DEAR EVERYONE: I apologize for alluding to the existence of an interesting character, setting it up in a way that suggests a future entertaining interaction with the protagonist, revealing that this character showed up to her professional photo shoot ready
I have good news for Catastrophe Theory readers! Because next Haunted transitions into Xiyuan’s office, I have to do a crapload of character design that I didn’t do before starting the comic (YOLO), which means the path of least resistance
he what (We’ve used the second-to-last-panel-is-a-beat-panel trope—this is officially a real webcomic.) (NOTE: Have you voted in the Monthly SimLit Short Story Contest yet? Go do it!! Help support our small community! For a genre this niche, every vote counts,
Let’s briefly go into this guy’s name, 刘希愿 (Liú Xīyuàn). 刘 (Liú): Destroy or kill—archaic meaning, nowadays it’s used only as a last name. (To pronounce, try to say ‘Leo’ as one syllable with a rising tone.) 希 (Xī): First
**NINA FACTS** Nina Chu’s name is written 朱妮娜. Nina went to business school in Windenburg. Nina doesn’t want to be here right now. She’d rather sleep in. She went through 10 masturbation jokes and “The Magical Fruit” before naming the
I trust you all to have figured this out on your own already, it’s just worth saying that some pages don’t enhance characterization or drive the story forward, and are there mainly because the author wants to make super-niche jokes
You, ’90s NYC expert: Uh, Metrocards in the late ’90s had a much smaller white band, and the “INSERT THIS WAY” strip was a duller gold. Me: Arrggh, I know, I merged layers like an idiot and had to move
You, cool and savvy person who knows a thing or two about digital art: Dolly, this is pretty busy. You want to avoid visual clutter so the reader doesn’t get overstimulated. It’s hard to know what to focus on this
Dolly placing Landgraab Apartments: Ok, so Spice Market is Jackson Heights, obviously, which would suggest the Casbah Gallery is in Brooklyn—likely Bushwick or Williamsburg—but when I think galleries I think Chelsea, especially in the late nineties when gentrification just started
Right, this is a romance and we have to allude to a love interest somewhere. (If this is late, it’s because I’m trying to draw Bernard but also cracking up and repeating “soOOoo… who’s the gUUuuuyyYYYYYY” to myself in the