Iss 10 P 1 & 2 "Burbank memories"

With this sequence, I wanted to show little Ronni, left to her own devices and with no adult supervision, getting into a fight with some bullies and losing. Koen has two children, and he is often drawing images for their school functions and such, so he really has a good feeling for drawing kids.

Originally page 3 was going to be the opening page of the comic, but I got a crazy idea about a flashback and decided that after the cliffhanger of Ronni getting her brains bashed in we'd detour to our oh-so-confusing string of variant covers (which, for the record, we still have one more of those at the end of the issue). And then cut to Lil Ronni... so first Koen designed her.

 

 Ain't she adorable?

The glasses, the overbite, the band-aid on the knee. Yet you can still see those distinctive forelocks and the mountain of hair are already there. Plus she looks like she is wearing Punky Brewster's hand-me-downs. When we talked about coloring it we went back to one of my favorites, where only Ronni is colored, due to her red outfit to make her stand out. I would have loved to do the entire book this way, but then we would be missing out on all of the cool effects Koen does with color.

The Crystal Pepsi and New Coke aren't quite accurate for the time period- old billboards for 95- but we did get to sneak in the Burger Baron as well as Colonel Kentucky's Fried Chicken Emporium. You may find it odd that I am so excited by fast food restaurant cameos, but wait and it'll become clearer in... well, a few issues.

To my mind this is something formative for the character. We see her spot trouble, intercede on behalf of a victim, only to become a victim herself and lose to superior force. I figure there are moments like this in people's lives that shape who they are and who they will be. And in this case, trying to be a hero gets Ronni trounced... not unlike the modern day. And another piece of the puzzle fits into place. Well, hopefully.

Hope you enjoyed the Lil Ronni flashback. And here is the page in its original form...

Iss 9 P 42 "...uncle..."

This was a darker turn for the storyline, to be certain. In the initial script draft pages 39 through 42 were all one page. Yes, I know that the density of dialogue that I spread over those pages would not have worked. But if I had followed the original script there was considerably less dialogue going on, and iit all would have flowed together as one comics page of action... which would include page 3 of issue 10, which was also on that page.

I'll show you when we get there so as not to spoil anything.

But long and short is that once I saw the density of the art, I knew this had to get broken up, which changed the pacing quite a bit. And since by the time we got here we were up to 42 pages already, I also knew it was time to break the issue in half, otherwise we were going to end up with another Issue 4 scenario, where full pages were still being published and we still ran nearly 70 pages as I recall.

So what you end up with here is one panel- yep, this is just one panel of what Koen designed as one page- where I realized it offered me a rare opportunity to really take that dramatic license and go to town. So we explore Ronni's thoughts and ruminations on life and death and how she sees herself 'going out' someday as a crazy lunatic beats her to death.

Not the shiny happy goofy fun comic we usually put forth, with our wisecracking heroine triumphing with little or no effort, to be certain.

Some have expressed concern, which is good. That means that folks are invested in the character, which is great and it means we have done our jobs and that we have fans who really are rooting for our favorite girl. Some have expressed reservations because it seems as though the book is taking a turn to the darker side, which... well, have a little faith and see what happens is all I will say. And so far no one has guessed where the book is headed, but if we had an onsite forum then I suspect we would see much more of that debate in action.

So this was my turn at setting the stage, leaving a cliffhanger and giving the book a bit of a darker edge. I hope that you enjoyed it, and stick with us for things to come...

Iss 9 P 41 "Pay attention! I'm tallkin to you!"

And here's where the crazy really starts peeking out properly for Prom Queen. She certainly does know a great number of names for a woman of ill repute doesn't she? And it seems she has made up her mind about Ronni's virtue, to be certain.

This page is a little awful, as Ronni is getting her head punched in by Prom Queen. Blood is flowing, and hopefully we managed to get across a bit of wincing violence here without getting too explicit. I love how MAD magazine crazy she loos- that third panel looks like an old Wally Wood closeup. And that whack with the scepter in the last panel- ow.

Koen is getting the hang of this nighttime thing. The field is lit up due to the big football lights, but it is still dark, and he works with that. We're getting the heavy shadows starting to fill in, and you ain't seen nothin yet....

