Another Way To Breathe

Spoilers, obv.

After last issue’s formalism, this one just accelerates. And, as everything in this arc, everything is a big beat. If everything is a big beat, how do you choose what to spend your space on? What beats really matter? How do you pace it? What can be a grace note and what’s a scene? That’s what this issue, and the rest of the arc, tends to be about.

This issue has gone down very well. I’ll admit that while I absolutely gasped when I got paged in, I suspect it’s going to be least favourite of the whole arc. That more says how much I enjoy the rest of the arc. Also, as a friend put it to me, I may be allergic to making people happy.

Let’s get on with this.

Jamie and Matt’s cover:

There is, to some degree, a “Who hasn’t had a headshot cover?” to this arc. As such, Mimir finally gets his. This is a glorious one – the pinks and blues, work really well, and the circuitboards frame it well. Obviously, Mimir plays a big role in this issue, so it is thematic. As is…

Paulina’s cover

I just love Paulina’s covers, as her being the regular alt-cover artist on Thunderbolt should imply. This made me want to immediately pitch a kick-ass pop D&D bard comic to someone, Xena Warrior Princess as produced by Xenomania. The names of the swords are the chef-kiss, but there’s so much to love. The expression is everything.

Page 1

One page scene, with a modified nine panel grid. The one page scene is something that happens a lot this arc. I did a two-page version, but with the right seven panels, we’re sorted. Yes, this is all we see of the de facto antagonists of the series this issue – when last issue was all about them, it doesn’t worry me too much.

Page 2

Standard music journalist concept. That the second album tends to be worst than the first. Hard to prove, though my old friend Peter’s note that “you have your whole life preparing for your first album and have a year to do your second” does seem to imply an easy explanation.

Page 3-4-5

Stealth mission! It’s Metal Gear WicDiv!

We actually forgot to add the flashes to the first panel until the very last minute. Monthly Comics is a hell of a time sometimes, stress the “hell.”

I love the determination of Laura in the second panel of 3. That’s great eyes.

Looking at this now, that “I can’t do much now” is in a panel smaller than 1/9^th of the page says a lot about the scale she’s working on. The background was Matt in full trippy mode – I had a friend note that this scene is a little akin to Kohl in Rue Britannia 5 (The difference being Kohl is using nostalgia for a performance, while Laura is just doing a performance) but the moving squiggle does remind me the use of optical illusions in Phonogram 3. Bugs in the optic nerve are our friend.

Panel 3 on 4 is obviously Clayton living large and conquering. When you ask for something like “Can you sample the background and use as a speech balloon” you have no idea if it’s going to work.

We could have divided the middle panel into two, but I suspect it’d have been less effective. We’ve seen the trick before. Now we see the same trick, but different. Mix it up. We’re performers.

Hmm. I realise the Norns string of balloons is something I’m doing more often now – it’s not something I’ve always done. I’m normally a one-panel-one-emotion, which strings of dialogue rarely allow (as, if there’s any change of emotion inside the string, the image is rendered ludicrous). In a middle shot, and a strong emotional throughline with the dialogue and I’m more okay with it.

While this whole three pages is an action sequence, it’s also exposition for Laura’s current state. The best exposition is demonstration, I guess.

I mean, the last panel of page 5? That’s how cut to the bone we are. Problem? Solve it. Problem? Solve it. We don’t need to fuck around anymore.

Page 6-7-8

And after six whole trades, the reunion between Lucifer and Laura. I suspect a different writer would have played this bigger and more melodramatic, but when the reader knows this, a splash feels overkill, especially with the taut pacing of the rest of the issue. However… there are five panels here. That’s a page’s worth of content, and enough to give an emotional throughline.

Sometimes when writing it’s all about trying to find an honest response which is also unexpected. Like, in life, you think you’ll feel sad or happy at certain times, but when you live through it, you don’t. Or you don’t entirely. What other stuff is happening? That’s what rings true to me.

Anyway – that’s where Laura’s Guilt comes from. Laura at her most Dionysus.

And then Lucifer shatters all that self pity with the wink. Did you miss me? Of course, you did.

Page 7, panel 4 is one of those “a comic panel is not a moment in time” bits of magic McLeod always talks about. As in, as we read across the panel time progresses. The Mimir/Cass conversation is getting on for… 10 seconds, maybe? The teleport signatures do not take that long to appear. It’s only with Laura’s interruption that panel kicks into high gear.

