Issue One, Page Twelve

Aaaaaand... scene! The song is finished and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, now that it's done. It was a huge experiment which I wasn't sure would even work. My initial idea was to cut from the dark, foreboding atmosphere of the opening scenes in Sugar Daddy's lair, to the happy, smiling face of Steamroller Man strolling the sunny streets of Kurtzberg. Then I tried to push that contrast to its wackiest boundary by having him so happy that he launched into song! Although the concept of song in comics is far from novel, I'm not sure how common it is in the episodic webcomic format. Having the entire song published to the website now means that new readers can read the song all in one go, without a week's pause between verses. Hopefully it flows better this way. I think it will be a long time before I commit myself to doing another musical number. It was a funny idea to start with, but then I actually had to draw the thing! The drawing itself wasn't the problem as much as working out exactly what to draw. Some lines immediately suggested a gag - the subway scene on page seven being a good example. Other verses were a bit more abstract, and forced me to use more generic scenes. In these instances, I tried to reference movie musical tropes. On every page, I tried to come up with a funny lyric, or a funny image. If I found a way to do both, even better. The downside was that it stopped the story in its tracks. As this dawned on me, my enthusiasm for the work sank. Halfway through drawing the song,  I realized that it was a complete indulgence that didn't advance the story at all. By that point, though, I had gone too far to change direction. The only way out was through. It was quite an education, really. As always, I hope you've been enjoying the comic thus far! There's more to come, and the best news of all is that next week, we actually get back to the story!

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