Chapter: Issue 17
Time for the fantasy epic. Wanna hear the roll call?
Can you hear the banjoes?
Comes the dawn, and Britomart kneels and prays, first prostrating herself before it, then embracing the first rays of light, the dawn of a new day. While her outstretched hands make a play between light and shadow, giving her angel wings.
Then the god of illumination gives Britomart flashes of the past, and of things to come, in regards to the titan with whom she travels. Which is interrupted by that great Paladin standy, the detect evil ability.
Dirk Swann, the hardworking everyman of the quest, there with the tackle save for Ali Kazaam, as the hillbilly giants attack!
To Be Continued…
Dee needs time off before the last push through these pages to finish the story, and thus the sprawling 175 page book we’ve been cranking out for the past few years. I considered holding this page back, but better to end on a cliffhanger, and remind you of why you came here in the first place.
We’re going on hiatus for the holidays, and we expect to be back in January. From there we’ll get through this story, to hook up the old stuff with the new stuff, and make this one very large cohesive work.
We’ll keep up on our pin-up obligations, because you folks support us through thick and thin, and we appreciate you. And if we have doodles or whatnot we’ll share them, likely on the Patreon.
Thanks for sticking around and supporting our work, folks. We love hearing from you, and we love talking about the comic with you. Thanks for being fans of our stories.
Sabrina & Dee
2023
Relationships
Take a pause here to examine how some of the relationships are developing, just a quiet moment before the action starts in earnest.
Side note, Dirk is writing his erotic memoirs, which will be recorded in the archives back in Arduin as well.
It’s FINE.
It’s never ‘fine’.
Remember, Ali’s teleportation spell has him saying “Now you see me, now-” then he vanishes, to show up at his destination, saying “You don’t” and having it somehow always fit into the conversation where he lands. Kane chooses to mock that here, because she’s hoping it’s clever and cutting.
Britomart is at first unaware, then becomes aware of the new peril in which she finds herself- part of a love triangle she never sought nor desired. For Britomart, it has also been a long day, one of many lessons and trials.
DEE’S NOTES
Ronni turning away from the fire was done, artistically, VERY much on purpose as the scene starts out with a LITTLE bit of shadowing on her and get progressively darker as the page continues. She’s hurt, but doesn’t want it to show, and that was a lot of fun to visualize.
I also love using Lexii as Ronni’s emotional Greek chorus, reacting to whatever’s happening in the page. And while Sabrina requested Leo being topless… I did set that fire up in front of his crotch VERY much on purpose. Take from that and the shocked glances what you will. lol
Musical Theater Major
I always loved the musical parody songs in Mad magazine. Issue 186, October 1976 was the Star Trek parody issue, and it was what introduced me at a young age to song parody. I was hooked, as I knew the songs from the radio, and the lyrics were clever and fun.
Thus, I managed to sneak one into this particular epic. Of a catchy, reasonably recent tune I thought would live on back when I wrote this in 2014.
Morgan had this particularly complex illusion/enchantment set up in advance to ride the coattails of the geas, and it is the third of the trio of gifts she mentioned to Ronni back in Witching Hill. The plastic toy hospital, the arrow of direction, and this. A musical number to entice Ali Kazaam to have a good time. Which one would expect he would not need much encouragement.
But see, he met this really nice girl, see, and she’s just fascinating…
So, here we see our titular heroine dance and perform her heart out, complete with bard solo. Because once it starts up, you can’t tell me the bard won’t play along with a spontaneous musical number? Please.
Yes, Ali Kazaam has a zipper. Because it’s not going to destroy magical culture if he doesn’t have to button up his fly, and his tailored outfit has modern amenities built in.
That look Leonitas is giving Kane is the same one he’s been giving her all day. “What a woman!” The ass-whupping did nothing to dissuade him of this opinion.
Also, let’s not forget, this whole thing is Morgan’s doing. So she deliberately included herself in this whole number, puppeteer imagery and all. She anticipated the insult and wrote it in, because diviner.
DEE’S NOTES
Ahhh, the musical sequence. The script left a lot of the specifics up to me, which I had a lot of fun with. In essence, this is a 16 panel page if you note the “breaks” in each of the rows, and I wanted to make sure the action flowed.
We decided to use the blue cosmic effect and color to emphasize that Ronni suddenly breaking out in song is Morgan’s doing. (Then I added the puppeteer visual JUST to nail it home as concretely as possible.)
We had a BLAST bringing this sequence to life.
The Right Thing To Do
To his credit, Ali asks a pretty reasonable question- if it is all predestined, why fight?
Britomart’s answer, while couched in some phrasing that elaborates on her philosophy, is simple- because it’s the right thing to do. Which in turn has Ali contemplating the life he’s led, and what he’s been doing with it.
So that the next time a woman throws herself his way for sex, he’s going to be feeling guilty, like someone who is a much better person than he is watching, and judging him. Someone whose opinion of him is suddenly meaning more and more to him, which makes him defensive, angry and uncomfortable.
Love will do that to you, as we illustrated kind of on the nose with that arrow through the heart. Because in panels 5 and 6, that’s it, he’s done for. He’s in love.
Which sets up the next page…
DEE’S NOTES
Throughout the narrative, Britomart has proven great skill at being bossy, judgmental and occasionally insufferable.
BUT, she is also EXTREMELY sincere, and when she says these things, she means them. Later on, she will apply more and more of this to Ronni, who will start to hear it and listen as well, but I have been looking forward to getting to do this early sequence to set the groundwork or that.
Here, she’s affecting ALI and changing HIS path with nothing more than the light she shines to show a different way, and it was a fun challenge to show that in a more grounded way than what was originally drawn.
Hand of Vanu, you say?
How do you get a person like Britomart, anyway? And once you have them, how do you humanize them a little bit?
