Page 39 features the long awaited (by me!) second meeting between Rah and Mierkhan. No kidding, I was thinking about that scene back in the mid '80s, while planning the long-term ramifications of the plot.

The page is something of a cheat, but Wally Wood would be proud of me ("Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up"). I wanted to get a cinematic feel with a constant background, and the last time I did that I had to redraw the same background three times. Forget it! I'm too old for this $#@! So I started by drawing the background on two 8 1/2 x 11 pages taped together :



and I photoshopped it behind the characters.





(It didn't really save time, because the background is one pretty big image and the process of adjusting it so it would fit with the characters without creating too many tangents was a bit of a bother. But at least it didn't feel like I was doing the same thing again and again and again.


Funny real life trivia: back in the '80s I had no idea how to place a good kick. In the thirty years since I learned karate, and therefore the kick had to be a real one. (I was really impressed by how Power-Man/Iron Fist artist Denys Cowan would stage fights on the page; unlike pretty much everyone else who'd just have characters punch or kick their opponent in one dramatic image and do something entirely different in another, Cowan would show what looked like a real fight, where you could see the progression from a kick to a grab and to the following take-down. Cowan has a black belt). At first I wanted the kick to be a front one, but that was likely to do serious damage! Since Mierkhan just wants to take Rah down without breaking his neck, a mawashi geri (roundhouse kick) seemed more appropriate. The distance seems very short, since the two guys are close together; but note how Mierkhan is pulling his left leg back just as he blocks Rah's clumsy punch. (Rah fights like c$#@, in case that hadn't been made clear yet). That leaves Mierkhan just enough room to lift his knee inside his opponent's guard. (I can vouch for the possibility of placing a mawashi geri at such a distance. I was once fighting a talented young guy at the school, and since he was much better than I and far more flexible, I stayed very close to force him to use punches or leg kicks instead of high kicks. Didn't work. Not only did he connect, but he broke four of my teeth!!!) 

Here are also the rough pencils for page 40, in which Oniria must decide whether she's going to take Rah away from the Imperials and risk an open conflict between Taharqua and the Empire, or act responsibly and back down. A hard choice, especially since she'd probably win.



Page 40... The first two parts were 46 pages long each; that means this one should be almost done! Unfortunately, there's a good twenty to thirty more pages to go.

Thanks, Confessor!

It all looks a little stiff, but I like that. Alex Raymond, Dave Sim and Gerhard, Russ Manning... they’re all heroes of mine. (Not that I’m comparing my doodles to their art... but they’re people I’d love to emulate).

Looks great!

I'm curious what program you are using — sorry if you covered this earlier, I missed it. I am learning the ins and outs of Clip Studio Paint (aka Manga Studio 5) at the moment. It feels like there's a lot of capabilities, but figuring out all the function is a pretty steep curve.

Page 48 is done!



While Book 1 was pretty much an action-filled chase and Book 2 had a heavy emphasis on military clashes, Book 3 has been all about people talking. The pace seems to be slower, but plot-wise things are moving very fast!

My hope with this series is that readers will say "well, that didn't go the way I expected". For example, I set up the character of Mierkhan as a bad guy in Book 1, but he was the hero of the first part of Book 2... and here we show him as a Pontius Pilate figure, not unsympathetic to the main character, but also ready to sacrifice him for what he sees as the greater good. What to make of him? That's for each of us to decide.

In the exchange between the two characters, I admit I don't actually know whose side I'm on. Both men make valid points, I believe, arguing about a government serving the greater number on the one hand and about respecting individual rights and freedoms on the other (and no, the exchange will not conclude with both agreeing that the right path is somewhere in the middle... stubborn fellows, they are).

I think I'm going to get a bigger scanner, too, now that 11 x 17 inches ones are once again available. Scanning pages in six to eight pieces and rearranging them in Photoshop is a pain in the b***, especially because of the distortion that always creeps up during the scanning process.

Page 55 of The Emperor's Ball, which happens to be my age. Hopefully I can finish this book (and the next, which will end the saga) before dying of old age.



I had a difficult choice to make with this sequence: Oniria enters an imperial prison with the intention of abducting Rah (or terminating him, in case she can't take him with her), in what is a politically sensitive move. She can't be recognized. It was already explained a bit earlier that her suit (and the nanodrones she spreads here) can take care of most electronic means of detection, but I hadn't thought about the obvious: I initially intended her to go in bare headed! No choice, she had to wear some kind of mask. 

I guess I can live with that, but it's easier to convey emotion when you can see the characters' faces!!!

Now on to the next one!

As mentioned in the Meanwhile thread, the English version of Rah the Slayer is available for a while, free of charge, to help pass the time during the coronavirus epidemic. 

Heck, here's the link for Book 2 as well.

And in related news, I finished page 60 of book 3 last weekend. Too bad our university closing down doesn't mean I can take some time off! I might be able to add an extra ten pages!!!

I absolutely cannot wait for the release of this volume!