Since she is middle America, I thought that making her a rather judgmental conservative would work pretty well. Nothing against conservatives, I just took this one to the extreme, and any philosophy taken too far usually goes off the rails pretty quickly. Plus she's being influenced by an alien weapon, of course.

That's all I got on this page. Except that this is the first time Ronni has really taken a beating in the series so far, and this isn't over yet...

Iss 9 P 40 "Gym class gut punch"

Woohooo!

Our heroine, caught off-guard because she shifted her attention to wisecracking instead of watching her opponent, is now suffering through a named maneuver. Due to the fantasy that this could be made into a video game (Kaiju Island Chronicles, the video game we saw Kumiko playing at the con in issue 7) I give them special signature moves, and they name them thus establishing it as a part of the character's fighting repertoire. Thus supers in the theoretical GG fighting game.

Thus the Gym Class Gut Punch.

I genuinely love the panic panel. No matter what, Ronni might sweat a little bit, but she's never panicked before. She wasn't expecting what she got, and now she's paying for it. No air means no focus which means no powers. Which means she's mortal- none of her density or growth tricks. She is now at the mercy of the schoolyard bully. I might just throw in a flashback page- oooh...

But I love tha panic panel. Hopefully that's a visual gag I got from Howard Chaykin that I can embrace, and hopefully it works for the reader.

And she ain't kiddin in that last panel. Nossir.

Iss 9 P 39 "Fat shaming"

For a change I thought I could set Ronni out there to make some fat jokes, and show off some of the repertoire she has picked up over the years from having such insults hurled at her constantly. Now, prom Queen is very skinny and lanky, so it's not like any of this is valid. It's just Ronni trying to rile her up to get her charging back at her. After all, she is pretty confident in her abilities, and they are outside where she has plenty of room to grow.

Now if only she hadn't gotten distracted...

Initially I was going to have her break the fourth wall here, but decided to give the line to Stanley instead, with him calling her out for fat shaming. Which still gave me the chance to use one of my favorite lines, "Don't judge me".

Cartoony and fun, this is the last light joke fir a while, so enjoy it folks... I'ma warn you, we're going into bad country here. These were initially the first few panels of the oage, and this page gets dark...

ss 9 P 38 "Belle Chere's dress and a bullhorn accessory"

So once again, this was the previous page's second half, the lower half of the page.

I love Ronni's bitching about her updo and flinging bobby pins as she undoes the pudo that she worked so hard on. It may have seemed as though she was just in it for the duty, but she really did her best to try to give her contest winner a good time. She wore a fantastic dress, she got all dolled up with her hair and makeup, she shaved her legs and showed up in a fantastic classic car that could seat about 20.

And she got Jose for a prom date, and got in a fight with some hick with superpowers.

I honestly wish I had asked Koen to put her in a scrunchie for the rest of the fight.

I wrote the Belle Chere gag in there because a lot of people I now have worn the Jessica Rabbit costume, but Belle Chere IS Jessica Rabbit in real life. Well, physically. She's actually one of the sweetest girls I know, and genuinely incredibly nice. Unlike Jessica Rabbit, who is bad AND drawn that way.

The bit about not being bored on a Saturday night is a hint, but it's a loooong hint that won't make sense for a very long time in the plot, but it isn't just random dialogue. For the detail obsessed who keep an eye out for this sort of thing.

I love the tiny typed muttering t herself. I don't know if the joke is funny or not, but I sure liked it. Then comes the insults and we're off to the races again. Koen is getting better and better with the underlighting, and I really like the way Ronni looks

. Originally there was a third panel in that dress ripping sequence, but it got axed as you can see above.Just didn't go with the other two well, y'know? This was the second redraw of that panel and we both agreed to axe it instead of keep ai it. Sometimes you have to just let go.

Iss 9 P 37 "Great granny's griddlecakes!"

So to start off with, this is half a page. I carved the bottom half off for another page which you'll see on Friday, and I think you will agree that those pages would have made one really good page, but you wouldn't be ble to see half of the art without a microscope, and there's no room for me to be wordy. So I am pretty happy with the compromise we're arriving at. It also gives us a larger buffer, which will be more important when we go 5 days a week (a patreon goal.Koen likes our three times a week, and when we revved it up to five times a week we just burned through pages faster. but someday, right?

