L.J. Scott: The final installment of the Scavanger Hunt, proper.
Also, this was the first of the installments that was a possible final end to the comic serial proper. Jay Ritchie, the editor, was tired of producing the DWIS Newsletter and wanted to move on to other projects. As a result, there were a couple of issues, such as this one, where things could end if they had to: Other ongoing items in the DWIS Newsletter also concluded in this issue. And while not a satisfying end to the comic serial, it was not intended to have any cliff hanger to keep our readers dangling if we never published another issue.
Page 1: I very much wanted to get the readers into the same "going nowhere" mood of the characters, so I asked studio robb to keep the exact same frame over and over again to get the feel of nothing happening. I think it worked!
Ace figures out the solution! Which, for someone who makes explosives for a hobby, it's reasonable to expect that she would be more familiar with local-boy Einstein's theories than the two off-worlders...
GRIM TIDINGS: This was written at the request of studio robb. Taking the elements he wanted, I added some of the elements I had planned for Susan in the upcoming installments to tie-it altogether into a nice little foreshadowing ditty! studio robb added the Doctor's picture and fit it right in with the foreshadowing theme...
You know, every time I relook over this installment, I find my self eager to see what happens after Grim Tidings. There's just something about it that gets the juices flowing!
Perhaps studio robb had a feeling that Jay was up to something and wanted this one-pager added to, in fact, keep readers hanging for another issue...?
studio robb: Things were starting come together with
this story and I was reaching a comfort level in drawing the characters
(despite the fact that I was, again, four months late with it!)...and for some
reason, I was prone to throwing in "low-brow" gags in...probably because I had
learned my lesson about throwing added story elements into L. J.’s scripts (no more Tinheads!)
but when one is drawing, sometimes you just can’t help both throw stuff in...like
Susan’s plastic lobster bib or "The Flinstones"
playing on Brundo’s control console...
Page 1: This page is L. J.’s
version of "three guys in a car talking". There’s something...I dunno, *fun* about doing this sort of thing where you draw
multiple panels for characters standing around just...talking.
Page 2: For the "Susan and Ace Dinner" scene, I
used a wall to the "Old TARDIS Control Room" which appeared in the Fourth
Doctor’s tenure, and converted it to a Bistro.
The
drawing of the Black Hole was [yet] another case where "I just didn’t get
it"...L. J. wanted the event horizon to be *massive*, to the point that you
couldn’t really see the Hole’s curvature... but my brain couldn’t get around it,
so the Hole comes off looking more like a dark planet instead of a collapsed
sun...
Page 3: "Grandfather, you haven’t fixed the
MAIN stabilizer yet?!" That line killed me! The Seventh Doctor is approximately
500 years older than the First Doctor (ie, when Susan was last with him), and
the main stabilizer was already broken?! HA!
If
I remember correctly (probably don’t), L. J.’s script
called for the Temporal Circuit to look like an hourglass.
Page 4: Having stated above that I was prone to
"low brow sight gags", it should be mentioned that The Doctor tying Brundo’s boots together was scripted by L. J. (though the
fact that his boots are Converse sneakers was me!)
Page 5: Some scenes get funnier as society
values change...back when I drew this, the power packs looked like upgraded
disks...now-a-days, it looks like The Doctor is tossing packages of *condoms* in
the air!
The "Omake": This was a bonus story we threw in...you
notice that it’s not listed as part of "Retirement?" but as a separate "Susan
Foreman" story.
I
had recently watched an excellent First Doctor episode called, "The Edge of
Destruction"...it was a two-part story that took place entirely on the TARDIS
because the budget for the show had dried up. And it was a totally creepy
story, in particular seeing a crazed, glassy-eyed Susan holding a long, long
pair of scissors...
Coincidently,
I had also watched the final season episode of the Seventh Doctor called
"Survival", and, again, it was creepy, in particular seeing a crazed, cat-eyed
Ace wanting to rip the throats of her enemies with her fangs (the planet/dimension
the Doctor and Ace were on/in was turning Ace into a literal "Cat-Woman")...
those two scenes haunted me for a week or so, so I submitted
a story idea to L. J. which, in turn, became this creepy one-page story...
by the way, "Theta Sigma" is a code-name that was used for
The Doctor, not his "real name" (no one knows what that really is/was).
Ace’s
"Your Blood in my mouth" was an actual quote from "Survival"...
Susan’s
"Ska!" exclamation was my attempt to throw in a "Gallifreyan Expletive", not a comment on her musical tastes
(it was a few years afterwards before I had heard of "ska
music"). On the other hand, the "Krom!" exclamation
was a nod towards Robert E. Howard, the creator of "Conan the Barbarian"
(though why, I wanted to throw it in, I can’t recall...)
Manga
fans will be familiar with the term "Omake", which is
basically "an extra bit thrown at the end", which describes this one-page story,
so I used it for this site.
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