Hopefully cover both with an origin story that encompasses how she came to be, as well as explaining her belief system. We also cover the major religions of Urth in the process, hinting at a larger world. We even spell out the Big Bad of the campaign, the dread lich lord who will eventually overrun the Urth.
I love playing with mythology like this- hinting at much larger concepts that could be explored and just casually dropping them in. Maybe someday we’ll get the chance to investigate and explore them, but for now, they just add more color to the tapestry of this fantasy world we’re visiting, to give it a bit more weight, a bit more realism.
Hopefully that comes across on this page. I can say for certain we enjoyed crafting it for you!
DEE’S NOTES
There is a LOT of meat on this page and 3 distinct montage/image inserts, but I am really happy with how smoothly it all came together. I particularly enjoyed designing both Britomart’s “casual holy knight chic” outfit AND the Naga, Solari!
I was only told what, broadly, a Naga WAS in the script and that the two were gonna have sexytime. I wanted it VERY clear that this was consensual, and also wanted to put a lot of little visual cues in there that Solari IS Britomart’s mother.
Making the “cobra hood” into hair VERY similar to Brit’s was one aspect, as was them having essentially the same face (Though Mom had more epic cheekbones. lol).
(Sabrina addendum note- I often find giving the artist the vague idea of what you are after gives them the creative freedom to craft something wonderful. Sure, sometimes you want something specific, but sometimes trusting your creative partner by offering them some room to breathe results in something wonderful).
Strength Vs Speed
How do warriors get to know one another? They spar!
Throughout the narrative, the big slow guy with the big 2-handed sword and the little guy with all the weapons employed at once will be seen paired up together quite often. R’Lithon even uses Smoke as a battle platform, hanging out on the big guy’s shoulder, as his weight doesn’t faze Smoke at all.
This is the scene where they take the other’s measure, and test their mettle. A short but sweet little fight that you know goes on a bit more from here, but this establishes who they are, and how they will relate to one another.
DEE’S NOTES
This was fun, but challenging to draw. Action combat isn’t a thing that comes as naturally to me artistically as a good scene of conversation, so I took a little extra thinking to keep everything flowing smoothly. I did love the idea of R’Lithon on the sword, which gave me the idea to have the smoke that comes off the blade wisping around him.
Not THAT unwilling…
This scene originally took place in one panel. Rather than stage direct it, I just left this for Dee to take and run with it. She has the layout of their positions and their little campfires. She knows the characters, and they are getting their introductions here.
Although Halder gives nothing away. The entire exchange is talking about Flynna and him reading her, an exchange that she cheerfully answers, because she’s proud of who she is. We are well aware this is not the way to ask someone in human society about a gender transition, but I liked the idea that they’re elves, speaking their own language. He can be direct because she knows he’s not being a jerk, just direct. And she replies in kind, and directly cuts to, “Sex?”
Elves. Direct, between themselves, at least.
At which point he does give something of himself up, and he’s honest with her- he is an assassin. It stands to reason some might object morally to this, and particularly someone you are about to have sex with. So as she has given, so too does he give, exposing himself to potential rejection for his own admission, which I like a lot better than the original dialogue run.
DEE’S NOTES
As Sabrina mentioned, they are VERY direct, but we did a lot of back-and-forth here to make sure that they were clear in their intention. Even in how the subject of her gender is broached, he has deduced a lot but we worked it out so that she prompts his elaboration directly so that the entire exchange is consensual.
I have been looking forward to this page for a LONG time as an artist, as this moment was one of my favorites of the story and STILL features one of my favorite lines in the book: “I certainly hope not.” Just SOOO cheeky, playful and flirty. I worked hard to make sure what I drew would match that energy and hope I pulled it off. (Phrasing! BOOM!)
Men call him…
On the laundry list of characters we’ve introduced for the quest, our boy Dirk needed an introduction. Who and what he is will be detailed a bit later in the story, but for the here and now, this scene shows us he’s got a bit of empathy and common sense, as he befriends the friendless Harald. Who is basically the weird guy who nobody particularly wants to approach. We’ve all known a Harald, I think.
I love how Dee transitions the scene from the main campfire and the four characters there, to up on the hill where Dirk and Harald are having a little bonding time, and we end with the elves in the background, indicating where the camera will move next.
DEE’S NOTES
Transitions are narratively important to me, to make sure pages like this never feel disconnected. I am always thinking of things in regards to the overall book and how pages will flow.
This page was a lot of fun, and it’s something I didn’t think either Sabrina or I expected. It’s just a bit of character building, but poor Harald is SO expressively cartoony and depressed that it made this a joy to draw.
Something To Believe In
This page gives us a different side of Britomart. She knows now she can’t command Kane, but she still used the Voice of Command on her, making her wish known. As Ronni didn’t plan on abusing Leonitas any further, she complies, then watches as the faith healer does her work. Which, to a gal who doesn’t see that sort of thing everyday, is kind of amazing.
Mind you, Britomart’smoment of humility, deferring thanks to her god instead of accepting them herself, is undercut by her being snarky to Kane immediately afterward. But she raises a point, and one that will come back at the end of the adventure when Kane does commit and have faith in something.
They don’t become friends through the course of this narrative, but Britomart and Kane both influence one another, and create some change for good in the other. I like that element.
DEE’S NOTES
We don’t do many spot colors for anything BUT Ronni, but Britomart’s holy glowing is certainly one we have fun with when it shows up.
There is a lot happening in this page, but thematically, it is a closed scene unto itself, which is satisfying to read, for sure. There’s a lot of fun acting I got to play with, and the silent acknowledgment of Lexii taking up the position on Ronni’s shoulder she would maintain throughout the adventure.
Giant Girl Adventures
Login with Patreon
Recent Comments