L.J. Scott: This episode is all about the shock one gets with a change of perspective. Up to this point, the reader may think they know what's going on; after all we seemed to explain everything in the last installment. But in this installment we have a change of perspective which, if we did it right, should give the reader a jolt and make them rethink all of the past installments with Susan!
As I remember, studio robb didn't know that he would be spending all of this time trying to rehabilitate Susan only to have me turn her into a bad guy with this installment. If I remember correctly, he read the first few lines between the Master and Susan and got very quiet for the longest time...
I loved the way studio robb realized the Master's rebirth on page 4. I couldn't have asked for anything better!
I think this is our best four-pager in the series, but all-in-all I think what we proved is that Doctor Who comic serial installments work best with at least five pages or more.
studio robb: If you had a lot of questions about
Susan’s involvement with The Master in this story, you’re not alone! I had to
"draw this one blind" because L. J. wasn’t talking!
Page 3: At last you get to find out how Brundo managed to get the second item, "Galbi’s
Pole". Remember back in chapter two? ("Maybe they got the next item already." "Maybe. But they must have been fleet of foot").
L. J. wanted the scene with Brundo
shooting The Master to be a tad more comedic: she wanted the blasts from the
Proto-Blaster II (a Tandy Company) to put actual holes in The Master that one
could see through. To me, that seemed a bit out of place for the dramatic
intensity of the scene, and Brundo’s "Holier than
thus," line was more than sufficient to lighten the mood...so I went bloodier and
had The Master’s arm get blown off. L. J. let me have that one.
Page 4: I’ll be discussing my character design
for "The Uber-Master" in chapter 13, part 2. Suffice
to say, though, that I hated myself for giving him that "white-on-black"
lettering for his word balloons. Yes, it looks cool, but it was a real *mess*
to deal with...the white ink was forever clogging my rapidographs,
I couldn’t get it to flow right from a crow-quill, and paint brushes weren’t
refined enough!
So,
for the sake of legibility, I’ve gone in and re-rendered all of his dialogue
(by hand) thanks to the magic of Photoshop for the version you’re now
reading...the downside of doing this was that it made the other characters’ "normal"
dialogue look bad, so, for the rest of this series, I ended up re-rendering
that dialogue, as well!
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