You can skip my commentary and go right to the full comic here.
Panels 2 and 4 look like copy and paste panels but they aren’t. The neat thing about going digital is I can use my inked work as a pencil layer and get panels looking relatively the same. I do think copy and paste is not good — the eye can detect it and at times can slip the reader out of the moment. By drawing the panel again it looks different enough so that it feels like a still camera yet it doesn’t have that feeling like it’s exactly the same, like we’re looking at a still subject rather than a photograph of a still subject. I did a lot of copy and paste with my earlier comics, but since starting depcom I have been trying not to do any at all.
What I have tried to capture here is the annoyance of trying to sleep in a bed with someone else in it, especially when you’re not a couple and your tolerance for things is lower. The conversation about nakedness is based on a naive belief I had as a kid that adults sleep naked because they are adults, not because of, er, anything else. Now I’m like Wren. Washing sheets is a pain in the ass.
Raven’s mom has appeared in depression comix #362 and it was interesting for me to sort out her family life in the comic. Although I had written the original script with no mention of Raven’s mom at all it’s been clear to me that the role the mom plays in this scene is actually vitally important. I didn’t realize it when Raven made the offhand comment about “boyfriends” on the first page, but it made me realize that Raven’s dad is no longer in the picture and Raven’s mom is leading a life that is really stressing out Raven. I believe that when we develop characters we give them lives subconsciously and we deke them out through the creative process.
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