As Multiversity noted you can easily imagine another draft of this with a bigger fight scene. And it’s true – but also lying around was a version which cuts it even shorter. Do we need to really give a whole page to Cass breaking out? I felt so. Without the big beat, it feels flat. And it’s good to see Cass let rip.

The slight angle on Jamie’s external shot with a Norns black/white plus golden thread from Matt is really interesting. We don’t often see the Norns as combatants in WicDiv, so this is a rare chance to give Cass a “Hello, I am a bad ass too, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Page 9-10-11-12

Cripes. Going this and making notes I can’t believe how tightly we’re winding this and (more so) getting away from it. We did all this in four pages?

Two panels to the escape – the right image and a handful of taut captions to hold you between scenes. The first is doing a lot of work, but the second is just elegant. What do you need but the broken doors? Great stuff by Jamie here.

(Laura’s captions do a lot of work here in setting up the themes, and the return of Sakhmet’s memory to the story)

If you’re wondering “How on earth could we get the escape be quicker, it’s to take the first two panels on page 8 and move to the previous page. That makes it a five panel page, which is entirely do-able. That’s a cost, but it would have bought slightly more space in this scene. As it is, I preferred to cut mid-page and end with Lucifer’s first spoken lines in ages.

Once more, a big reveal in a small panel. Chrissy’s note on the script was basically hearts for Luci at this point. Like, the second she cuts to the chase and tell s people what to do…

…and then the page turn, and she just goes full Lucifer. I know you lot have missed her, but I have too.

Getting back to Inanna was also easy, the sweetheart… but it all leads back to Sakhmet. That Mothering Invention was as tight as it was didn’t leave much room for Laura to think about Sakhmet, or mourn at all… or, most of all, make it clear the story (and Laura) considers her loss important and real. It’s an awful sad panel at the end of the page.

Inanna’s voice was easy to find again. He’s such a sweetheart. Tara is a little harder, just as I wrote her less, but I’ve been fascinated by this arc in terms of writing her as an actual character. I think one of the ironies of issue 13 was that it put Tara on a pedestal, and the pedestal is an objectifying as any other cage. Getting her back as a character is wonderful, and she gets to be as messy and flawed as everyone else.

Inanna not knowing ANY of this is hard. That’s the problem with most of this arc – there is so much information flying around, and secrets some (but not all) are aware of. Who gets to respond to what and when? What to remind people of? What to let slide? Inanna not knowing about Baal is so huge it had to be hit and hit hard.

And then… the bodies.

When plotting this and trying to work out how I could get the cast – oh god, this is not a deliberate pun, but it’s also clearly a pun - back on their feet, I was thinking of the Morrigan Gambit. Three heads, three bodies. Perfect. Then I remembered Mimir, and swore. I started to think about how that would be a tense, dramatic situation and how the personal politics could play out and I realised that Tara would just turn it down. I then realised that’s exactly how the scene would work too.

(In a "tightness” thing, I suspect in another world, this scene would have been two pages. The “and Tara then just butts in” is the key thing, but you could get the timing a little more intricate to sell the moment more – still, even in this page, I could have extended it more, but seeing Tara’s elaboration and everyone else’s response to it was just key work for them all.)

In passing – Mimir’s glowing in the dark in the penultimate panel just wonderful. Nice work Jamie and Matt.

Page 13

From the Sisters of Mercy’s song, Marian.

Page 14-15-16-17

Here’s where you talk about spending space. What’s important here? You need the scale to show what Baph has been doing – and Jamie turns it into something astoundingly gothic. The use of blacks, the use of light and shade. Just the right level of suggestive. It’s one of my favourite bits of composition in the issue.

As the pantheon are getting back together, this leads to an increase in crowd scenes, which are the eternal artist killer. As such, I’m looking for solutions which only involve the absolute minimum of the cast in a scene.

Thee was an awful moment earlier in the issue when I went – wait! Do I have too many heads to carry? Then I realised I was fine. That said, finding places to put them down so we can have chat scenes was also somewhat tricky. The shelf turning up on page 15 is an example. Clealry Baph planned to (er) have a place to keep heads.

Well, I say, Baph, but it’s clearly Nergal now. The road from early Nick Cave to late Nick Cave has been a long way. It’s a great shot.

