Joyce and Walky!

I love that barber guy.  Look at him.  He’s great.

I’d’ve liked to make the previous page the final one– there would’ve been something poetic about making those parallel frames of Walky and Rikk and Joyce and Alisin the final beat. But chronologically, this page and the next had to be later. Don’t worry, though, David, we’ve made sure they’ll be downers too!

Will and Jackie’s relationship touches on issues that I still have a hard time talking about outside of fiction. They shouldn’t be together. They know it. They’re drawn to each other, physically and psychologically. They keep trying to resolve that (though often not at the same time). They keep failing. Both are basically good people, but they often bring out the worst in each other. And their potential for the worst imaginable ending is etched in Will’s color-inverted, frustrated face. In another story from the following year, I’d take that scary ambiguity about as far as it could go before Will ended up with the far healthier option.

On a lighter note, this page shows a little of the kind of writer-artist disconnect the Waltrips and I are usually very good at avoiding. In panel 1, Barnaby Barberton talks like he’s carefully cutting already, which was my intent and would also better explain Jackie’s “owww,” but his shears are about two feet from Jackie’s head. Then in panel 2, hey, already all done! It’s like he’s afraid Jackie’s imprisoned by some kind of hair snake, and he’s got to kill it with one single, dramatic lunge. Dude missed his calling as a samurai.