Given the multi-page buildup to the fight, it would be really great to be able to spend more time with the actual fight itself. I always think it would be more intense and entertaining to have a fight span a few pages to really get the back-and-forth across. As it is, when it’s just one page, it feels a bit short. But given the amount of story I have to tell in every issue, prolonged fight scenes just seem to be a little indulgent and not the best use of page count, especially when other scenes may need more pages for dialogue.
I guess I’ll let all the fights breathe a bit more in the animated series. Ha ha.
Another pro for keeping the fight short is that it shows that Jayd’s reputation is well earned.
And that she definitely showed mercy to our Runners.
True. For these kinds of fights, I also just imagine there are some additional moments in between the ones I’m showing, so it is a slightly longer fight. Next fight sequence, I’ll throw in a panel of both characters resting and taking a water break to convey that it’s a REALLY long fight.
It would be interesting to see if combat sports are a thing in the Runners universe.
How do you take into account your opponent having extra eyes, limbs, etc?
Perhaps it’s like Enter the Dragon, Bloodsport or the early UFC days: style vs style, restrictions be damned. 🙂
Panel 6: the assassin thinks, “Aw, Shuk!”
I have to admit, coming up with sound FX is much hard than I thought it’d be! I can never really tell what a good sound for any given action should be. I also have to admit that I do really like the funnier comics that can get away with sound effects like “SHOVE!” or “STAB-IN-THE-CHEST!” I would have loved to use those two on this page, but I guess it doesn’t quite fit with this series.
It never really occurred to me that an author would need to worry about page count on a webcomic. When you turn your comics into physical books is there some kind of page limit you need to avoid exceeding?
Also, having been watching ‘real’ swordfights by HEMA practitioners on youtube it’s become very clear that even bouts between experts are invariably over in seconds, if not sooner.
I think it fits the genre of your space western that this kind of fight is more Sanjuro and less Duel of the Fates, Jayd’s energy sword notwithstanding.
Excellent question! RUNNERS started out as single printed floppy comics for Vol 1. For Vol 2, I went straight to graphic novel without the single issues, but I still broke it up that way because at one point it was going to be published by Archaia as single issues too. For this volume, my original idea (and I was really excited about it) was to release each chapter as it finished as a digital single comic on comiXology, before that whole enterprise imploded under Amazon.
I still have a mentality of breaking up my story into chapters of around 24 pages each. I think I do that in order to avoid too much bloat, since I could easily add more panels and more pages ad infinitum to make scenes feel longer, fight scenes more epic, and to just have more establishing shots and breather moments, etc. So it’s a bit of an artificial constraint I put upon myself to keep things tight.
But in other ways, I don’t feel confined by standards. Vols 1 and 2 were each 5 chapters of 24 pages each. So about 125 pages of story. This volume with ultimately be 7 chapters, with chapters 1 and 7 being supersized, for a total of around 200 pages! For that, I was thinking about the Harry Potter books and how each was a different length depending on what the story dictated. I knew this volume would have a whole second crew to follow, so it would just need to be a longer story.
So in the case of the overall page count, I’m ok having books of different lengths. But for each chapter, I currently still try to stick to a set number of pages. In the future, I might rethink that though. It all depends on if I ever want to release each chapter as a single issue, in which case a standard page count would be good. If it’s all direct to graphic novel, maybe not.
That also goes for all the chapter covers BTW. I still do those because I think about single issue covers, but for a graphic novel, they’re really not necessary and just extra work. But I kinda like them as a way to break up each chapter in a collected volume, so I’m torn.
Thanks for the considered answer. As for the cover pages they may not be necessarily from the standpoint of the story but from my perspective as a reader they are pretty good at setting the tone or mood of each chapter.
Real fights take surprisingly little time.
Because if you see an opening and don’t capitalize on it, you are usually dead or seriously wounded seconds later.
So this was maybe a bit anticlimactic but pretty realistic