I don’t often pat myself on the back, but this page looks pretty good if I do say so myself.I’m a big fan of Frank Miller, and this page is definitely a homage to issue 184 from Miller’s run on Daredevil in the early eighties.
A bit of background here. It was important to me that the gun Arnold pulls be specifically rendered. Too often in comics, guns are sort of generically blocked out. It drives me nuts. I also played around with where to put the text in this one. Some might rightly argue that Arnold’s speech bubble shouldn’t have covered any part of him, but I felt it read better with the tale closer to his mouth. I also rotated the angle in the final panel to point the gun into the bottom right corner. However, he more than likely switched the pistol from his weak hand to his strong hand between panel 2 and 3. Shooters shouldn’t have too much of a problem with this, but casual readers might have a bone to pick with the choice. The idea here is that it directs the reader to the next page. I’m not sure if that matters on a web comic published a page at time on a semi-weekly basis, but if it ever goes to print, I have to keep these things in mind. Plan for success as they say.
Will Arnold kill Nightstik? Can Nightstik even be killed? Hopefully, I figure that out by next week…
Enjoy!