Shadowfolk 38

A few notes here. Back to digital inking, for one. Yay. Also, you can see I tried to draw Kerry in perspective, and it looks hilarious - he's all chunky suddenly. This might have been my first real attempt to do it with construction lines. I also wanted to fit some Kiolias into this strip, to explain where my online handle came from, but because of the line thickness and putting them against a space backdrop, you can't make heads or tails of these ones. A much better view of one comes later. I'll give details on them then.

Overall, this page feels filler-ish. I've read at least one very smart guy saying that for purposes of advancing a story, it's wise to avoid any scene where two people are talking about a third who isn't there. This is one of those "rules" I'm still trying to figure out, but I suspect it's less because such scenes can't be done decently, and more because the reason most writing tries to include them is because the writer feels like the audience is going to miss some character development - ie, they become scenes with no purpose but feeding information to the audience. Sort of the scene equivalent of "as you know, John" dialog, where characters tell each other stuff they both know, for the sole purpose of making sure the reader finds out.

Rule of thumb for writing: information comes out of dialog through conflict; otherwise you should not try to make dialog carry the weight of backstory or other straight information. People just don't talk that way, and if they did, it'd be like a school lecture and you'd probably tune them out anyway.

Start of Chapter 3: Pirates. Probably not the least spoilerish chapter title. These days I pretty much avoid chapter titles; I feel like there's almost no way to do them that's both fresh and meaningful. In my novel I've left the chapters numbered but named the books, and I'm not even sure I'll keep that.

Title: Suspicious. Originally aired: 1.12.04

Disclaimer: this comic is discontinued, and that won't change.