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
Fairly straight forward. This part is mostly the fight so it works as a cover.
page 197 – 199
Before the fight I wanted to establish two things that hint at the end of the fight. The first being Suryu’s heals which are gonna be used against Seth. And then Seth being sexually harassing Suryu.
page 200 – 202
I wanted the panels to be kinda off balance during the fight to make things more interesting.
I tried to make it clear Seth is dodging Suryu during the fight but he’s not quite fast enough. Seth is however very good at making people mad at him.
page 203 – 205
Jeff now has all kinds of brain damage. He’ll get better. But he has to stay a werewolf. That last panel of Loki pulling the hair pin out was fun to draw.
page 206 – 210
And we have more of Seth being a sexist asshole to get Suryu mad. He gets a heal in the forehead for his trouble. Then he adds some sexual assault in the mix. So for the second time that night he gets thrown through a wall. Nothing is off limits for Seth.
page 211 – 213
And then we find out that’s his plan. But Suryu is furious so speedy retreat needs to happen. Also I used this to show just how fast werewolves recover.
page 214 – 216
And here is where I set up what is the longest running conflict in the comic, well other than Seth’s dickishness. For the record all the rules of The Order are mostly don’t bring too much attention to yourself rules. And as Aaron’s line implies Seth breaks/pushes these rules a lot.
page 217 – 221
Jeff gets some brief werewolf lessons. Brad’s expression when the cure gets brought up is something I’m proud of. He reaaaaaallly doesn’t want to break the news here. You can tell where Jeff’s priorities in life are (aka sports) when he is cheered up by finding out werewolf stuff will help him make the soccer team.
And while Brad tells him the werewolf stuff Danny was off getting cosmetic contacts and blood.
page 222 – 225
I generally try to show don’t tell. I don’t know how clear it ever was, but vampire powers in general is tied to how they eat. Maybe it’s more clear after Pat is tortured by Suryu and it takes him several chapters to recover compared to Seth’s page or so here.
And Seth continues his tread of doing stuff without giving a shit what others think.
page 226 – 229
So just wrapping things up. Mostly this is dedicated to the running joke about January which is werewolf mating season. This is another thing I would honestly take out if I was starting Sorcery 101 over. I thought it was a funny joke at 19 but it ended up opening a can of worms with a small section of readers that then wanted extremely detailed explanation about werewolf sex. That’s not a thing I ever wanted to focus on. In hind sight, I should have realize that’s where the Internet was gonna take things. Actually, no. You’re never ready for someone to ask you in person at a convention how a werewolf dick works because you didn’t approve their several comments asking about. Yes, that did happen. Just goes to show one of the valuable lessons I’ve learned about writing is to think more about each aspect of a story. Even a small joke. Most of the stuff I’d do differently now has to do with pacing and getting better as a writer. This is like the one thing where I want to change it sololy because of the reader reaction. It alone made me think harder about how I present my comics to people.
There we go. These were all originally drawn in 2006. I redid them in 2012.