HEART-SHAPED SKULL

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-NINE It’s extremely difficult to come up with a new take on vampires. Even putting a new visual spin on the ol’ sucky-sucks is tough. Don’t think “mouth opens wide enough to roll up the nose” was ever gonna set the world on fire, but I tried. Those goopy eyes are nice…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-SEVEN I was really uptight about drugs and alcohol when I was in my 20’s. There’s a history of substance abuse in my family, so maybe being uptight saved me from disaster, but man… I must have been annoying as hell to be around sometimes. Judgy. Choosing to avoid specific chemicals is…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-FIVE This is just frankly an astonishing haircut. You might say Kasper’s majestic bunny hair is nothing but a cartoonist’s fancy, the fevered imagining of a wretched shut-in blissfully unaware of the physics governing the world around them. YOU ARE WRONG. I have seen this haircut in real life. It was green.…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-THREE Ugh, there’s that slur again. Sorry, everybody. I believe this is the second and final time it appears in the Serenity Rose saga, and just like before, it’s coming from a character we’re supposed to find repulsive. Might change it for future printings of the book. Lot of pop punk hate…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-ONE Thinking about how much time I spent getting the texture juuuuust right on that 2X4. Or all those teensy-tiny little wires behind the tower in panel four. Or that whole horrible frame! Do you think people even appreciate all that unnecessary trouble? I do! I loooooove teensy-tiny details, the more the…

SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-NINE This page really shows off the advantages (and disadvantages) of doing every last thing yourself. It’s an enormous pain, but I have to say, being one person really streamlines communication. I’m imagining myself now, trying to explain to a letterer how I want these balloons arranged. “Yeah, the first one’s divided…

SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-SIX SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-SEVEN The only two-page spread in the book! I think this is a pretty accurate depiction of the goth/industrial scene in 2002. Or 2024, frankly. Spooky people like to keep the old ways alive! Probably less rave and “cyber” stuff now, though.  All those obscure little margin jokes…

SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-FIVE I’ve never shoplifted anything on purpose, but I did it accidentally one time, and if I’d been caught it would have been the most humiliating moment of my life. A lot of you are probably familiar with the PREVIEWS comic catalog. It’s this enormous brick of a thing that comes out…

SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-THREE I think this page is the first time we hear Tess is a crafter. Thought it’d be cool if my witchy conjuror’s best pal was also a kind of conjuror. To me, as someone with no mechanical aptitude to speak of, people who know how to build things are as magical…

SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-ONE Well, there she is, everybody: Our first real look at Sera’s rockstar fairy godmother, Vicious Whisper.  Pretty sure Vicious fits at least one of the internet’s 10,000 definitions of “Mary Sue,” but that’s sort of the point. For Sera, Vicious is the Platonic ideal of a witch, the perfect version of…