So this is the desert: A 24-hour comic. Afterword

Afterword

The motif of having a telephone inexplicably explode on every page was the first thing I thought of. Naturally, it was a reference to the situation I found myself in, and I like drawing explosions. Then, I thought of a good opening line, and the story grew organically from that as I drew.

It was probably inevitable that I would end up making it into a transformation story, but I was determined not to be self-indulgent. I had skipped the televison panels, and was at "We've got to do something"... and the only thing that came to mind was "I could turn into a snake, would that help?" (Evil Overlord checklist, #46: "I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.") I realized it would be a practical move, as I was having a little trouble keeping the guy looking consistent for some reason, and snakes are easy to draw. Anything to speed it along. I found that, suddenly, I had a whole science-fiction world in place. I explained away Frad's awkward position on Page 3 by implying in the commercial that most of these alien polymorphs haven't gotten the hang of walking completely naturally.

So, what is the artifact in the box exactly? Why would Ñy need it to escape, and why did she want it so badly in the first place? Well, that's a mystery open to interpretation, along with many other things in the comic. I can see a few plausible possiblities:
1. It is established that xenoes can't shift more than once in three months. Frad and Ñy are looking for this thing because it removes that limit and opens up a whole new world of freedom. They could be whatever they prefer at their leisure and still walk to the corner store without scaring the straights. Clearly, then, Ñy's three months just weren't up yet.
2. Ñy wasn't a xeno, just a human who wears shades and hangs around with them. She identifies with this other race and wants to be one of them. The artifact can do that.

Who are the MIB types? Well...does it matter? I don't think so.

The home stretch was exciting and exhilirating. Ñy was running for her life, and I was racing the clock. The two things seemed symbolic of each other. It put me in the story. I briefly entertained the notion that I could finish the 24 pages in the remaining time by just showing Ñy running, faster and faster, messier and messier, and of course the readers would understand why. It would be a very immediate allegory. But it was soon apparent that time was so short I wouldn't even be able to do that.

It's not completely obvious the way I present it on the web, but during the running sequence the comic turns from portrait format to landscape format. Using what initally seems to be just a dramatic angle, I coax the reader to gradually turn the comic sideways by using steeper and steeper angles.

Tragically, most of Page 15 was destroyed in an accident wherein I decided it sucked and ripped it into little pieces. I had been determined to avoid the recurring theme that tends to dominate artsy one-shot comics, you know, where our main character, a woman, becomes one with the universe and discovers ultimate truth while bathed in pure white light and surrounded by snippets of high-school-poetry-magazine free verse. I was kind of disgusted when I realized that, in my 24th-hour haze, I had done it. It was confined to one page instead of the entire comic, but there it was, and badly drawn too. It also ruined the whole story by establishing Scenario 2 in a bad way, turning the character of Ñy from a mature adult into an adolescent poser desperate to "belong" somewhere, and sending a dubious message by giving her what she wanted. Scenario 2 does not automatically presume this, but the way I wrote Page 15 it did. Only the panel in the top left corner survived the, er, tragic accident. The challenge says "pages may be any size," so Page 15 is just smaller than the others. And still uglier.

The ending is sappy but I love it. I've long been fond of horses... and snakes.