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Panel 1: Establishing shot of the Van Buren Bridge that connects Central City and Keystone City, night. We are on the Keystone City side which is the more blue-collar industrial town of the two. The cloudy night sky is flashing lightning in the distance...
CAPTION: 3X2 past Flashpoint.
CAPTION: "...can't outrun the Sideways Men forever, Wallace..."
Panel 2: Under the bridge, hiding behind the steel struts, an older man (around 45 years old) with rusty blonde hair greying at the temples. He's wearing a dark blue body suit, but his face is hidden in shadow. He has the build of a middleweight boxer in his prime, and his body language is angry annoyance as he points towards us.
BLUE: ...M space is nothing to them, jumping between branes as easy as meditation...
WORD BALLOON: (from off-panel) Maybe for you. I always had a hard time staying still...
BLUE: ...and when they find us, they will kill us! Have you ever seen someone get "folded"?
Panel 3: A young woman (between 25 and 30) statuesque and athletically voluptuous, with long black curly hair in a dark red bodysuit. (a good photo reference would be Leryn Franco: http://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=745&q=Leryn+Franco&oq=Leryn+Franco&gs_l=img.3...1858.4488.0.5537.12.5.0.7.0.1.278.754.2j1j2.5.0...0.0...1ac.1.W_vTcTt4oP8) ) Her face is hidden as well as she comes out of hiding from the rocks.
WORD BALLOON: (from off-panel) I'm not worried about getting "folded", Vic. I'm worried about us. This timeline didn't recall us.
RED: Is that why I can't remember anything before we got here? I can't remember anything...
WORD BALLOON: (from off-panel) The Sideways Men have been screwing with your timeline for a while. Your history was a Gordian knot. Now it's a blank.
Panel 4: A slender man with a runner's build and red hair, face hidden as he peers around a support. He wears a yellow body suit, and looks ready to make a dash.
YELLOW: Besides, we can't worry about that now. All that concerns me right now is finding Gabriel Walker. Anyways...
Panel 5: Running out from under the bridge, towards us: WALLY WEST leading DONNA TROY, and VIC SAGE, up the rocky hill, the bridge and the river behind them.
WALLY: ...they can't kill you if you were never born.
Loved this page. Firstly, these sideways men, are they a creation of your own? I couldn't find any reference to them. They way they add a great menace to the page and your storyline here that really worked for me.
ReplyDeleteThe set up, pacing and final reveal are all so well handled. I would love to see how all this played out.
Alan Moore and Warren Ellis both had written something along the lines of how we would perceive higher dimensional beings as 3-dimensional cross-sections of themselves. The Sideways Men are mine, but inspired by Moore and Ellis's suppositions. If ever I get a chance to do a time-travel story, you bet I'm using them.
DeleteThanks!
They make for a great villain. The idea personally brought to mind some of the new Dr Who villains.
DeleteSideways Men.
ReplyDeleteCreepy as hell.