Strip 13: Pieces of the Past

First off, I'd like to clear up any confusion there might be regarding panel 5. It looks a bit like Dy-Gar has been teleported to some kind of vast desert, but it's supposed to be Maka Central Park. Evan just didn�t draw buildings in the background, so it looks like that stretch of dirt just keeps going on to the horizon. It doesn't. And unfortunately, this strip was already complicated enough without having to go back and fix the issue, so we had to let that one slide in order to stick to our schedule. But doing a weekly webcomic sometimes requires artistic sacrifices, and it's something even professionals have to deal with to meet a deadline, so as long as we keep the sacrifices to a minimum I�ll be able to live with it.

When I began planning this strip, I considered showing Dy-Gar's memory fragments in first-person, as he would see them, but I thought it would be more interesting stylistically to have him projecting his memories over the locations where they once took place. It allows us to show both the past and the present at once, and the interplay between time periods is something we'll be toying with a good deal in Steel Salvation, so now is as good a time as any to start.

Of course, that last panel had to be a point of view shot for a number of reasons that should become clear once next week's strip rolls around. I'll bet that girl knows why. She looks important.

- J.S. Conner

June 28th 2013