Hey!  How did we get to the last page so soon?

Commentary follows.

I don't really like splash pages.  When you're as miserly as I am with page space, the idea of giving up an entire page to a single image is just unthinkable.  I only wrote one deliberate splash page in all of MURDER MOON (at the end of Chapter 3).  But that didn't stop Luis from putting together pages that contained everything in a single panel and having things work beautifully.  I didn't call these out, so pages like the above (and at the end of chapter 4, where he broke out some beautiful ones) were all his doing.

Containing everything in the darkened woods makes the isolation more palpable, makes the loneliness stronger (which also makes for an interesting contrast between this page and the end of Chapter 5 of MURDER MOON--though I used a different technique to enforce it there.)  Collins' choice to protect Father Abbot instead of unloading his own guilt comes to serve as a defining character moment, served up with Luis' blacks and moonlight.

This whole sequence is probably the most successful in all of chapter 1 of MURDER MOON.  Which really shouldn't come as any surprise since we were all learning along the way (mostly me, but Luis, too--and you can see that over the course of the entire book, and even into the pages I've seen that he's done for THE THIRSTY).  And if you're not still learning,not still improving, then you gotta wonder why you're doing what you're doing.

Okay, there's getting paid.  I won't argue the practical utility of getting paid.

But even s0, like Mike Choi wisely said at the "How to Break into Marvel" panel "You're never as good as you think you are."  To which I'll add, that if you're not going to work at it, you'll never get there.

STRANGEWAYS: THE THIRSTY will return in the first week of September to its normal MWF schedule, with bonus features in lieu of pages on Fridays.  Meanwhile, I've got to make sure the kids get adjusted to school starting again and I try to figure out how I can get everything done around a kindergarden timetable.  Wish me luck.  I'll be back a couple times before the story starts up again, just not as frequently as usual.