Double Cross Scene Compilation - CH1 Pgs 58-67

Howdy, everyone!

Happy Fall!

Now that Chapter 4 of Double Cross is finished, and we need to take a little break before starting Fallen Chapter 2, I still want to keep providing fun content for my awesome Patrons (like you!) who keep this comic going. So, I've decided that in place of the single page updates on Tuesdays, I'll post a new scene compilation instead every week, until Fallen is ready to start posting. Hopefully, y'all will enjoy them!

In terms of personal updates, I did have the oral surgery where they removed my tooth, and it went well so I'm very glad to have that in my rear view mirror. It'll take a full year before they are able to replace it with a crown, but I'm in no pain and I am getting used to the gap.

In terms of my urban fantasy novel, things are going great! I'm in the third act, in the scene just before the climax, so I'm getting close to finishing! (The scene itself is actually an explicit sex scene—something I've only done a couple times for these comics, but writing a novel that is full of adults gives me a bit more flexibility in terms of content.) If all goes well, I hope to have something to share with you in a few months. Stay tuned!

For this scene compilation, the damaged Sphere Celestiale has unleashed a storm of magic portals, and The Platinum Priestess now unleashes an even more horrific complication. Will our heroes even be able to keep their feet on planet earth?

Check out what happens under the fold!

These pages were published way back in August-September 2019. If you want to read the previous scene compilations (and, even better, read them 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, especially on that double-page spread!

Onwards!

 So close, Mitch!

Fun with portals!

So, in this part of the battle, the artists and I really get to have some fun.

First of all, it was my intention for these portals to be able to take you anywhere in the universe—and beyond. In the script pages I called out several specific things I wanted to see and then gave Adam carte blanche to fill in the rest with whatever cool images he could come up with, and I really love his choices here. It's moments of collaboration like this which I one of my favorite parts of working on comics.

Also, random portals flying around increases the danger for our heroes exponentially. Remember when I talked about throwing rocks at the protagonists in Act 2? Well, the closer you get to the end, the bigger and faster those rocks need to be. Gotta keep increasing the tension!

Of course, the first thing those portals do is free a certain evil sorceress. And so

The Platinum Priestess takes her revenge against Spooky

There are consequences for Spooky deciding to take off the gloves and end The Platinum Priestess once and for all. Because there was always the chance she's been holding back as well.

But before she casts her wicked spell, she reveals something important for the future chapters. That regardless of her methods, she still sees herself as some kind of hero. Is that who she really is? Well, finding that out is a lot of what Double Cross is about, and I needed to lay the groundwork for that. (Hopefully for those kids in the background of the lawn she steps onto, she's at least finished with evil rituals for now!)

Speaking of the ground, it looks like her spell has called up ZOMBIES! Which meant that

I got to give co-creator Adam DeKraker some horror to draw

When I can, I like to tee up fun art for the artists of our comic and, if I recall correctly (this was 5 years ago!), I had just found out that Adam was working on a gay zombie comic. So, I figured it would be fun for him to also stretch some of those muscles here.

I think you can see he's having a lot of fun with it!

Someone who is not having a lot of fun, though, is Cory. He was already freaked our about seeing the gravestones before they even got to The Platinum Priestess. And now the living dead are crawling out of those graves all around him!

He wants to get away from the zombies as fast as possible, so he's not looking when he's backing up which means that

Cory falls through a portal onto the first page of Fallen

This is of course where our heroes stories diverge. I knew I wanted to create a more romance-focused comic and decided that Cory would helm it. This is one of the big moments I've been building up to throughout the whole chapter.

While Mitch desperately tries to get to him, we see Cory falling through a portal towards the mouth of a dinosaur, which is exactly where we pick up with Chapter 1, Page 1 of Fallen. (And we'll be starting Chapter 2 of Fallen by Tuesday, November 5th!)

And he leaves Mitch and Spooky behind and in trouble

One thing The Platinum Priestess revealed before she exited to suburbia was that the artifact that Spooky has been tracking in this chapter is indeed the Sphere Celestiale—the very thing he needed to rescue his friend, Anaado, from Hell. And now it's been destroyed!

And on top of that, his magic seems completely useless against these zombies. It just bounces right off them!

In an action scene, you've got to keep upping the stakes and the trouble, or it starts to feel static and redundant. This is the point where I planned the tension to be at its highest, so I was pulling out all the stops.

Did it work for you? Were you on the edge of your seat?

Let me know what you think!

That's the "DVD commentary" for these pages. 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