To go back to the space, why spend it on this? We’re reintroducing Nergal and Morrigan, and we’re also showing the scale of them in the plot, and the actions of Nergal. Where we go with the bodies is such a big beat, it needs to come from something similarly large. That’s also the reason why so much (relative in the issue) space is spent on the Morrigan/Nergal scenes. Of course, it’s also a key scene for this subplot, so demands space for that. It’s rarely just one reason. Probably a useful time for my usual “these notes are only ever a selection of thoughts.”

This is also a serious pose panel by Jamie.

The “I could bring her back.” He’s an underworld god too. If she could do it, he could. This is something which I suspect some people thought implicit in the old scene, but the final manipulation of Morrigan is unpacked at length in the nine panel grids.

Nine panel grids are a natural rhythm for this – when I was planning the later bit the triple-goddess of it made obvious sense, so it expanded to the whole scene. Also, the cropped image reduces the possibility of a Jamie crowd scene.

I always thought that, given the amount of time the various characters get on film, Ladyhawke could more accurately be called Blokeywolf. I digress.

Page 18-19-20

As said earlier, the triple-goddess to nine panel grid is one of those natural ways to give a stress to each of the elements. You’ll notice the clicks are left then right then centre. I’d originally written it as left to right, before – after Chrissy’s Editorial urging – rewrote to end with the Macha section to go last. Gentle Annie may have been the kinder part of Morrigan, but Macha was the part he mostly dated.

Then, in a moment of weirdness, Jamie actually drew it in the original order, despite never having seen that script. Morrigan has powers, as does the logical necessity of a left to right panelling order. As a nine panel grid, just moving panels around to fix it is easy. Hail grids!

Like most of the big acts of magic, it’s all about emotional sense than anything else. Hence, it is inevitable as Nergal actually does this, the bleak temple he’s constructed starts to crumble. And, in perhaps the most ludicrous bit of me in the comic, The Temple Of Love Is Falling Down. Too much is the bare minimum.

Jamie’s triple-portrait of the Morrigan is pretty startling. I have no idea if Jamie will miss drawing Badb’s hair, but I’ll miss seeing it.

Re-reading this now I’m struck by how low-key it is. That was always part of WicDiv’s magic – the finger click, and then things happening. The Morrigan transformation was usually drawn to be instantaneous – one panel Macha, the next Badb and so on. This kind of keeps to that.

And then… the reveal. That the new bodies isn’t a splash page says everything about this issue, but it still gets the punching the air moment. We had to have one of those eventually. Lucifer in a black suit is one of the things I’ve been waiting as long to see as Nergal in his. I giggled with glee at seeing this. Jamie’s worked in elements of the Morrigan into each of the gods – Lucifer’s red hair is the most obvious one, but Gentle Annie in Inanna and Macha in Mimir also have their notes. Inanna’s netting top is the main one – and note the shapes on Mimir’s armour changing to mimic Macha’s.

Yes, writing Lucifer remains fun and easy. I recommend it to everyone.

Page 21-22

In terms of seeing chat, people responding to the small details in the issue is one of the bigger joys. That Jamie got the Inanna/Nergal hug in the background of this exchange between Laura/Lucifer/Cass is absolutely wonderful. Laura and Cass have come a long way.

This is arguably a small cliffhanger – the smallest of this arc, at least. However, it sits on the weight of the rest of the run. We’re promising a solution to one of the larger mysteries in the run, and I suspect we get by on that. Note how space is used – this is a dense panel layout, but we go to a thired of a page for Laura’s “I know how to end this” (so giving it weight” and then going to three panel page for the conclusion (which adds weight to each of these beats.) Jamie takes the framing to tight on Cass for the beat as well to sell it. Note Matt with the Norn-colouring creeping in – and how it goes from the fires in the first panel to this is just a joy.

Page 23

Interstitial, and obvious reference to the Jay-Z record, but everyone is just excitedly clapping over the adding stuff to the godwheel. Sergio outdid himself here. It’s certainly an example of how you can have storytelling and even hero-shot audience-cheers beats out of things entirely unlike a traditional comics panel. After all these issue,s we get to see something added to the godwheel. Of course people cheer. That said,  as I said to a friend, “Of all the things I’ve found to torture the WicDiv readership, hope is the cruelest of all.”

EDIT: Actually, I messed up here - Jamie did the tweaks. Nice work Jamie!

And that’s it. Next up – 42, wherein questions are answered. In passing – the letters we’ve been getting are amazing. I’m going to try and cram as many as I can in the issues to come, but issue 44 will be our last one with a letters page. So that’s a timelimit if you wanna try and get in. It’s wicdiv@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading.