Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Author's Reflections- Comic #400















#400
 
The final spotlight had no more obvious recipient than the commentary trio. Full comics of the three of them were always a chore to attempt to do right but luckily this one wasn’t too terrible to write. Cliffjumper and Hot Shot’s interaction is really the bread and butter of this comic, but Hound has some good lines too. As I’ve said before there was never any set explanation for how the trio observed what was going on, this is an example of them watching things in real time. I recall one of the readers on the chat board took the picture of Hot Shot punting Cliffjumper offscreen and made one of the ‘motivational picture’ memes out of it, with the caption “Am there anything we can salvages now Cliffjumper?” It definitely made me feel good someone liked the comic enough to do that.
 
 


Author's Reflections- Comic #399



















 

#399
 
I had no intention of bringing Bugbite back into the comic anytime soon but as I’ve said, he really was a well-liked character from the readers’ standpoint. This gave me a chance to follow up on what happened to him after his run-in with Mini-Megs, and also to show what said run-in had done to affect his already psychotic personality. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the Ungas to full effect either.

Author's Reflections- Comic #398














#398
 
This comic is an example of a mosaic style spotlight done right. I intentionally had the Beast Wars Predacons (or “Predecepticons” as I had started to refer to them) appear to be doing trivial background construction work which not only worked well for the plot of this one-shot comic but it also led into what would be the next big storyline, which of course we’ll get into in due time.

Author's Reflections- Comic #397














#397
 
I hadn’t used all of the Dinobots together in a comic since Swoop and Snarl/Slag got their upgrades so it seemed like the thing to do. This idea just stemmed from my distaste of the Dinobots’ comic relief portrayal in season 3 of the G1 cartoon. Ironically they complain about being comedy relief in a comic based on comedy so I had to have some sort of punchline, which I do think worked well.