Meanwhile, Prom Queen continues to use slurs on Ronni, and I have to say I adore her expression in that second panel. That is hilariousI had planned kind of a different exit for her than this, but once Koen drew it I knew I had to use this. Though Wendie did completely have to reverse panel 3 to make it work.

Panel 4, I had all this room, I got expansive with the bickering sibling dialogue and gave Queenie some lines that actually come back around on later pages, coming soon.

You like the subtleties of our clues? We do too. How Ronni sees the world. "Look! A clue!"

That's about it for this one. Once again, a bunch of gamma correction made the colors darker and more vibrant, and I am loving our 'nightime' look in the strip Koed continues to work with the lighting, and the return of the 'THOOM' sound effect from back in issue 4.

Iss 9 P 36 "Screw fair!"

This was an earlier version of the page with the flat colors that somehow  persisted despite the correct page being available. In case you like a peek into the creative process, as it were.

Once again, this is an established patter, She gets into trouble, she shrinks. Then she pops up out of nowhere with the giant rising uppercut. At least in this case she follows it up with the growing piledriver, a new attack in the combo chain. She's picking up on how to do this, but slowly. While the size-changing comes naturally to her Ronni is really not such a great fighter.

I like the deep shadow for the ominous and moody pre-piledriver shot, I wanted Frank Miller silhouettes but we compromised with a lot of gamma correction.

Wendie was inordinately proud of that 'SMOT!' it was her pride and joy for lie two days. And Koen really knocked it out of the park with the piledriver. The flailing legs, the splintering wood- it really gives the feeling that there is an impact in action.

The curfew joke was all I could come up with. There was a funnier line but it eluded me.

That's about all I got for this page. Hope the right version publishes...

EDIT: She went to Jared.

Iss 9 P 35 "Later for this!"

And lo, Veronica Kane shall do as she has always done, and she shall try to reason with the unreasonable.

And when in the natural course of events this has not produced a desirable result, then shall she become injured, which shall give her cause to retreat.

Upon which time she shall shrink to a remarkably small size and hide, as she is wont to do.

So let's discuss jjst why Prom Queen is so intractable, shall we?

I've gone to great lengths to illustrate that Ronni is trying various logical tactics on Prom Queen that aren't working. Eventually she quits trying and scampers off. But our young Miss Kerr is quite antagonistic. Let's look at why.

First there's the red dress. This is a senior prom, not a hooker convention. That sparkly red dress showin alla them dirty pillows is just plain in bad taste, and it advertises just what sort of woman would wear such a thing. Plus that whole 'red flag in front of a mad cow' thing.

Then there's the fact that her date just won prom queen over Ayesha. Her boy date. Prom Queen really is very angry about that on a number of levels. After all, that boy is an abomination that's going to hell, as she'll explain later.

Then there's the fact that she is first and foremost a schoolyard bully. How did that go again?

Because that's how one communicates in her world, apparently. Wonder what the past few years have been like for old Bobbie. Yikes.

 Note cameo on the wall of Major Thompson, who we foreshadow here. And of course his pic is on the wall, he's grandpa. And he was a hero. I actually have  guide to all of the photos on the wall back there in that page. Apparently because I am a crazy person.

I liked the three panel shot and complimented Koen on it- who promptly said "You put dat in de script. I just drew what you asked." Explained why I liked it so much, but I still like the way Koen drew it far more than what I had envisioned.

Willie Nelson joke was born out of me wanting to have PQ distracted so Ronni could do her thing and actually have it work. After all, the hick is a little dumb, should use it against her. And the shrinking sequence is really pretty keen here. Koen makes the beginning and end forms solid and everything in between is a bit transparent- so far this is our favorite version of this tactic of hers. The process boys sigh at us a lot.

Okay, there's this page in review. Hopefully no spoilers, but a behind the scenes of today's comic. Thank you and good night!
..

Iss 9 P 34 "Dern cheerleader"

Ahhh, Ronni. My lovely Giant Girl... how you do take a beating. The 'it' kicked out of her. Heh.

But not today! She dives, she weaves! She dodges! Look at that lean-back dodge. That's some skill right there. Also a very bendy spine. I love how Ronni is analyzing as she goes, keeping a clear and calm head about her. Yes, this is dangerous, but she knows what she's doing and, well, she's Giant Girl. Analyze the situation so as to determine how best to defuse it.

