Harem is a real gigglepuss isn’t she?

Arianna’s probably not the only one worried about their new team getting photographed mid-celebutard activity, and there will be plenty of opportunity for it in the upcoming days. Some of them garner more concern that others. Harem can’t fly, but she’s still high on the list. Heatwave is as well. Achilles, well guys can certainly do moronic things on camera but at least there is far less of a chance of a wardrobe malfunction with them. Barring kilts.

Is it weird I have 3 female characters who don’t own dresses or skirts? Not that it’s some sort of requirement for women, especially in this day and age, but personally I don’t know about women who don’t take advantage of the option. But I started thinking about it and I just couldn’t see any of those three wearing them. Maxima because she perpetually downplays her femininity, and also figures at any moment she might get into a serious fight that involves kicking someone in the neck, and would be severely displeased if any panty shots of her started getting shared around. Peggy is just a straight up tomboy, as is Sydney, though I will say of all of them, I could see Sydney choosing a long skirt over shorts in the summer since it would allow her to slack off more on the personal grooming front. It’s just over the years her wardrobe has leaned more and more heavily on jeans until all she had left was the odd skirt for a bit of cosplay. In reality she probably still has a few buried in the back of her closet but she hasn’t worn any in so long they’ve slipped her mind since they’re so far out of rotation. Varia is a tomboy too, (you guys think I have a type?) but I could totally see her rocking a dress/skirt and some big ‘ol boots.

#MakeComics: There are a few ways to introduce a new character. From a humor standpoint, I think the worst way is to have a joke that relies on prior knowledge of the new character. I think writers are prone to doing this because they forget that the readers aren’t as familiar with the character as they are.

The other way, besides just walking them on to the page and saying “this is Phil” is to bring them into a scene in a way that establishes something about them, but doesn’t require prior knowledge. Instead you infer implied prior knowledge about them from what you seen in the establishing scene. I’d like to think I did this here, but in reality this page could have benefited from having Omar (that’s the guy in the beard) introduced previously. Most of you know Max is a bit of a strident feminist, and you can infer her relationship with this guy from what’s going on in the page. Unfortunately I am the least qualified to judge this since it’s my own characters and my own writing. I wrote myself into a little bit of a corner as I realized this scene only has a few more pages and if I wanted to get this joke in I had missed the opportunity to introduce him prior to this page. Also I’m breaking my own rule about putting people in the Who’s Who before they’re named in the comic just cause people will want to know who this guy is and that’s where they should be looking. I could have easily had Max saying “Damn it Omar” but I preferred her with just the death stare.

This page colored by Keith.

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.