Ironborn

Ahh, good grief. I’ve waited to properly introduce these guys since 2008, and I’m very thrilled to finally get to have some fun with them.

Bit of a talky scene! Bit of a talky chapter, in fact. The next one is when shit gets crazy again, but before that we’ve got some more mystery to build and some angst to straighten out. Stay with us, people! Chastity has secrets to offer yet.

Blargggg. So sorry about the delay; here’s your page for the week. If you make whooshing noises while you read it, I know I’ve done my job.

Friends! Monday’s page will be up on Tuesday night or, at worst, Wednesday. I was unexpectedly invited to do some biological field work. Apologies.

Anyway, it’s a very pretty page. You’ll like it.

More faceless mystery comics!

I heard somewhere that The West Wing is something like 40% walk-and-talk scenes. Is it true? I don’t know, I don’t watch The West Wing, but one must admit that it’s one of the most potent narrative devices of our time. These people are going somewhere and they have shit to do when they get there and also there’s time for some unnecessarily vague exposition. It’s awesome.

Whoa, Circuit, that’s a lot of italics. You must be upset.

Very pleased with how this scene is turning out. There aren’t enough old lady robots in fiction, don’t you agree?

Here, by the way, is a sketch of Magdalene in her spiffy overlarge trenchcoat. It is, after all, mid-September in the mountains of our story, and Chastity is getting chilly.

Due to the recent heatwave that’s gripping Stockholm like a cheerful vice, I drew part of this page in my underpants. I think this is what they call living one’s art.

Funny thing about Magdalene is that she’s one of the very oldest characters in Ironborn - I’m quite sure she predates Jaspar, for one - but it wasn’t until chapter 4 that I figured out how she fitted into the story, if at all. (She was originally part of a short story I was going to draw as warmup for Ironborn, but never got further into than a few panels.)

The cast is wildly divergent like that. Reach was invented much earlier than Vanna; I didn’t come up with Brideslock until right when I started writing chapter 2, at which point I didn’t even know she’d be a main antagonist, let alone part of the backstory. I keep thinking I’ve designed (though not introduced) all the significant characters, but here we are, just about to meet someone I created about a month ago, when I realized there was a space that needed to be filled.

I think it’s stuff like this that provokes the old cliché that stories write themselves. It isn’t true, of course, but looking back, things fit into one another so naturally that it’s hard to see them being much different. It’s huge amounts of fun; that said, whatever story I make after Ironborn is done, I intend to plan a lot more of it ahead of time.