Electric Team

On page 14, the fight scene is well under way–Plant Man battles Commander McCarrot! Leeta jumps into the fray!

When I was writing the script for these pages, I ran into an age-old question–how do you write dialogue for a fight scene? It’s trickier than I had realized. If you think about real-life fights, people don’t really talk much. It’s mainly grunting and maybe some generic threats. If you have panel after panel of people grunting and moaning, occasionally shouting, “I’m gonna beat you up!” and “No you’re not!” it starts to get boring for the reader.

That’s why many comic book writers have tried to jazz things up by adding jokes and snappy banter. After a certain point, though, it starts to get unbelievable for readers, the sheer amount of conversation some characters have as they jump around and punch each other. If you think of a Chris Claremont X-Men comic, for example, you’ll often see a character delivering entire paragraphs worth of exposition during what had to be no more than a second.

How much talking is too much talking? Stan Lee is famous for snappy fight scene banter, but there were times even he just gave up, like in this famous Jack Kirby page:

Sometimes you just have to let the art speak for itself. I tried to hit the right balance between words and actions in this scene, but for whatever reason my favorite panel on page 14 is the one without any words.

In other news, that Laser Ponies game I mentioned, the one at Gen Con, was a big success. Pictured below is Lemonbell, wearing a sassy yellow bandanna, leading the party in search of the ancient evil sorcerer Memnon.

Page 13 offers up all-out action, as the Electric Team battles Commander McCarrot’s villainous vegetroids!

I really enjoy the flow between the two panels above; not just Mr. Amazing, so confident and then so quickly brought low, but Leeta in the background running through a vegetroid with her sword.

Drawing big fight scenes like this is a real challenge. I already knew that, because I spent much of my childhood and teenage years drawing pictures of people fighting, but young Samantha Albert had better things to do with her time–perhaps playing the piano, or learning calculus–and had to teach herself how to draw combat as she worked on these pages. If I hadn’t told you, though, you wouldn’t have guessed, would you? You’d think she spent her time in French class drawing pictures of a half-elf cleric battling a horde of goblin assassins, just like you did.

But the all-out action is just beginning! Tune in on Tuesday, as the battle rages on, and Commander McCarrot’s savagery is unleashed!