes, Baal’s hot stuff in the final panel. For those who are wondering about his Inanna tattoo, alternate covers aren’t strictly speaking canon, and gods have all kind of miracles available to them. 

Next issue is two weeks late. As well as being one of the hardest issues we’ve ever done, there’s been several real life disasters. Sorry for the delay, but we’ll see you next week.