Posted February 9, 2015 at 1:14 am

Grace's plan was actually written before Sarah's, but when I realized how the plans built off of each other, they were rewritten slightly and the order swapped.

The implication of that, of course, if that the plans weren't originally connected, and that Grace's entire zombie apocalypse survival plan for her and her friends was "give me a giant sword".

Use a Barrel Roll Spin Attack

Grace's attack in panel two is inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Link's spin attack, but that's not what I used as a reference. Instead, I looked at videos of spinning ballet dancers. I'm pretty sure Nintendo did that as well at some point. There are only so many ways a person can spin quickly and maintain balance, and ballet is probably the finest example.

Grace's Omega Form is sans tails because they obscured her pose too much, and because they'd get in her way with a sword. She's a shapeshifter. She doesn't have to use them. That, and it's a chibi fantasy panel.

Grace's outfit is inspired by Leon's outfit in Resident Evil 4. Early in the game, anyway. He loses that glorious jacket rather quickly. Amongst the various residential evils and monsters, the loss of that jacket was the most tragic thing of all in that game.

I Like Big Swords And I Cannot Lie

"Claymore sword", as I understand it, is redundant, as the origin of the word means "great sword" all on its own. The word "claymore" can refer to multiple things these days, however, so I decided the heck with it. Besides, Grace doesn't necessarily know the finer details of the word, so there.

It is ALSO my understanding that claymore blades top out at a little over 47 inches, aka 120 cm, aka about 3/4 of an inch short of four feet. CLOSE ENOUGH. Besides, I'm getting this info from a Wikipedia article with "citation needed" for the source and using it in a comic about a casual discussion regarding the fighting of zombies. There's factual wiggle room.

I have a fondness of claymores that dates back to collecting fantasy LEGO sets. Many of the figures had swords, but they were mostly small and grey. Some figures, however, came with larger, actually shiny swords, and someone I knew referred to them as claymores. I don't believe they actually were claymores for a number of reasons. but it was a word I latched onto at an impressionable age, and I am still to this day biased in their favor and basically regard the definition of claymore as being "an awesome, big sword".