Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.
Title page
I like how this title page came out. It’s a little on the nose. But I like it.
page 1239 – 1242
Firstly, I wanted to establish that this is very soon after the last chapter ended. Like a day or so.
Then Mr. Tamura off is having the lights go out. I wanted to think of what would be the dark equal of the light getting super bright like went Cal started falling apart. I figured the lights fizzing out was good. Then I tried to draw it in still images and realize I maybe should have tried something else. But I am glad about the coming out of the shadows bit. Wrapping around Mr. Tamura, I thought would give The Lady a somewhat sinister vibe.
page 1243 – 1251
And to follow the sinister vibe, what’s more sinister seeming than a parking garage at night? Cal suddenly appears all kinds of bad shape. I wanted it to seem like he fell out of the shadows. Kinda in a clumsier way that The Lady rose from the shadows. The cracks in Cal are supposed to being showing dark and light magic. It’s part of why he can’t keep himself together.
On Brad and Ally finding Rita, I wanted to keep the focus on Ally and how her response to grief is anger and violence. That way I wouldn’t have to rely on cliche shots of her crying at the end of Sorcery 101 but it was still clear she was grieving. Really this whole chapter is Ally reacting to the death of a loved one with anger.
Also, Danny basically saying maybe we should just give up cause this is too powerful, kinda speaks to his mental state at the moment.
And every scene in the magic shop make it clear to me how pressed for time I was when I drew this. If you look at magic shop’s last appearance (when Danny is getting threatened by Seth), there is WAY more stuff on the shelves and displays. Here it’s just got red boxes.
page 1252 – 1258
Big ass info dump. Not much else to say. I try to avoid these now in my writing now. This scene is one of the downsides of planning a comic that takes 10 years to finish. I planned something that is really complicated and convoluted and relies on details that couldn’t be shown earlier. And by the time I got to this part in the story and realize how clumsy these info dumps are, the story had already was too dependent on this in a few other info dumps to wrap up. I did try to make it at least a little more interesting like with the bit that has Lucy cut off their own hand.
And really this is all to get Danny to touch the knife. What a crazy random happenstance that the angel who had broken the rules so bad worked with Ally who is very close personal relationship to the man who is the wielder of The Lady’s angel killing knife. Also, quite the conquience that she is close friends with Danny. Really what are the odds that he would get that close to the knife.
page 1259 – 1261
So while Lucy is very good at the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. Both Cal and Lucy aren’t supposed to interfere with the opposite side. Cal gets in trouble for taking liberties that made a creature of darkness rethink their actions or choose something else. Where as Lucy just flat out threatens/blackmails Ally. The two sides aren’t just supposed to be light and dark, but also order and chaos, day and night, and really any opposites you can think of that aren’t good and evil. So Lucy could always get away with serious bending of any rules or orders they get.
page 1262 – 1267
Mr. Tamura returns all bruises. I originally was gonna show his fight with Cal, but decided not to because really that fight doesn’t matter to Danny’s story. We weren’t gonna learn anything that helped push it forward or reinforced a theme/idea that’s important. It might have made Cal a little more sympathetic/more sad about Rita’s death. But I felt that would have cheapened Ally’s reaction a little, which was more important. Also, we never spent much time with Cal before this, so it would be meandering to spend a lot of time on him now. Also the fight would have raise a lot of questions about Mr. Tamura which I knew weren’t going to be answered.
Mr. Tamura respects Ally. So even though what he did is kinda over protective bullshit that denies her agency, I wanted to show him apologizing. He also doesn’t interrupt or argue with her while she yells at him.