I had quite a few reasons why I brought my friend Boolah on as my co-writer, and this page exemplifies two of those reasons.
For starters, I would never write a page like this. My style of writing is a very "Right Here, Right Now" approach. Sure, I use flashbacks from time to time, but not like this, and not in such a clever way. This page is one of those Grant Morrison/Allan Moore/Kurt Busiek style pages that I love to read, but almost never succeed in creating. It's the kind of page that presents you with the possibility of a story in every panel, while simultaneously creating a page that gives you a sense of years (in this case, millions of years) of alternate history. All in all, it's a very cool kind of thing.
Secondly, and one of the major reasons I brought Boolah in, is that this page helps to flesh out and give some history and perspective on the villain of our story, the Vertionce. I hate working with villains. I don't like devoting time or energy to them. I'd rather spend more time chronicling the adventures of my various heroes. Of my many, many weaknesses as a creator, this has been one of my more pressing handicaps. So it is cool that Boolah likes to spend time with the villains, giving them interesting characteristics and backstories. It's something I wouldn't do, which is the whole point of the matter.
Other than that, a few other Notes...
Drawing the Cyborg Dinosaurs was really fun. I need more excuses to draw Dinosaurs.
The Ner0 character in the second panel is a predecessor to the Ner0 that appeared in "The Hot Fudge Sundae Adventure Club" #12. This was all Boolah's idea, that the Ner0 armor has existed for thousands of years and passed from bearer to bearer. It's a cool idea that I liked a lot. If you have a copy of HFSAC 12, you might notice on the cover that the Ner0 in that issue had Grey Armor with a Red Sash, while this Ner0 has Gold Armor with a Purple Sash. I did this to set the two characters apart, and also to show that the Armor has corroded and aged over time. In Boolah's Script, Ner0 is also supposed to have Bull Horns on his Helmet, but because I'm still not used to working with a Script, I forgot to draw them in. That would be my bad.
On the bottom panel, I think the script called for some sort of Sea Monster. Originally I was gonna draw some sort of Sea Serpent or something like that, but then I decided to draw a Kirby-style Monster from Kirby's early 60s Monster Comics phase. I shoulda colored it Green or Blue, but I ended up making it Orange to deepen the Homage, since several Kirby monsters were colored a weird shade of Orange.
Man, I enjoyed this page.
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