I implore you to read Sydney’s last bubble in the most Smirnoffy accent you can. I won’t say this joke was a prime motivation for the entire Sigil story arc… but it was definitely one of the first gags I wrote down when I started putting ideas for it together… and this was like, well before page 200.

It played out slightly differently in my head. Ingsol’s speech about the horrors of Vampire starvation was longer and more harrowing to give it more gravitas, and I really wanted a pause panel of Sydney glancing around while Ingsol continued to pose dramatically, like she’s thinking “Should I say it? What a set up! How can I not say it?” And the final panel, Sydney’s expression was supposed to be a little goofier, like maybe a bit wall-eyed, like she’s, well, really leaning into the impression. Alas, I drew her eyes like 5 times and never really got them quite right. Still I think it came out pretty good.

Panel 2 also suffered from a lack of space on the page. I wanted it to be a lot more chaotic in the background, like a nurse with with an armful of those blood packets running away from another vampire and a couple more drinking from a “keg” of blood or something equally ridiculous. (Suzie isn’t injured in that picture, she was just caught in the Vampire equivalent of someone popping the cork on the champagne.) There’s only so much space on one page.

#MakeComics: More from the eat my cake and have it too files:

Stuff I cut:

Ingsol prefacing his speech in panel 2 with more vamp history. I pulled it for space but also it was a little redundant with him telling Sydney of prior purges of creatures that couldn’t keep their bloodthirst under control: “Some strains of wampirism produce wiolent and feral sirelings. These have been largely culled, but an individual’s reaction upon embracing the night is alvays a vild card.”

Sydney still hoping for a workaround – cut for space and being entirely tangential to the page: “So no uh, Synthaglobin in the real world yet?”

Ingsol: “Vat?”

Sydney: “You know, synthetic… Oh I’ll just say it. TruBlood.”

Ingsol: “No, however we can survive on any mammalian blood quite easily.”

Sydney: “I bet Human bloods tastes best though, right?”

Ingsol: “Indeed. Also there is a certain… sensual component to feeding, so feeding on animals is qvite stigmatized.”

Sydney: “So it’s fair to say you guys have a real food fetish, huh?”

Ingsol: (giving her ‘the stare’) “…”

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. (As soon as I get up. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)

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.