In my original draft of the story, this is where issue #1 was going to end, with the cliffhanger of Ril having a gun to his head. Weird. I guess it would have been okay, but it’s just very odd to me now that I would have had them find the girl halfway through issue #1 and not focus on that moment as the big scene of the issue.

I only changed it when it came down to doing the page breakdowns and thumbnails for the art, and I realized issue #1 would end up being way over 24 pages to get to this Ril moment at the end. So I re-jiggered issue #1 to end on the girl, and I’m glad I did, as that moment really is a much more important event than this one.

Unless you’re Ril, in which case getting a gun pointed at your head is a pretty big deal.