Double Cross Scene Compilation - CH2 Pgs 16-25

Howdy, everyone!

Time for another scene compilation with "DVD-style" commentary, which I'll be posting weekly until I start getting the pages from Gabriel and Vero for Fallen Chapter Two in November.

In terms of personal updates, I went back to my home state of Vermont last week for the first time since 2018. I really love it there, and my closest friends live in Burlington, but with the pandemic and other concerns I haven't been able to return. Earlier this year, my husband, Fernando, let me know that he really wanted to experience foliage season and the stars aligned for us to make a quick early-October trip. Seeing my friends was absolutely amazing—it was like no time had passed. I also got to sneak in some amazing bicycling on the Lamoille Rail Trail (so gorgeous and fun to ride on!) as well as the newly extended Burlington Bike Path (that now has a causeway that puts you four miles into the middle of Lake Champlain!) And we did indeed get to see some gorgeous foliage, like here at Middlebury College:

What I didn't get to do was post last week's scene compilation! I had the best intentions, and brought my laptop, but these compilations require a lot more focus than my typical page updates, and with fitting in all the people I wanted to see, I couldn't find even a moment to work on it. But I was serious about getting these out to y'all. So, that means that in addition to this posting, I'll try to squeeze in another scene compilation on Friday. Two postings this week! Stay tuned!

And in this scene comp, things get very noir when Teen Spooky meets a dangerous, new client.

Check out what happens under the fold!

These pages were first published way back in January-February 2020. If you want to read the previous scene compilations (and, even better, read the whole first chapter all at once), you can find them on the TYP:DC Scene Compilation Collection page. 

My DVD-style commentary is below the comic pages. And the pages themselves are full-resolution here on Patreon, so feel free to zoom-in!

Let's get to it!

                  Preach!

Embracing Film Noir

I've always loved film noir as a genre, especially neo noir. (If you're looking for a definition, this is one of my favorites: in the end, film noir is about two things: how bad people can be, and how good they can look.) My first short film, Pitch, was intended to be noir (it involved an angel and a demon, so I took to calling it a "theological noir.") And that aesthetic has always informed how I viewed Spooky's day job as a paranormal investigator.

Adam is also a fan of the classic noir. So, even though Double Cross is Flyboy's story, we were both looking forward to exploring that aesthetic whenever Spooky was acting in his PI role. We got to see some of that in the first scene between Adult Spooky and Kanya. But this takes place at a time when Teen Spooky was heavily influenced by Cassidy so here is where we get to kick it into high gear. One of the classic tropes of the genre is the "meeting the client" scene, and with the circular panels and art deco shapes, you can see that Adam is now taking advantage of a 1940s/1950s film visual vocabulary. All of which is complemented by Vero's color choices. (We're all getting to have some fun here. :) )

Of course, one of the other most classic tropes of noir is

The Femme Fatale

Ambrosia is beautiful, haughty, rich, and vulnerable. She also is willing to use tears, sex, and even the life of a little girl to get what she wants. Is she bad? Or is she just drawn that way? It's something that Spooky and the rest of us will discover in future chapters. But in this scene, I had a ton of fun having Teen Spooky's hard-boiled PI play off of this archetype, all while Flyboy is in the room.

And this dangerous and sexy woman introduces some important new information:

There's a new demon in town and he's hella dangerous

It's in this scene that we first hear about Domanoth and learn that there's some connection between Flyboy's time and Spooky's. If you are current with the page updates, you'll know this particular demon becomes relevant to the story later.

And there's a girl to save!

We also get the introduction of Daniela, an eight-year-old girl in the clutches of a monster. As I said in an earlier scene compilation, it was important to me that our heroes act as true superheroes in this story arc and that means saving people.

Yes, Flyboy wants to save both Cory and (if possible) Adult Spooky, but it's going to take quite a bit of time before that's even possible. Daniela gives us an innocent they can try to save right now, and that gives me as the writer some useful hooks to push the characters and the action forward in a compelling way. :)

Of course, that also puts our time-traveling hero in a bit of a bind...

Flyboy's Choice

In the present day, Flyboy essentially has two "superhero parents": Commander and Adult Spooky. (Sorry, Tsunami! You're more of a big brother to Mitch...) Commander believes in rules, tactics, self-control, and being smart. And Spooky believes in trusting his instincts, saving everyone no matter what, and following his heart. After the events of the Flyboy Bonus Comic, Mitch has decided he needs to be a lot more like Commander. But, like Spooky, he feels a tremendous need to save everyone he can.

In this scene, he chooses to risk changing the timeline to try to save a little girl. Later in the story, he'll make a different choice. Navigating these two paths and the two sides of himself that they represent is a key part of Flyboy's character arc in DC. Which will he ultimately choose? That we won't find out until the last pages. :)

Odds and Ends

There were a few other things that were on my mind as I wrote this scene:

• I wanted to keep fleshing out Teen Spooky's relationship with Cassidy, showing both how much they like each other and that they have each others' back

• I continued to play with place names in my alternate world. Bay City is, of course, an analogue for San Francisco, so Hunter's Point becomes Jaeger's Point here. (What's interesting is that in the urban fantasy novel I'm working on now, which is set in actual San Francisco, there is also an important action scene that takes place in a church in Hunter's Point. Apparently, I haven't said all I needed to say about that!)

• I was wanting to show a bit of the difference between the hype around Spooky's romantic history and the reality. Adult Spooky has a reputation for being with a lot of women, even when he was young. But the truth is much more nuanced and less sensational. Ambrosia tries to use her sexual wiles to get this teen on her side, but he's not having it. This Spooky, like the Adult version, has bigger fish to fry.

• Like in the previous scene, I had some more fun with the fact that Mitch is wearing a superhero costume in this film noir world. I still like Teen Spooky's "fashion consultant" quip.

• It was also fun to research the kind of 40s slang that Cassidy would choose to lean into (lettuce for money, "the bee's knees"). It's a little thing, but sometimes the little things keep things fresh for you as you're writing.

Let me know what you think!

Anyway, those were the things I was thinking about when I was writing this scene. I hope you enjoyed revisiting it along with my own memories.

Please let me know your own thoughts below. It's your feedback that makes it fun for me to create these, so please jump in and share!

And thank you, as always, for making this comic possible. Sharing these scenes with you helps remind me of how much I love creating this story. And it's only possible because of your support.

Y'all totally rock. I'll post the next set of pages next Tuesday! I hope to see you there! :D