I love that barber guy. Look at him. He’s great.
I’d’ve liked to make the previous page the final one– there would’ve been something poetic about making those parallel frames of Walky and Rikk and Joyce and Alisin the final beat. But chronologically, this page and the next had to be later. Don’t worry, though, David, we’ve made sure they’ll be downers too!
Will and Jackie’s relationship touches on issues that I still have a hard time talking about outside of fiction. They shouldn’t be together. They know it. They’re drawn to each other, physically and psychologically. They keep trying to resolve that (though often not at the same time). They keep failing. Both are basically good people, but they often bring out the worst in each other. And their potential for the worst imaginable ending is etched in Will’s color-inverted, frustrated face. In another story from the following year, I’d take that scary ambiguity about as far as it could go before Will ended up with the far healthier option.On a lighter note, this page shows a little of the kind of writer-artist disconnect the Waltrips and I are usually very good at avoiding. In panel 1, Barnaby Barberton talks like he’s carefully cutting already, which was my intent and would also better explain Jackie’s “owww,” but his shears are about two feet from Jackie’s head. Then in panel 2, hey, already all done! It’s like he’s afraid Jackie’s imprisoned by some kind of hair snake, and he’s got to kill it with one single, dramatic lunge. Dude missed his calling as a samurai.
Oh fine, “Barnaby Barberton” is better, I was originally gonna tag him “John Barber.”
Yeah, these two have some… issues.
Funny you should mention John Barber… He’s the one who animated that linked story, well before his time doing Transformers comics.
It was very much intentional!
Maybe Jackie was OWWing b/c she was pulling on her own hair? I mean, not difficult to do…
Yeah, that’s how it read to me.
That moment when you Witness someone’s OTP just die.
For some reason the barber guy makes me think of that old guy from the Six Flags commercials.
I forget what’s next, but it’s one body-blow after another the last two days.
Is “bee-n” in the 3rd/4th panel just a typo, or does it tell me something about the way Jackie talks?
I guess I could finally do that archive binge of Fans! I’ve been considering and find out…
My thought is that she was going to say one thing but stopped herself and that was her recovery, but I can’t think of what she might have been going to say.
Bean with a long E is more British than ‘bin’, my guess.
Yeah, ValdVin’s on the money.
Thanks everyone!
Oh, but I bet you think dropping hints is just fine for women.