Page 34 – 38
The demon’s name is from the scientific name for a coo coo bird. So I asked for the design to have a beaky looking face with no eyes. Yishan added the fleshy flappy skin. I wanted the monster to be fairly easy to kill this time around because the challenge later is gonna be keeping Joyce away from the fight.
page 39 – 42
This scene is about upping the ante. The demon maybe hasn’t seemed THAT dangerous up until this point. It hasn’t directly hurt anything but I wanted to show the full implications of putting it’s needs before your own safety. Hense the vampire walking into the sun and burning up. Then immediately after the demon mind controls Joyce, so we got the threat made clear and then it’s directed at a character we care about.
page 43 – 47
These few pages I tired to build up some brief tension before the reveal of Buffy finding Joyce. Then I wanted Buffy to try and deal with it herself.
page 48 – 52
These are all kinda dangers in the kitchen that can accidentally get left unattended. It’s a little bit of minor jeopardy before the big fight. I also wanted the demon to be sorta indifferent to Buffy because it only cares about being taken care of. Like it’s not thinking it’s all want. Kina like an actual child 😛
page 53 – 63
Buffy springs into action. This scene I wanted to make sure while they were restraining Joyce they weren’t hurting her. So Joyce is doing all the damage to the scoobies.
One of the fun things about comics is you can do fun things with lettering. I specially suggested the “words” of the spell make ribbons that attack the demon. It’s fun to take advantage of the medium.
page 64 – 68
If you listen to my podcast with Spike and Amanda (Dirty Old Ladies) I talked a little bit about this scene on the episode of censorship. One of the examples of when censorship is good was in relation to me working on Buffy. The demon has to look monstrous when Buffy fights and kills it because it can’t look like Buffy kills a child when taken out of context. It’s a branding/property protection thing that makes sense and doesn’t really interfere with anything story wise.
page 69 – 72
Since a lot of the conflict on the personal end of things was Buffy and her Mom so I wanted to end on a nice Buffy and her mom money. Something sweet and it very they ended up getting the mother daughter time Joyce wanted.