Physically I'm gonna say that Prom Queen is mutating as she goes along. Some of the original art from earlier panels had her turning into some sort of froglok-

 

 I mean, seriously. Weird okie inbred perhaps, and yes, she does come equipped alien-tampered DNA, but still- her super power hasn't even kicked in yet and she just unhinged her jaw. So I asked Koen to tone it down a bit until we got a bit further on in the story.

And that hooker crack today isn't insignificant. Go figure- on top of everything else Prom Queen is a judgmental fundamentalist. Combined with anger management issues that's a winning combination right there. Wait for it...

 

 BE MAH NEW BOYFRIEND!

Bonus post- the Creative Process, Patreon style

So my best friend supports my efforts in this endeavor even though we're distant. And so when it came time for his doodle that we promised him for his patronage, Koen started working. I made some recommendations but they didn't all fly. So here's the first draft.

Neat, love the suit, the little lunar lander driver is cute and it all sorta works, but I wanted the spaceknight in it, To offer a representation of what I wanted, a little chicanery led to me sending this back:

Rar. He is mechanoid, he is mighty, fear him.


At any rate, that got him something of the idea, so he cranked out this:

Okay, better. He's in there and he has the big gun I requested, but he kind of looks more like a 'space squire' that a spaceknight. I also like how he's looking directly at her chest in the form-fitting spacesuit.

Just sayin.

Next came an evolutionary leap, with...

Yeah! Now that is a funky-looking alien spaceknight who's mechanoid! Okay Koen, add in that BFG from the Squire (whose design we are totally going to use for someone else) and make Ronni a bit smaller.
In a moment of genius Koen took his camera, pointed the skype camera toward his tablet screen and grabbed the Ronni layer. He shrunk her to the size I specified then snugged her in where I wanted her planted. Boom, done.

 

Then just came the strengthening of the lines. And him losing his pointy duckbill chin.

So there you have it. Still isn't done yet, but by the time we're done we'll have brought Shirva the Spaceknight to glorious life, and created a great bit for one of our longest running supporters. This was a visual tour of some of the creative process- we hope you enjoyed it!


EDIT: Finished inked version with proposed background:

Blog thing, Ah think Ah luv yoo. With Cameron's permission implied, the final piece.

I 9 P 33 "Prom Queen, dagnabbit!"

So this is one of those things that just tickles me, and makes my existence entertaining, at least to me. Here we have a great and classic  birth of a villain piece. Splash page, of course- always take an excuse for a splash page. But in this case she deserved it. She has some cosmic power juicing up there that would do John Byrne proud (apparently this is my Byrne homage episode as well, with the Ronni coming out of the bathroom scene. "Late I amy be, but surely worth the wait?").

But the cheery part of all of this is the level of detail- the torn up floorboards, the coalescing crackling cosmic power, the low camera angle to increase dramatic tension, the dimmed lighting beyond her, the prom banners Wendie lettered individually. That cheery-ass font we did her logo in we used it for White Rabbit last month. We might have to license that one, because I like the idea of a standardized set of fonts for this project. All the merchandising on shared fonts worketh for me too.

At any rate, all that amazing teamwork and all of that gravitas and all for a hick girl from a redneck high school in a damaged prom dress who is starting to resemble a troglodyte.

Prom Queen was originally created in the supplement for the Superbabes RPG sourcebook Knockouts & Powerhouses. I don't have my copy handy, but I'm pretty sure she's about the same- big, dumb, mean, whackin stick. Might be in AC unbound but pretty sure it's K&B. Recognize her Cam? Oddly enough I think she published without an image.

And of course Jose is not giving up his crown without a fight, bitchy super powers or not.




A magnificent page all around, I think. We all take a bow on this one, and stand proud of our work.

We make comics.

I 9 P 32 "Becase super powers"

Now I'm just waiting to see if someone jumps on the feminism train to complain about 64 Bit's lines here. Guess without a forum on the strip they cant complain too loudly...



So, stuff about this page.

