Oops! These are not the weapons they were expecting!

In order to set up for this reveal, I felt I really had to establish the lighter weapons Roka and crew were expecting the rustlers to have. So they comment on the light rancher weapons while spying on them at the border patrol, and Roka brings it up again on the previous page. It’s one of those tricky things where you’re trying to give information to readers without making it look really obvious that you’re giving them info that’s going to play out later. The idea is always to make it sound as natural as possible, since the more natural it sounds, the less attention it calls to itself.

Hopefully, it wasn’t too obvious that this was going to happen. In general, I don’t like withholding information in the artwork in order to reveal it completely as a surprise later. I think it’s much more fun to include that info in a very subtle way ahead of time, so that readers can come back later and discover that it was there the whole time. Back at the lockbox, when the rustlers pick up their supplies, I actually drew one of them holding one of these heavy guns. The idea was to obscure it visually with snow as much as possible so that it just looks like something random. But it’s there.

See you in issue #3!

So here you finally get a better view of Cember’s poncho. Unlike Roka and Ril’s, it’s obviously a bit flashier with the fur trim and jeweled clasp. Personally, I love the little puff balls dangling from the bottom since they’re so stupid-looking and utterly pointless. And not terribly masculine either. And yet Cember pulls it off. Somehow it just works for him.

By the way, in case there’s any confusion, the rustler aliens aren’t actually female. Cember’s line is just to be a bit jokey and obnoxious.

Ugh. The trees. In my initial concepts, I had planned to do much more alien-looking trees and thought it would be cool to have clump-circles where a single big “spine” tree would grow in the center, surrounded by a ring of smaller trees that grow lateral, flying buttress-like branches to support the main tree, which would need support to carry its snow load. As it turned out, I decided that rings of trees would get really thick in the art and it would be hard to space multiple rings out enough to clearly show the characters in the scenes. So I opted for singular trees instead.

To make them a little more alien, I went with the twisty trunks, with the idea that a couple trees would grow together and intertwine for support (again, I was thinking about the snowload the trees would have to carry on this planet). Ultimately, I’m not crazy about the tree designs as I think they could have been more visually interesting, even if they had just been a bit thicker or more twisty and intertwined, but there you go.

This page marks the start of the nighttime sequence, and I obviously made heavy use of blue overlay tints to enhance the mood and setting. I think it came out well, and I also found it helpful to slightly erase (or mask) the overlay in certain areas to lighten the blue and let the underlying colors show through. I did this to accent specific elements that I wanted readers’ eyes to be drawn to, with the technique being a bit more apparent in the following pages.

In the first pass of the script, this scene with the rustlers didn’t exist, but I eventually came to realize that the story was focusing almost exclusively on the Brimia crew. I hadn’t given any face time to the “bad guys,” so they were just there to be ciphers and obstacles for Roka’s crew without ever having their own personalities. I remember hearing some commentary for LOTR: Return of the King, where the writers mentioned that originally, it was just a giant faceless orc army attacking Minas Tirith. But then it felt lopsided since there were such clear leaders and main characters on the Gondorian/human side, but no such characters on the evil side. So they added Gothmog and some other orc lieutenants to the mix giving out orders and rallying the troops so that the bad guys would have a “point of view” as well as the good guys.

With this scene, I wanted to accomplish the same thing by spending just a few moments with the bad guys. I thought it would be nice to get their names out there and also show that they’re actually quite competent and well aware that they are being followed. I think that sort of thing adds suspense since, as a reader, you now know something the protagonists don’t, and it also establishes the bad guys as more formidable adversaries.

I have to admit I love these three cattle rustlers. Design-wise, they seem pretty weird and alien, and I liked the outfits I came up with for them. I deliberately wanted them to have that South American/Southwestern US feel to their outfits and be reminiscent of rancher attire. Thus the banded ponchos and the cowboy-ish duster. Their hats originally looked much more like cowboy hats and sombreros, but I thought that ended up looking a bit too literal and out of place. After all, who would ever buy a sci-fi series with really strong Western outfits and themes? That would never catch on.

