5.31

Oh my god this page killed me~

Detailed notes for this page are up! A bit of explanation about This Damn Car and also some tips on coloring scenes low-light scenes like these~ As usual, I regularly post a notes page with worldbuilding information and shoptalk/ practical process tips for every new page (as well as other comics and bonus stuff) for my lovely Patrons.

Did you know I’m at ECCC this year??? It’s going to be a wild ride. Come say hi to me to make me feel validated and maybe get your paws on some sweet comix

37 Comments

  • Spark

    It’s so weird seeing cars. I think it’s the fact that the other chapters are all either happening in the wilderness or the middle of nowhere, but these tanks and locomotives are surprisingly high tech compared to what I envisioned. In any case, that interior space must have taken forever, plus the rain/lighting of the first panel. Looks amazing though.

    • Fridge_Logik

      I honestly love that Shing is putting the cars where she does. It fits very well with the tech of most everything. Because the story is so focused on remote areas or slums or palace interiors we have had few chances to see cars and they really held a very narrow scope of use until after the second world war.

      Even up until WWII horses were a major part of life. In fact, German and soviet logistics during WWII were heavily dependant on horses to move supplies. The German army employed 2.75 million horses for the purpose of moving supplies. The Russians deployed another 3.5 million for both supplies and mobile troop detachments. The american perspective on the war and the pre-war period is a bit biased by our down right phenomenal automotive industry.

      • Corbie

        There was rather high tech before in the comic: giant windows! They just don’t happen without industrial glass production. And while I would just shrug that off in most comics as lack of research or just a thought on how giant panes of glass are made, I’d never do that with Der-Shing’s work, because everything makes sense to the last pixel. :)
        Later, electricity in Soli’s chapter, and even before, at the logger’s camp: it needs quite some tech to cut these ancient trees and haul them away in mostly one piece.

        • Caris is actually known for their high quality sand and glass! The windows in the Territories is not as great of quality but uses the similar level of tech (stolen from Caris ofc).

      • David

        I’m fairly sure WWII did not happen in this comic’s universe.

        • that guy

          I would not be so quick to draw assumptions. The Shing’s got a few tricks up her sleeve, I’m fairly sure myself.

        • Darcy

          Perhaps not WWII but they certainly had a fairly major war not too long ago. I think you always need a catalyst of some sort to bring in new technology. War’s a great way to do it. You always need better and more reliable methods of killing other people, protecting your own, and moving supplies/troops. And given human nature, it’s something that comes up pretty frequently.

        • Matías

          I’m very convinced by several cues along the entire comic, that the story is happening on the future, on a relatively newly emerged civilization on the territories that used to be California.

          My biggest motive to think so? The huge dry dam on the Soli chapter. While is not impossible to it to be built by the same peoples that inhabit the story, its placement on a site without water suggests that it was created before some important geo-something event that disturbed important water courses.

          Another one? From the same chapter, the treatment of books as relics and the general hype around electricity; it just gives me the impression they are rediscovering ancient (i.e. RL current or even a bit old) methods to generate and manipulate electricity.

          On the other hand, there is a clear sign that they hadn’t evolved a comparable industrial environment: they have no visible products of mass graphic replication. Maps are created by hand by carthographers, alcohol is sold on plain bottles, without labels, there is no visible printed media (in fact, text is almost absent!). With that situation, I guess is fairly logical to assume most books are either contemporary manuscripts or ancient printed works, relics of our era.

        • Fridge_Logik

          I’m using WWII as a major historic event to provide stats which might help people compare technologies. Generally speaking most of the technology we’ve seen is stuff that was developed on earth between 1910 and 1940. The matilda tank is especially advanced as were some of the mathematics in DeTiker’s notebook but otherwise we see a lot of 1920s and 1930s era technology.

          Whether or not a similar event to WWII happens in the Meek’s universe doesn’t matter. I was just trying to give people context on what things were like on earth when humans on earth had comparable technological development with respect to that seen in the Meek.

    • Arianwen

      Strangely what knocked me off balance was not the cars but the umbrellas. I know we’ve previously been exposed to tanks and shotguns, but umbrellas is just… weird.

      • Ren-der

        Ha ha, yeah!
        I was thinking the exact same thing! I didn’t even think about the whole tank and car situation until Spark brought it up in their comment.
        But I noticed and considered the umbrellas the second I saw this page!

      • Marion

        … parasols (against the sun) have been used by Chinese and Indian ladies to protect their complexions for centuries and umbrellas (parasols coated with wax against the rain) began to appear in France in the 1660’s. The first car appeared, what?, two centuries later?

  • that guy

    Yesss. Frequent updates. Yesssss.

    (Disclaimer: this is not a complaint.)

  • “it’s the details”

    when the comic reflects the story’s dire situation AND the artist’s suffering

    • ;__;

      • Fridge_Logik

        You work is exquisite, please never forget that.

  • Luces

    That’s the thing with the so-called strong men:
    When rulership degrates into tyranny, people don’t dare anymore to speak the truth, or, in the case of the broken edge, put things into perspective.
    To repair stonework in pouring rain means waking up builders, erecting a tent, drying the stone – and still it might not give the same results than simply waiting for good weather. If you look at the way of Stalin and other dictators, one really fears for his country!

    • Fridge_Logik

      There simply was no time though. He’s only arriving a few hours after Suda.

  • David

    It was the car, wasn’t it? You hate drawing cars.

    • See also: interior shots, indoor/ artificial lighting, umbrellas in perspective, perspective in general. I like making comics but I don’t really enjoy drawing all that much XD

  • Jenny

    …ULYER???????????

    • MiniMoose

      This gif 100% describes my reaction as well. Yes?? Finally????? Will we get some of that sweet sweater+belt style action????????

      • Jenny

        Lmao we’ve been ready for that belted sweater for years dude I’m pumped

        • Retterhardt

          A middle-aged half-balding man in belted sweaters…clearly all our dreams have come true!!!!!! Psyched to finally see Ulyer in canon lol

          • I am so ashamed you guys remember all these sordid details V__V

          • Jac
          • Jac

            It’s the details…

  • Darcy

    That first panel is excellent. The lighting, the angle. I feel like I’m watching a movie. I was almost surprised the image was static lol.

    It appears the servant lady that was winking at Suda on page 13 is one of the two helping Luca out of his coat. Her bangs were memorable.

    Oh hello there, Hyla. Is daddy going to be happy to see his little girl or is he going to chew her out for wandering the halls?

    Belted-sweater man finally appears! :D

  • The first panel and last panel are GORGEOUS, but they look like they were hard!

  • John

    Suda’s gonna get in trooouuuuuble…

  • Courtney

    Hi there! Am I missing something, why are the two guys’ conversation in <>, are they speaking a different language from what we’ve seen before in the comic?

    • Yep, they’re speaking Basori to each other, it’s come up a few times before (here and here for example). Just a way to show that some people in the comic switch modes of speaking based on who is being spoken to.

  • Some_Douchebag

    I feel Luca’s pain here.

  • Javi

    And yet I was bewildered about bottle openers.
    I don’t know if that’s what you were going for, but the first panel totally brought me to the funeral of Don Corleone. Which obviously was pretty cool.
    In fact now I see some “cosa nostra” flavor all over the page, and I can’t help hearing Luca say “It’s the details, Uly” with a raspy Italian accent. I am still deciding whether this is an improvement or not.

  • Fleece

    Wow, this page is gorgeous.

  • Ardid

    Amazing work as always.
    I just reread everything from the begining, and now I’m too anxious because I have to wait for the next page!

  • Dewmilk

    See, Hyla, Daddy’s not dead dead dead dead dead.

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