Electric Team

1. As you can see, we’ve gone to a darker color scheme, to reflect a darker time in Brianna’s life. We’re approaching the end, so this is the final color scheme, at least until we come back to present-day Brianna telling the story.

2. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I originally planned a longer scene showing the Ultimage fighting the castle guards, but I cut it. I realized that there’s no real need to show the battle with the guards; the Ultimage has got the powers of a god, so it’s not a suspenseful fight. By just consigning that battle to a line in a caption, and cutting right to the Queen and Princess surrendering, I saved precious space, without losing anything important from the narrative. Which is important, because I have a limited number of pages to tell this story.

I haven’t written the whole thing, but I’ve planned it for 30 pages, and I think it’s going to work.

3. I’m happy to see that Sam chose to make Queen Caroline and Princess Audrey look a lot like the toys that inspired them.

Those toys:

Not surprisingly, they’re named after Abi’s friends Caroline and Audrey.

4. It’s hard to believe, but Swann Castle and Luxum the city-moon first appeared way back in Chapter 2, on page 34, when Jaxula was describing where he was from. I knew it would be a long time before we got there, but I wanted to show the castle early on. I’m so happy to finally be telling this story.

On the next page, Amazing asks Jaxula how he and Brianna met. Jaxula says, “That’s . . . complicated.” You’ll find out how, in just a couple of pages!

5. I’m glad to see some E.D.I.C.T agents in action; it’s a shame they get taken out in one panel. Hopefully that doesn’t make them look too ineffective. Look closely, and you’ll see Jaxula in there.

6. As I’ve said many times, The Electric Team is based on characters and concepts that Abi and I made up while playing with toys. In most cases, the stories are not based on specific events from playing, but our current story is an exception. Jason Occult took over the castle in an epic tale that unfolded in our basement in July of 2013. We got a lot of material out of that.

7. I asked Sam to design Brianna a new outfit for this page, making her look like a super-villain. I didn’t specify that she should put spikes on the shoulders, but I’m so glad she did.

8. When I first described Brianna to Sam, way back when we started work on this comic, I said, “She used to be a villain.” At first I considered revealing this part of her background at the beginning, but I quickly decided it would be better if Brianna and Jax were keeping it secret. More potential for drama that way. It’s been a long road, with occasional little hints, but we’ve finally made it.

9. If you’re a servant to someone rich and powerful who mistreats you, you might learn the lesson that it’s wrong for people to abuse their authority. Humans being what they are, though, it’s likely that you’ll learn the lesson, “Someday I will be the master, and I’ll have my own servants.” That’s where Brianna is at this point.

10. Brianna first tasted chocolate when Jason gave it to her when they first met. Remember?