This page really could have benefited from another panel or two between the final ones. Max looking around inside the bubble as it engulfs her, then one of her taking off her mask for a test sniff of the air. It’s challenging cutting down the movie of Grrl Power I see in my head into panels, on top of the challenge of laying them out on the page. (And fighting my desire to draw everything as large as possible.) Comics y’all!

Another difference between the in-my-head version and this one is originally, Sydney discovered the function of this orb in a more dire situation. Like helping shore up a structurally compromised oil rig or something, in water deep enough that racing to the surface would be a considerable danger. The reason it didn’t happen like that was simply because some simple testing of the orbs would reveal this function, and it’s not like the team isn’t going to do basic testing. So the drama took a backseat to practicality in this case. Of course if I had structured the story differently, I could have some oil rig incident happen on the morning of day 2 of the comic. Hmm. But that’s okay, not every revelation has to come on the tail of a harrowing event. Yeah, this version could have been vaguely more dramatic if Maxima couldn’t grab the chains cause Sydney was panicking, but again, none of that would make sense. Maxima can catch bullets. Grabbing that chain would be simple even if Sydney had been kicking her feet around, which she wasn’t because she’s a reasonably competent diver and knows how to reacquire her mask.

So yeah. The green one makes air. At least. Maybe it makes other stuff. Maybe if Sydney breathed molten gold like some kind of magma bling fish, it would make that. One question answered, and as usual, an infinite number more rear their head.

This page colored by Keith.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.