Surprise! Officer Patch! …again! He was only two pages away, so it wasn’t like it was a big suspenseful reveal. But this strip was supposed to be the bottom of page 44, revealing Patch after the attack on the same page. Like I said in the previous week’s posts, I did the layout for both pages, and finished page 44, and then thought to add a strip where Mal was at work to show how his day differed from Dee’s difficult day on page 43, and then to walk in to the apartment talking about how he had a good day. Tell you what, scroll down for a BONUS RECAP to see what that page would have looked like:

So, instead of the reveal being at the bottom of the page, Mal is having an okay day at work (investigating the ghost train), walks into the apartment looking for Dee, and is attacked by the mystery TV.

Here, there’s no establishing reason why Mal is so cheery walking into the apartment and then telling Dee & the reader that he had a good day. We just had a full day of Dee having a rough day at work and then he bumps into Patch. So we get an extra breather with this strip that starts page 44:

Just a contrast to what we experienced on page 43. I want the reveal to have an impact, but I also want to tell jokes, and have the story moved forward that way. Hopefully what happens the rest of the page has an impact, and then (lots of hype here) you get something even better with page 46, the last page of issue 2.

See you tomorrow!