Meanwhile back on Ceres

I guess they could be anywhere by now ....

That's so beautiful. Like Chang just completely missed the point....

I think Chang got.  He just did not want to come right out and announce that the men were dead.

Plausable deniability too. Elsewhere is ever so much a big place. Me, I like AWOL to the compost bin. Though taking up aquaculture and sleeping with the fishes is good too. Elsewhere.

The Germans called it 'evacuation".

Another good one.

So, Glenn, weather there boring enough for ya?

Another good one.

So, Glenn, weather there boring enough for ya?

What?

Stale joke, long expired, please discard.

Well I guess thats the end of the invasion storyline.  I have to say the build up was good, if marred by the now proven meaningless detour to Mars.  But the ending was a real letdown.  This might have made a better prose story than a comic.

Well I guess thats the end of the invasion storyline.  I have to say the build up was good, if marred by the now proven meaningless detour to Mars.  But the ending was a real letdown.  This might have made a better prose story than a comic.

Here's the deal about the Mars "detour." It is one segment in an ongoing story line, "The King and I," that also tours human colonies on Venus and Mercury. Which, in turn lead to a subsequent arc. As prose, it was written as a distinct story from the Rhonda arc. The decision was made to blend them, in part, to let the artists switch off. I think in the final book format, it will work, because it will read much faster than with a daily drip.

As to the dramatic construction of the end of the arc, it represents a tried and true technique. Usually, the rule is, "show, don't tell." However, there are some clear exceptions. L. Neil Smith and I had a conversation about it. In one of his Martyn books, the evil brother tortures the good brother, to death. Neil's only reference to the torture was to have the bad brother say, "First, we will start with the eyes..." (ellipses included.) Now that is scary.

My two equivalents in this arc were, "Just for their sick amusement, those animals were humiliating and terrorizing Kate. They had her stripped naked and tied to the storage shelves. They did things ..." and "Chang, my men are only human." In both cases, details are left to the reader's imagination. What did you imagine?

I'm betting readers came up with truly vile visions that would beat anything we could illustrate in a panel. So I think it is far better to just drop hints in the denouement and let readers run wild and create their own mental horror show.

I bet you like the "Hostel" movies. They don't leave anything to the imagination.

L. Neil Smith is big on the dramatic switch off technique.

In the Venus Belt, Win, Koko and Lucy are swarmed by Things With Tentacles. Fade to black. Then they are lazing in the sun, the monsters being revealed as harmless biological remotes for their Orca hosts.

In Hope, ain't gonna happen but one damned fine book, there is a gunshot, Alexander Hope clutches at his chest, break to something completly different for a couple pages, then we discover the clutching was for his pistol in a shoulder holster.

You have read those Glenn, haven't you?

Never seen the Hostel movies or read Hope but there is a difference between a monologue informing us of what happened in the climactic scene and actually doing the work of showing it.  Its a comic strip.  But I suppose honest men can disagree.  I don't care to see a girl being raped but I would have liked to see the action as it happened.  No need to imply this makes me some sort of sick voyeur.

And its a bit late to claim you made some sort of artistic choice when you already admitted you did it to entice people to buy your book.  Nothing wrong with that but lets not pretend that is was a "dramatic" choice.  It wasn't.  You are a capitalist first God love ya.

And its a bit late to claim you made some sort of artistic choice when you already admitted you did it to entice people to buy your book. 

Uh, that was what people on my planet call sarcasm. Yes, we want readers to buy the books, but to get them to do that, we just do our best to write and illustrate our stories as well as we can. Sometimes that will mean we will use artistic techniques that frustrate you. Sorry about that, but we calls 'em as we sees 'em.

I am not familiar with the Hostel movies but Glenn, have you seen this dramatic video. I at least, think it's a hoot and the ending is hardly subtle at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4sZ2A04GrY&feature=player_embedded