Chapter: MURDER SHE WRITES

Shelley’s on the Advocaat, things are going from bad to worse. I think ideally there would have been a page between this one and the last one, or at least a caption, but back in the day I didn’t really go for captions. I’m not sure why!

What is it in the nature of man that makes us lie, and hate, and steal and kill? Let the carnival begin, every pleasure every sin!

Derek making use here of the classic hotel notepad with six sheets of paper left on it, the one you have to shade over with a soft pencil to see what was written on the previous page to locate clues (I am speaking from personal experience).

A sudden resurgence for Shelley, who has a powerful constitution (if carefully maintained). She always bounces back!

I forgot to write a caption for today’s page. I’m not sure there is anything to say about it that is not obvious from the text.

My favourite thing about this page is the two men having their conversation in the space over Lottie’s head. She’s inserted herself into the middle of events, but they don’t take her seriously. It’s a visual metaphor, right? yeah? WEW MINTAW.

NIGHT EXCITERS! A lot going on in this page. My favourite panel is the central one, where Lottie and Shelley are partly obscured and involved in two very different thought processes. One of the pleasures of a genre piece is that it frees up my mind just to have fun in the provided framework. I’ve done a few – this one, the THAT miniseries from a year or so later, the X-Men issue and my fantasy comics, and they all opened a door in my mind that the serial structure of most of my work keeps shut. More room to play.

In this scene, Shelley is slightly diminished compared to the go-getting version you may remember from Scary Go Round, and indeed the equally forceful iteration in Destroy History. I think it’s because in this part of the story, she’s got a five alarm hangover. And Lottie is taking charge so effectively that she can sit back. Shelley’s holistic path through adventure is a contrast to Lottie’s direct approach.

The top half of this page was another bit of filler from the print version. Looking at it now, I could have given it a bit more, but time was inevitably the enemy back then. First thought best thought! Better than constant creative paralysis, the opposite reaction.

This comic has reminded me that I made this comic after watching the Death Note anime. Lottie’s persona here is very influenced by Death Note’s detective protagonist L. My idea was just that she’d watched Death Note at some point and decided that this was the way forward. I really enjoy her pose in panel one, and the thrill of a Dutch angle in panel three. Had I ever done a Dutch angle before? Don’t go looking. It doesn’t matter.