Page 8
ONE:
SABRE and HANS, another exchange of blows.
1. SABRE: You’ve gotten better.
2. HANS: You left me little choice, Lady.
TWO:
HANS cuts at SABRE’S head sharply, a quick flick. She just as deftly avoids the swipe.
3. SABRE: Ah, Hans –
4. SABRE: – very nice! –
5. SABRE: – did I break your heart?
THREE:
HANS lunges at SABRE, who parries, dancing back along the surface of the Zep.
6. HANS: I will not give you the SATISFACTION of an
ANSWER.
FOUR:
SABRE swings the parry up, into a lock, so the two are face-to-face.
7. SABRE: Darling, you just DID.
Juicy backstory! On the other hand, I bet Sabre breaks everybody’s heart.
Quibble: isn’t there nothing between Hans’ blade and Sabre’s neck at the moment?
Yes. Yes it is.
Move along, nothing to see here 😉
Nothing between the flat edge of the sword. I would imagine he’s pushing to keep tension against her blade, which is awfully close to his face….
She’s got a smallsword, though, which clearly doesn’t have (and couldn’t hold, anyway) much of an edge — while the back end of his sword his much heavier, and so much more dangerous. Besides that, *she* isn’t going to be keeping tension on her blade in the other direction, since it would only be pushing his sword towards her face — and, considering the supinated grip he has on the sword, he could easily just turn it over and then, using the force she’s applying, bring it up and cut her throat.
But also it just doesn’t seem right that their lock would end up that way. After the parry seconde, he’s presumably trying to bind her weapon around to take advantage of his weight and strength. That would leave his sword on the outside of her weapon.
I guess after he picks up the parry in seconde, if Sabre immediately disengaged (her weapon is probably a lot faster, after all) into quatre, and then tried to punto-reverse around his blade to keep that point coming at him? So he had to parry and then had to turn with her to keep the blade at bay? It seems like an awfully risky move on her part, since her lighter frame and weapon would put her at a disadvantage in corps-a-corps. Also, it doesn’t explain why he doesn’t just turn his hand over, pin her sword arm with his left, and cut inward with the saber.
You’re actually citing something that we’re looking to address. If you look at the script, you’ll see that the fight isn’t choreographed per se; that’s something I’m hoping to change next time around. This was meant to be far more Errol Flynn than Reclaiming the Blade.
By the way, I checked out your site, but didn’t see any links to sword work. Did I miss ’em? (And I quite liked your piece on Penn; you articulate something I’ve been feeling about his work for much of the last decade. I adore their stage work; I find his political writings to be…problematic.)
You didn’t — I do have a fairly comprehensive background in fencing (both the sport and classical varieties), but it doesn’t come up very often at TQP. Occasionally I write a thing or two about fights on film or in the theater and I mention it. The theater, interestingly, I think has the opposite problem that a lot of other media have, and that I think you’ve got here: while we’ve got no shortage of people who are technically really well-versed in how to fence, it’s often kind of unusual to find a fight that’s actually thematically significant. They just sort of hang around, and look like they were choreographed by someone who didn’t at all participate in the writing, direction, or acting of the piece (which is generally exactly what’s happened). So, this fight is obviously a strong character point, but a couple of the technicalities don’t quite jive.
Though, really, who cares, except for a couple noisy internet guys? And you’ll get those no matter what you do.
Incidentally: that parry seconde — I don’t know if you’re familiar with it — but it’s commonly referred to as “the Actor’s Parry”, because of how often Errol Flynn uses it. Very flashy, very neat, very easy. You almost can’t use it without laughing uproariously.
With regards to Penn: I agree completely. I disagree with him politically sort of flat-out, but I can respect that; I have a problem when I feel like he’s trying to cheat me, and you know? The fact that he’s so brilliant with language in his(/their) stage work only makes me twice as suspicious when he starts talking about politics.
Ooopf, excessively wordy. I blame the surplus of daiquiris.
Nice little tid bit. It seems like the story is really moving along now. Keep it up, I’ll be sure to check back for more.
Minor point… in the last pane his smile is bisecting his moustache. Unless his moustache is braided (or waxed) into his sideburns, his moustache would curl around the corner of his mouth, following the natural contour of his face.
It’s the new fashion in Hollern…
…or not.
Super comic so far! Don’t let nit pics get you down.
Actually, Chris, Hans has mutton chops that grow together from the moustache and the side burns. They are trimmed very close to the face and are shaped very thin. I saw a guy with whiskers like this one time and filed the image away for later use.
Are these nitpicks turning you off of webcomics? I hope not!
Not by a longshot. We’re still early days yet. The learning curve, as remarked, is steep.
I just love this webcomic so far.
Rick – how much “second guessing” about layouts do you do between what you would draw for a traditional comic page vs. a screen?
Ken, my first knee jerk answer would be, “I dunno.” Actually, I’m constantly second guessing this entire process. We’re attempting a new type of visual storytelling here, one based on dramatic beats rather than pages or panels, so it really is a work in progress and we’re bringing the reader along so they can witness our mistakes. We’re a lot further along now and by the time we post chapter two you’ll begin to see just what we have in mind.
Another conundrum I’m dealing with right now is the fact that my work has never been reproduced this big before. I’m having to re-assess the amount of detail and the character of the line in the work. Also, this is the first time I’ve ever colored anything, so I’m having to learn to balance the color and the spotting of blacks. I’ve noticed that with the advent of computer coloring, artists aren’t using black as much as they used to, letting the color do most of the work. That’s fine except that color works better when juxtaposed against black than it does when working with white or another color. In short, I have a lot to learn and I couldn’t be happier.
This may be a bit of dumb question and maybe it was asked before and I just overlooked it, but I notice in several of the script sections you write ‘NO COPY’. Just curious as to what that means. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that used in any comic scripting I’ve read before.
I use “no copy” to indicate that the panel in question has no associated text – no caption, sound effect, or dialogue. Thus “no copy.”
Agreed, that a reveal of a possible past between them, or even the most brief exchange that might have happened minutes ago on a dance floor, I still hope to learn more about her, and less about her body, unless it conceals some aether driven machinated mess.