Page Fifty Two: Where, Indeed
And thus endeth the flashback! (For now…)
And I gotta go collapse now… The last few days have been kinda hectic.
One of the lesser-known perils of back alleys: inter-dimensional rifts! Talk about a shortcut…
And hey look, page fifty! Woohoo! Hmm, I really should do something for the fifty-page mark… I have got a really silly picture I sketched for the occasion, guess I should finish that? Or maybe I should get that character section up finally, heh. (Or maaaybe I should catch up on my buffer… I seem to be rapidly falling behind due to other deadlines, eep!)
…When it’s pouring rain and you have no umbrella and you’re lugging a big awkward painting and it’s around lunchtime so it’s impossible to catch a cab… Oh, and it’s the middle of the Depression. Yep.
Of course I couldn’t resist tucking in various bits of historical paraphernalia and going off on more research than necessary… That glimpse of a cab took ages of research. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find accurate reference of a New York taxicab likely to be in use between about 1932 and 1936? (Pro tip: if you’re looking for historical car reference, search for the websites of companies that rent historic cars for films and events. Reference bonanza.) The “El” refers to the old elevated trains, long gone now except for the West Side High Line which is now a fancy-schmancy park. The guy selling pencils is a nod to the many classic comic collections I read over and over as a kid… I remember the depression-era comics always seemed to feature guys selling pencils or apples for a dollar, and that stuck in my head, so I had to sneak one in. The barely visible outfits of ladies on their lunch break were gleaned from browsing my costume books, of course (because I’ll take any excuse to browse costume books…)
Flashback time! All the way back to 1936, and a very messy studio! (Mine is not unlike that, except there’s no table so everything is on the floor.) And I may have to bring Frank’s painting into actual existence one of these days, just for kicks… (Come on, it’s got rockets, babes with whips, and giant robo-serpents, what more could you ask for!)
(Yeah, kinda late, but with the awful events of yesterday, it just… sort of didn’t seem right to be posting comics…)
In which certain people are not as much help as they could be and Vitalia hears the worst news you can hear in an alternate world… To whit: sorry kid, you’re stuck here! (Well… At least they have donuts here. Could be worse?) Also we’re about to go into one of my favorite sequences… Whee!
WAGH sorry this is up so late, Monday was sort of a mess… But yes, new page finally! In which donuts are dispensed to our long-suffering cast. You can probably guess which “damn big animal” ate everything else in the meantime. (Lunch seems to be a running theme in this comic…)
In which various parties experience shock and displacement, to the astonishment of neighborhood squirrels… Which neighborhood is the question, though.
(And yeah, this should have been up a lot earlier, but first I had to go draw this picture. Heh. I HAVE NO REGRETS.)