Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Dex Parios – Too Good to be True – MK Stangeland Jr.

(7 Panels)

Panel 1: DEX PARIOS is wearing a bathrobe. She holds a cup of coffee in one hand as she goes through her mail. In front of her she holds one piece of mail – a bank statement – that has caused her to freeze as she tries to repress a spit-take.

DEX PARIOS: (Text Box) …

Panel 2: DEX swallows her coffee. She puts both her coffee mug and bank statement down the table.

DEX PARIOS: (Text Box) One billion dollars?

Panel 3: DEX tries to clam herself and keep a cool head as the bank statement sits on the table in front of her.

DEX PARIOS: (Text Box) How does my bank account suddenly have an extra one billion dollars?!

Panel 4: DEX holds the bank statement in front of her, but folded so that she can’t read it as she prepares to open it again and make sure she didn’t make a mistake.

DEX PARIOS (1): (Text Box) Why am I questioning this? It’s a billion dollars!

DEX PARIOS (2): (Text Box) How could I not question it? It’s a billion dollars!

Panel 5: DEX opens the bank statement again.

DEX PARIOS (1): (Text Box) It’s too good to be true.

DEX PARIOS (2): (Text Box) There’s a saying about too good to be true.

Panel 6: DEX PARIOS looks at the bank statement to see that she didn’t make a mistake. She really has no idea how to react.

DEX PARIOS: (Text Box) No, I’m not seeing things.

Panel 7: DEX PARIOS slams the bank statement on the table in front of her. Her attitude shouldn’t be one of joy or frustration – it’s far more neutral out of a confusion about how to react to this mysterious turn of events.

DEX PARIOS (1): $#*^!


(END PAGE)

3 comments:

  1. I like the idea you're presenting here, MK (the perennially broke Dex suddenly has more money than she knows what to do with - although a billion dollars seems a bit much), but I'm not as sold on your execution.

    I hope it doesn't feel too nitpicky, but the captions / text boxes threw me off from the get go, as Stumptown, hasn't used that type of internal monologue to this point.

    Instead of focusing on the discovery of the money, I think this could play better with Dex talking with one of her supporting characters - perhaps Ansel or Grey - to explain the weirdness of what's going on. That could allow the situation to play out more organically, spend less time on characters coming to terms with the event, and make for a smooth transition at the end of the page to what comes next.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can imagine how giving her someone to play off of for this would be better. However, I'm really not familiar with Stumptown itself - I'd never even heard of it before it was nominated and all my research came from Wikipedia and TVTropes, so I kept my character interactions limited/nonexistent on purpose.

      Though I could see how, if I did have more familiarity with the property, giving this kind of explanation via a conversation with someone else would be better.

      Likely also notable - while captions may not fit, it's probably better than the thought balloons I was originally going to use before I considered that using them probably wouldn't fit with the tone of the comic.

      So I can see where you're coming from on your critiques, and I'm guessing a lot of it is simply that you have a billion times more experience and knowledge of the comic than I do, so you'd know a lot more about those things fitting or not fitting with what's been written.

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    2. I am admittedly locked into Stumptown in a pretty serious way, so I apologize if my feedback was overly focused on that element of things. I hope that some of it was of use to you. :)

      Thinking on it a bit more, this situation could also play out really interestingly at the bank itself...

      Delete

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