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Hey guys! Welcome to the start of our next big arc, Prey. We’re really excited about this one. Just in case you’re wondering, this picks up just a week or two after the end of the last story. Guess it’s time to revise our character list on the About page again. I gave some thought to creating some sort of In Memoriam section for all the characters we’ve lost so far, but I decided that I didn’t want to spoil any of that for new readers.
It might also be time to reformat the Archive section into issues rather than individual links to every single page. I imagine it’s getting a little tricky to navigate through all of that. Anyways, can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the new arc as it develops!
And that’s the end of The Hoover Damned (no matter how many times I’ve said this, I feel the need to point out it was an intentionally silly title every time I type it). Check back next week for the start of our brand new arc, Prey.
Endings, Beginnings, and a Return of the Undead
by Christopher on March 18, 2013 at 12:10 amPosted In: Blog
Hey friends! I realized it’s been a long time since I’ve checked in here. It seems like an appropriate point in the story to drop in and let you know what’s around the corner. There are still a few weeks left in this current arc, but as you can probably tell we’re sort of going in for the descent here. These final moments are definitely going to be a huge part of what’s going on with Ed when we catch up him in the next storyline. I actually just handed Kristen the script for the first 22 pages and some rough drafts of the page layouts.
It might be too early to make a declaration like this, but I think it’s easily the best stuff we’ve come up with for EMW thus far. After looking back over The Hoover Damned stuff, I thought there was an opportunity to improve on the pacing and structure of the comic. Oh – and you probably noticed a serious lack of actual zombies the last year or two. I suppose a lot of that had to do with their overexposure and our own fatigue with them. But they’re going to be back in a big, bad way.
Lots of them. Lots.
As you know, these arcs wind up taking a couple of years to complete so I’ve made a really strong effort to come up with a story that I think is engaging and is really going to put our core group of characters through the ringer. This one builds to a real motherfucker of an ending. It feels so strange to be thinking about panels and moments that you guys won’t see for years.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about whether or not I should come up with an endgame for Ed. Now obviously this is way way off , but after the next arc is over I’ve got two ideas about where to take the story after that. One would be a final arc that wraps everything up and definitively ends the comic. The other would allow it to keep going for the foreseeable future. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see how Kristen and I feel when we get to that point.
Just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. I’m sure we’ve all got our own traditions that tie-in with this time of year and for many of us that probably includes checking off a roster of Christmas movies as the big day approaches.
What struck me this year is that our list of must-watch films is getting a little… fat. This is the first time it started to feel less exciting and a little more like homework. I remember a time when I didn’t even go out of my way to watch anything. It was just whatever I caught on TV.
When it first started to become a tradition, my selections were a little bananas. It was before I met Kristen so I was living alone and I didn’t own any holiday movies on DVD. I had copies of Home Alone 2 and Die Hard 2 on VHS. Those were the two films I started watching every year.
Then Kristen entered the picture and we began collecting more and more films we remembered from our childhood. The list kept growing and now it seems like anything even slightly related to Christmas is fair game.
This year we watched: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Die Hard, Die Hard 2, The Christmas Toy, A Garfield Christmas, Home Alone, Home Alone 2, The Year Without a Santa Claus, A Claymation Christmas, Love Actually, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Muppet Family Christmas, and A Muppet Christmas Carol. And I’m sure that because of the marathon on the 25th, I’ll see A Christmas Story at least twice.
The sick thing is I’m pretty certain I forgot a few.
That’s just way too damn many. I think next year we’re going to have to be a lot more discerning about what makes the cut. Oh, and by the way – that Rudolph movie is crazy sexist you guys. Like jaw-droppingly sexist. Oh, and Die Hard is totally a Christmas movie shut up.
So long Jacob. We hardly knew ya. So as we bid adieu to him and Nelly (the girl who got her face blown off a couple pages back), I want to take a second and admit that I’ve criticized many other stories for doing exactly what I’ve just done – knocking off secondary characters who haven’t been very developed. I’m not expecting any big reactions to either of the recent deaths. Nothing along the lines of what losing Stacy hopefully felt like at the end of the Prelude.
With Nelly (whose name was never even mentioned, how telling is that?!), I guess the idea was just to introduce someone you think might go on to become a more important character and then kill her a few pages later. The only reaction I was chasing there was surprise – and to further cement what a dick Briggs is.
With Jacob, I actually had a far grizzlier death planned for him originally. It would have taken too long to set-up, though and it became clear to me we needed to pick up the momentum of this arc. I had other ideas for his character and so many notes about his relationships with Ed, Bill, and Alyssa that I’ll never get to use – but I also knew he was going to be the next member of the group to bite it because I’m interested in what happens to Emily once he’s gone. That’s really why we’re dropping him so quickly. It sets up what happens to her in the next arc and it’s going to create a different dynamic for our core characters.
There are a number of things that could have worked better in this storyline and Jacob’s death might be one of them. I’m taking all of those lessons to heart moving forward. Before I get too far ahead of myself, though – I’ll say that in terms of the immediate future, we’re now entering the part of the story I was most excited to tell. The sequences I was thinking about when I first began plotting out the whole Hoover Dam thing.