I like little beats like this sequence, although sometimes I wonder if readers will be thinking, “Really? A scene with Bocce making snowmen? How does that advance the plot?” Well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. Okay, it doesn’t. But I thought it would be a nice short scene to show just how bored Bocce is and also add a little bit of visual humor, with all the snowman versions of the crew. And I really like the gag of Bocce having trouble capturing Ril’s likeness until he adds angry eyebrows and a frown. I guess the other function this scene serves is to just cut away from the Roka story once in a while, so that it isn’t all about them all the time.

In concepting the alien wolves, I was really happy with the designs since they came out kinda wolf-like but different enough anatomically to look a bit more other-worldy. It wasn’t until I had finished coloring the page that I realized they looked a bit like the wargs in the Lord of the Rings movies, with the hunched back and bat-like head. Ugh. Anyway, it was different enough that I didn’t try to rationalize tweaking the design, especially with my time needed on the other 80 or so pages left to pencil, ink, color, and letter for the arc!

I’m a sucker for scene transitions that make use of panels with similar compositions. I used it a lot in the Meltdown comic I did for Image for each transition from the character’s present to a past flashback. Here I went with a direct Bennesaud shot to a snowman Bennesaud.

Coloring-wise, I’m particularly happy with the dusk-like feel of these next two pages. I think that very light pink hue really helped to sell it.

And here you get a little more info on the Runners universe: there are the “dhamas,” which are the mob bosses of the universe, but then there are also the six “Tal’Dhama,” who are the top bosses. Presumably, the Tal’Dhama run the show, kinda like the heads of the five families of the mafia. All the other dhamas are lower level bosses that either work for the Tal’Dhama in some capacity or conduct business outside the spheres of influence of the Tal’Dhama.

So here we have Roka and Bennesaud finally having it out. Ever since the revelation back at Free Kespa about Bennesaud’s past connection to a mob boss, I tried to sprinkle in a few moments of Roka throwing verbal jabs at Bennes and giving him a bit of the cold shoulder. Not sure just how much that came across, but he’s definitely made some snide remarks while looking directly at Bennes.

As for Bennesaud, I really love the design I came up with for the character, but I do find him hard to work with as far as facial expressions go. The biggest issue I have is that the structure of the mouth always makes him look a bit smiley, and in scenes like this one, that kinda diffuses the confrontational intensity that supposed to be coming from him. Overall, I guess it’s not a huge deal, since I think the dialogue actually gets the emotion across. It would just be nice to really nail an angry facial expression to clinch it.

I love doing things in a story that people can come back to later and look at in a different way. When I first had Roka ask about connections to bosses, the response from the crew just reads as a humorous awkward silence of no one having anything to contribute. But now, looking back at that same panel, it seems obvious that Bennesaud is just looking down, deliberately keeping his info to himself. And Cember, who knows Bennesaud’s story, is actually looking at him to see what his response will be.

All the rolls and bags on the lead yak were an addition to this issue. I originally hadn’t thought about them, but in doing this sequence (where the rustlers pick up some additional gear) and the scene at the border patrol (where the guards go through their belongings), I realized they would have a decent amount of stuff on them that they’d travel with, IE camping gear, food, etc. If you go back, you’ll see that the gear isn’t shown in the opening sequence of issue #1. Let’s just say the supply-loaded yak are simply off-panel in that sequence, shall we?

Or, since it is a sci-fi book, we’ll say they’re cloaked.

Every time I look at panel 1, Ril’s anatomy just looks wrong, because with human hands, those thumbs would be on the wrong side. But Ril has two thumbs on each hand, one on either side of his two fingers, so the anatomy is actually right for him. It just looks weird though when you’re so used to human hands.

I think this page is a good place to mention the effectiveness of using a light snow dusting as a coloring effect. When I first started coloring the characters in the snow, starting way back with the cover to The Big Snow Job #1, I found that the characters colored normally without any effects just didn’t look right in the environment. They stood out too much and felt “removed” from the surroundings. I found that adding a slight dusting of snow on their shoulders and heads, and especially on their legs and feet, really helped tie them into the surroundings.

It’s just one of those very minor details that, on some subconscious level, I think your mind registers. Something that’s been out in the snow for a while that has no snow on it comes across as “fake” and even if you aren’t consciously aware of it, some part of your brain picks up on the discrepancy. Anyway, on this page, I added that snow dusting to various parts of the characters’ clothing, as well as the top parts of all the yak, to make the characters fit the environment that they’re in.