The growth sequence kinda reads backward because we read left to right, and she is growing right to left, which kinda makes it look like she is strinking rather than growing, which is weird. But I couldn't come up with a better way to do it, and I liked the wide shot with 64 and Jose. You didn't think we forgot the rightfully crowned Prom Queen in all of this, didya? Oh no, he still has more screen time.

Not sure how I feel about her villain rant. "I AM DISENFRANCHISED AND DELUSIONAL" seems like a lame motivation, yet I have certainly seen worse. Yes, there is an outside agency nudging her toward being a pain in Ronni's ass, but she wasn't all that balanced to start with. This is the girl who was explaining to her stuffed animals how she was going to sweep into power and rule the school, and wished they could be there to see her do it. Not healthy for an 18 year old girl, nossir.

Stanley was supposed to turn into Big Tex (as I am sure he is in a video game somewhere) but Koen liked the two-dimensional "Neon Cowboy" so that's who went to print. He's still cool looking, so such is compromise.

And it's the little things that make me smile. "Your grammar... it hurts."

I mistimed this one. The next page was supposed to be the Friday page... bah. Oh well. Next up- slash page!

I 9 P 31 "You should just hand it over"

So here we are at page 31... which was actually page 19 in the original draft of the script, which was even lower numbered in the actual script, where it was page 13.

Page 13

Panel 1

Ronni shrinking back down to normal size and letting PQ go. Note that PQ is still she-hulk sized right now..

GG: Okay, so just hand over that scepter, and-

Panel 2

Close-up of the scepter whacking Ronni in the face good and hard, with a surprised expression on Ronni’s face.

GG: Thought balloon: Why does that never work?

Panel 3

Ronni goes sprawling on the floor, coming to a stop at the feet of a bunch of promgoers who are still in a bit of shock.

GG: That... really hurt. I think she mighta broken a tooth.

And that's what happens in the creative process. Some of it is because we add panels, some of it is because we break up pages, and some of it is because we tell the story at our own pace, and my conservative scripting efforts often become much longer once they are illustrated and action sequences become sequential storytelling.

I'm not complaining, but the 80 page giant issue I have planned is probably going to run for an entire year even publishing 5 times a week.

So here is the page as it appeared published today. You can tell that there was considerable debate on my part to break this page in half, because I had Koen change the original panel border scheme, as you can see in the production drawing:






But somehow I really wasn't up for having a 2 day wait for Friday's strip to be just Ronni hitting the dirt and realizing that she might just be in a little bit of trouble with the raging redneck. So I left the page intact, and the fans see it as Koen intended for the action to flow.

One of the fans pointed out that Ronni should have just plucked the scepter out of Aisha's hands when she had the chance, and that is going to be very tragically true over the course of time. But take it from the gal who wrote this months ago (well, the core of it anyway) stay tuned- Ronni is no dumb cookie, and a moment of compassion doesn't make for a mistake she isn't willing to rectify.

As I mentioned in the last update, Koen is working on shadowing, moving light sources and underlighting, and you can see a lot of that coming into play here. In addition, his backgrounds are becoming more and more complex with all of these bystanders kicking in- I never asked but I suspect he pulls them not from the busy street outside his home in Belgium, but from his own fertile imagination, which serves him well.

My original script cvalled for Ronni to slide to a halt, but Koen did these amazing wrecked gymnasium floorboards, so I just stepped it up. Yes, she is surprised by the hit and she is rendered mortal by it, which is very unpleasant to her, but even as she is plowing in she is pushing her powers to survive this. Sometimes the story is a compromise between the script, the art and the dialogue (more often than not in collaborative efforts) and you have to be willing to go with the flow. I could have asked for the panel to be redrawn and made it much more harmless, but hey, those ripped up floorboards look great. Why rain on that? Just rescript a little, and viola- much more exciting all around, and no wasted artwork. And Ronni's increased density explains why she tore up the floor so much. because of course she can concentrate her density instead of getting bigger.

She's Giant Girl.

I'm still experimenting with the flow of dialogue, and I think I am getting a feel for it as evidenced by the bridge between those last two panels, and I wrote the dialogue of the last panel so that it could be read forward or backward and still make perfect sense.

Favorite bits? I shoehorned in that 'top men' line. and Ronni's expression in panel 5 really is quite priceless. Captain Kirk bloody lip wipe #1 for the issue.