Comic 783 -- Weighing the Odds

 Gail and Krylov face off...

Lone Wolf and Cub (Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima) is one of my favorite comic series. In the fifth volume, we find a classic story called "Half Mat, One Mat, a Fistful of Rice," in which our tortured hero finds himself facing off with swordsman of equal (or maybe even greater) skill. Through multiple pages, Lone Wolf visualizes how this duel will unfold... and each scenario ends in either a draw or his own death. It's a riveting piece of comic writing and art.

I've always wanted to do something like that. Since my pages come out only once a month, I could not justify trying the patience of my readers by dedicating page after page to this psychic duel, as was done in Lone Wolf and Cub. So here is my tiny homage, presented with great affection. I hope you enjoy it.

Return of the Outtakes

 Well, it came to me about a week before August drew to a close that I was never going to get the strip done in time. So instead, here we have... Outtakes!

For those of you who are new to Thunderstruck, I had a tradition of marking chapter breaks with some bonus art, wallpapers, and silly outtakes. You can find the collection here. 

These ones are mined from the post-hiatus chapters, so they're a bit of a trip down memory lane.

One strip a month is not much to ask for a readership, but when the month was like this August was for me, it still became more than I could manage. I hope the outtakes are amusing enough to tide you over. Let us cross our fingers for September.

Comic 782 -- Swords

 Krylov always has her weapons of choice handy...

So... I don't normally like to do comics like this. Since I'm only posting once a month, I prefer to move the story along as much as I can in each installment.

However, this month was very busy, and I had a lot of traveling to do. As a result, I needed to do something a little less content-heavy than my usual comic.

With any luck, I won't have to do this too often.

Comic 781 -- Sufficient Perception

 Let them fight!

What is the sound effect for a ki-blast hitting a handgun hard enough to disassemble it? I went with "Zzang." I don't suppose anyone can definitively say otherwise.

Comic 780 -- Recognition

 Gail figures out what she's up against a few seconds too late...

A split-second decision can have lasting consequences. Gail will find that out soon enough...

I don't do a ton of link sharing, but here's one I think my readers might enjoy:

Overly Sarcastic Productions

The producers of this YouTube channel love mythology as much as I do. With charming hand-drawn videos and excellent writing, the creators (Red & Blue) provide superbly summarized accounts of myths from around the world. Check it out!

Comic 779 -- Sakrament Abbey

 Sorry for the delay! Here's the new comic:

Bad luck and bad timing can undo even the best-laid plans, unfortunately. This was true of my scheduling this month... and for Gail, Sax, and Hayaka's plan to snatch Emilia from Vigil's secret hospital.

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UPDATE: Whoops! I screwed up some links. Try again if you couldn't see the page before.

Comic 778 -- Key Phrase

 Gail and friends arrive in Estonia...

Personally, I think it would be very rude to say someone smells like a liar.

Comic 777 -- Speaking Medically, Not Mythically

There's a chimera in Thunderstruck!

...but perhaps not in the way one might have expected.

Apropos of nothing, I always thought Bellerophon got way too much credit for defeating the chimera. It was Pegasus who did all the hard work. Perhaps the ancient Greeks agreed, since ol' Bellerophon went out like a punk in the end. 

Comic 776 -- About Those Security Goons

 Bella always keeps back a few choice details for times like this...

I do enjoy the word "goon." 

So the art in this one came out a little janky... still learning to work with the tablet. One of my particular gifts in learning a new piece of software is figuring out how to screw things up so you can't undo the error. I should keep a little sticker collection on my laptop, like a pilot racking up kills. 

Still, I love the tablet, and I'm gonna get the hang of it in time.

Comic 775 -- Not Much of a Decision

 Back on Gail's side of the story...

I don't know if those are really the "three ingredients of stealth." Maybe there are others? Maybe the others are so secret they can't be spoken of? That seems very stealthy to me.

So I've taken my first steps down the path of using some new artistic tools. I have now fulfilled a long-held dream of owning a really good drawing tablet--got a relatively new iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil 2. And I'm getting used to the Procreate software on that platform.

My previous process went like this:

1. Pencil on Bristol paper.

2. Ink with a brush.

3. Scan to clean up, color, letter, and finish in Photoshop.

This time around, I did step 2 on the iPad with Procreate rather than in Photoshop. I'm not unhappy with the results, and I think once I get the hang of it, I'll see a certain savings in time.

Procreate is a cool piece of software, but in order to get the full use of it, I'm going to have to overcome about 25 years of habits built using Photoshop. So I'm not sure how much of the coloring process I'll eventually be able to do on the tablet. We shall see, we shall see.

Oh, and hey, look! 2020 is almost over. Man, this year just whizzed by. Like a steamroller. Through molten glass. Being piloted by a sloth. An evil-tempered sloth who hates us.

Hope you are all well and safe, and wishing you better times in '21.