13th Jun 2021, 8:25 PM
I’ve included some of my initial thumbnail sketches (below) to show what my original plan was for this part of the story.
As you can see in the first thumbnail, it started the same way as the finished page, but I was going to stretch out the action over two pages, with Steamroller Man breaking through the wall of the factory grounds on a subsequent third page - this would have been a page-turn reveal, as I mentioned in my previous Author Note.
Here’s what I thumbnailed out:
The trio of heroes was going to look for a quiet, sneaky way in, running straight past Paige’s lab coat without noticing it. Sleep Tyke would discover a small hole in the wall - a drainage grate or something.
The next page would see Night Knight and Sleep Tyke crawling through the hole into the factory’s courtyard, and saying that it was a tight squeeze. They would express doubt that Steamroller Man could fit through the opening. Steamroller Man was going to say “no problem guys, I’ve done this before, I’ll just go feet-first” and then get stuck, saying “you guys go ahead, I’ll find another way in”.
One page-turn later, and the reader would see Steamroller Man break through the wall right behind Night Knight and Sleep Tyke, saying “I found another way in!”
I liked this bit of business, initially, and I really liked the idea of Steamroller Man getting stuck because of his huge head… but something was bothering me. The more I thought about it, the more I started to worry that the reader would be way ahead of the joke. Was it really worth stretching this gag over three pages? I could accomplish the same gag in one page instead of three. What’s that saying about brevity being the soul of wit?
So I scrapped the idea and roughed out the page you now see completed, here. I think it works better - I’ll save the “head gets stuck” gag for some other time. I had fun breaking the panel borders and getting some dynamic poses into the page. I hope you like it too!
See you in two weeks, as we start to wrap up this chapter!
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