Maggie used to be the barmaid at the Victoria, but she no longer rules the roost. “Wasson” means “how’s it going”, or so my regional sensitivity consultant tells me.


From today’s email list: My approach to writing these comics is to make pages that are a hybrid between a print edition and a straight-up strip. So you get a little punchline payoff and some good panel density (“no splashes” is the rule), but also, they’re designed in two-page spreads to be printed, maybe, one day (if anyone ever wants to). There is a conflict between advancing the plot and telling a joke; you can’t throw away a page on a scene transition in the same way you can in print, with the next page just seconds away. That sucker is up when fresh for, as currently, forty-eight hours. And at the same time, you can’t crash from scene to scene too much between pages because it won’t make sense in print, and if you stick an extra page in for print to make things a bit clearer, it throws off the balance of all your double-page spreads and big-reveal (haha) page turns. So you have to put two boring pages in. Mind you, I think this email I’m currently writing might be a considered a boring page so perhaps I know nothing. Today’s page is an unavoidable scene transition. I did my best within the constraints of the format. I jazzed it up with the following: 1. Picture of Queen Victoria with little devil horns 2. Carefully designed new character (see fig 1) 3. Magus Tom Pendennis reading very interesting-looking book 4. Under-table angle worthy of The Magnificent Ambersons 5. Person in fedora. TRAY mysterious?

FIG 1

Now a page that could have been, and let me put this plainly, dull as ditchwater, is instead as rich as fruitcake. My gift… to you.

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