We finally get a look at the titular antagonists of The Thrill-Seekers. I didn’t feel there was any need to make the story a true fair-play mystery, because I not only wanted to maintain the basic structure of most Blaxploitation action movies, but I felt that it was important to establish the villains of the piece early, so the readers get familiar with them and understand them. But as the old saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” and as I indicated in the comments for last week’s strip, to know these guys will be to LOATHE them. Soon you’ll be begging for Pastor to deliver some righteous revenge to these three bastards, if you hadn’t been before!
Nonetheless, I had a great time creating distinct character designs and personalities for them, especially the weaselly Charles Bouchier and the loutish Tuck, whose appearance I patterned after Ed McMahon from Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, starring Blaxploitation stalwart, Jim Brown.
Enjoy!
- JEP
Looks great. The dialogue in panel 1 seems disjointed. I think that the dialogue in the box is Pastor’s dialogue continued from last week. At first I thought it was the guy on the other end of the phone. As a weekly strip, I find it confusing to continue dialogue from the previous week into this weeks strip. If it was all on one page displayed together, there would be no problem. I love the tilt of the camera angle on the last panel.
Good point. I did consider whether it might be disconcerting to carry over dialogue from last week’s strip. I did realize that for this week’s update, it may be disorienting if a reader didn’t remember Pastor’s pronouncement from last week, but I made the calculation that in subsequent weeks it wouldn’t matter as much, since as newer readers came in, or older readers reacquainted themselves with older strips, the follow-up would be immediate.
Regardless, I think you’re right that I shouldn’t even introduce an element that might disrupt the natural storytelling rhythm. I probably won’t do carryover dialogue in the future.
Thanks!
- JEP
Have any of the regular readers figured out the bad guy names?
Is Ned the Comedian in retirement?
Ah … the loutish Tuck.
And did the carryover dialogue box get shaded today? That panel read a lot cleaner to me just now than it did earlier.
Nice work as always, sir!
Guess Who was wondering if anybody would notice.
Naw, it was shaded before, but in retrospect, the second balloon overwhelms the caption box a bit because it is higher in the panel. I’ll probably pull a George Lucas and digitally remaster these two strips and the dialogue at some point.
- JEP
I read the last two weeks back to back, and the I was able to recognize the shaded dialogue as being pastor’s – so it works when reading them back to back.
Thanks for giving your perspective on that, MannieJo. I gambled that it might have been a creative decision that worked better for posterity than as a weekly update. Nonetheless, I probably won’t do that again unless it’s as a re-edit for a trade collection or something.
- JEP