Another week, another page.  The Army keeps rolling along.

This is the last bit with the Russian for a while.  I probably went overboard with that, actually, but once I set the precedent, it was kind of hard to break.  Maybe in the end, I’ll add an appendix with translations (which would assume, of course, that I’d have some actual Russian-speakers of my acquaintance make better translations than I can do).  But anyway.

More tanks.  And our first look at UNA battle armor.  Santelli, by the way, is an old friend of mine from college – he just sounded like an infantry captain.  I don’t know why.  I hope he doesn’t mind being a comic book character.

This page I mulled over almost interminably, pretty much right up to the last possible second.  Segues from scene to scene like this one are hard to make, and usually end up giving me writer’s block.  I broke it, however, by simply taking the page for what it was worth and deferring the big “so what happns next?” process until the next one.

This is a result of the fact that I don’t really work from set scripts, instead preferring to work on the fly and write as I go, one page at a time.  I have a general list of what is going on and where things need to be by which page, plot-wise, but beyond that I sort of let the story happen on the page.  The disadvantage is that I sometimes get into awkward corners.  Usually, (insofar as 7 pages constitutes “usual”) I like to have the next page written and at least sketched out by about ten days before I plan to post it, or put another way, when the preceding page is about half done.  This time, I literally had no idea what it would be until I sat down and started drawing.  I’m pretty pleased with the result, but now I have to see if I can handle the next transition.

I’ll keep plugging though.  There’s fight in me, yet!