On the Verge: the Arrow of Time, three

And we’re back with the next chapter and more new art featuring two of my favourite characters from this story – Mr. Tall and Mr. Small. Click on a thumbnail image below to read.

This was another chapter that first started out completely differently. I was still working away on just what I wanted this story to be when I decided that I kind of left things hanging with the Professor in the previous chapter. So it made sense to go back and kind of finish that story. Last week I explained about a bit about the “29 Day comic Project” and because it worked really well, I figured it was best to take the same approach with part two of the story. So in September 2012, I wrote and drew part two of this story in a month and then published it all the following month.

Anyway, when I made the decision to include all of this chapter within THE ARROW OF TIME story, I redrew and coloured all of the pages, just like I did with last week’s chapter.

I had fun with this part of the story. It was important to introduce Mr. Tall and Mr. Small here because they’ll play a larger role down the line. As well:

• I really wanted to start to really explain the Professor’s motivations. This wasn’t to make excuses for what he was doing, but I wanted him to be more than just an evil genius.
• I didn’t just want to introduce Tall and Small, but I felt like I needed to explain how Tall and Small aren’t just the Professor’s henchmen. They actually work for La Fleur and are keeping an eye on the Professor. I knew I wanted these two guys in the story because they served a variety of purposes, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to have them be the Professor’s henchmen. I mean how would he even find henchmen? So once I sort of figured out the La Fleur angle, it actually seemed to make things fit together better.
• It was important to really tie Jeremy to the Professor. This is an important link that needed to be made because I needed to really explain how this guy (Jeremy) was really the guy who was going to be needed to figure out how to make the machine work. Plus I really liked the fact that Jeremy was this prized student and has formed this relationship with the Professor. What do you do when your mentor goes bad? That was a fun angle.
• And then finally we go back to La Fleur. To me it was important that with each of her appearances, we start to evolve her character. She really is controlling the Professor who’s obviously in over his head and this continues to be something that happens right until the end of the story.
• Also! I managed to squeeze in another Daily Recorder story about the protesters. This is one of those things that keeps building through the whole story, so it was fun to keep plugging that in there.

So yeah, there’s a lot that’s happening in this bunch of pages and I think it’s really setting up what’s coming next. I hope you enjoy!

Source: On the Verge