strangetrip | [EP] When Real World and Comics Collide

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[EP] When Real World and Comics Collide - Open

Mack caught about ten hours of sleep total since his arrival. Unlike others that had arrived, his was due to excitement. Yes, he missed his grandfather and his friends. But the Changer world wasn't in a war any longer and he viewed this as a vacation. Besides SERIOUSLY, he got the best welcome to a weird place gift ever. No, not the toothbrush and other stuff (no offense Caroline) but what was in his egg.

He'd been given a Clip Studio EX software and a Graphic Drawing Tablet, PLUS pens and colored pencils. Mack didn't waste any time in setting up the software and trying to figure out how it worked. His first couple of attempts weren't the best, but then his character began to look like it did on the paper and he was satisfied. He stuffed everything that had been in his egg, plus he own graphic novels, comic and notepad into his backpack and headed down toward the cafe.

There was plenty of room on the table at a booth to spread out all his stuff. It wasn't busy so he didn't feel guilty about doing it. Soon he was lost in trying to transfer his comic to the tablet and thinking of new adventures of a Kitsune stuck in another world. SO TOTALLY COOL!

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"You are?" Lillith thought then that she really should not be surprised, not with how the Inn worked. She smiled brilliantly and clapped her hands together. "Wonderful! I was looking for you."

She gestured to the other side of his table, asking without asking if she might sit down and continue to explain.

"Yeah, yeah." Mack nodded to her unasked question and even moved some of his stuff out of the way. "Is that normal? I mean for you to get stuff to be shared with someone else?"

His egg had only stuff for him, not that he wouldn't share, he would, but it hadn't had a special tag on it like hers did. Since he was literally brand new, he didn't know if that was normal or not.

"It is difficult to say what is normal for this Inn." She herself had wondered why the Inn had chosen to have her share this gift with someone she did not know, but seeing his artwork, she began to understand.

"But it does not matter why, does it?" she asked him kindly, voice growing more excited as she spoke. "It matters what we choose to do about it. And I think we should take the ribbon off and see what the Inn has given us."

Mack had to agree. He didn't care why, only that it did. He also, handed her back the gift, it was hers to begin with anyway. "Untie and pick one."

He was also a little anxious to see what she thought of them, since it was new for her.

Lillith had intended for the boy to choose, but if he wished her to, very well. She hooked the ribbon on her claw and very carefully drew it out of its bow. Then she spread the four books in front of them in a fan.

"I do not know how to choose," she admitted, a touch of wonder in her tone. "They are all very different. Perhaps... this one?" The one called Nimona seemed to have a simpler style and it might be easier to understand. "Or...would it be best to begin with the lesson book, on understanding comics?" She was very curious.

Mack's hands hitched to take one of the books but he held back. At her question, he shook his head. "Nope, I'd dive right in on reading a graphic novel." His eyes lit up with excitement, "you'll catch on really quickly. Maybe not of everything that is going on because they're usually long stories, told in little chapters, but you'll understand after a little bit."

He thought about it for a minute, "but you can always look at the lesson book if you don't understand." Mack looked up and smiled at her, "or you can always ask me." While he wasn't the world's expert on it, though probably close, he could definitely help someone learning.

"Well. Maybe it would be better if we started together and you explained or showed me?"

Lillith was quite certain that she could learn on her own, and the lesson book looked like very much fun. But she thought it would be better if Mack told her about it.

"For example, is that what you are drawing? A comic?"

Mack liked nothing better than showing people his comic series or discussing comics. He did like shifting into his fox form, but comics would be his first love always.

"Yep. It's a comic I drew about a kitsune superhero and his adventures." He moved the paper over so that she could see both the original and the one that he was trying to recreate on his new tablet.

Lillith nodded at the word 'kitsune'. The fox-folk were rare in her world, but she knew of them. It made her wonder if maybe the boy was not a kitsune. He had taken her physical form so well.

But there was another word she did not understand. "Superhero, what is this thing? I know the words, but together they mean something important or different to you."

It shouldn't have surprised him, she'd never seen a comic before, but it did. But there wasn't anything he enjoyed more than talking about it. "Superheroes are heroes but they have extra. I don't just mean extra power or anything like that, though a lot of them do. But they can also just be really brave people that go that extra from regular people to help innocents."

He was thinking of his favorite comic book hero Agent Underworld. "My favorite hero is Agent Underworld and he fights crime to keep his city safe, but he doesn't have special powers to do it." Mack chuckled, "well lots of money to have fun tech toys, but not like a shape shifter."

"In my world, those who 'go that extra'--" What a strange phrase that was, but it seemed appropriate. "Are often well rewarded for their trouble. And so they must be, because fighting monsters is dangerous and weapons and armor are both costly and difficult to come by."

It did strike her as odd that a wealthy man would make himself that sort of hero after the fact, however. She had heard tell of some, but most, like Percy had suffered a tragedy to set them on an adventurer's path.

"Tell me about your kitsune, if you will. I would like to know why he goes the extra."

"He's a young man." Mack had aged him for the comics to be in high school rather than middle school. Artistic license. "And he finds out that he comes from a long line of kitsunes. So helping people is kind of a family thing. That's why he gets involved at first, but then a war breaks out between good guys and the bad guys. It goes from being a fun hobby where he doesn't think about what could happen to getting real, real fast." Mack added, "it's a story of him growing up, not just growing older."

Lillith listened and noticed some of the differences between kitsune and her world and in his, or at least in his story. It seemed very likely Mack was kitsune, but she did not need to know until he wished to tell her. Instead she focused on the story.

"And what of the art style? It is also unfamiliar to me. What mean these squares and bars? What is difference between bubbles and arrows in the writing parts?"

"Well the squares are called panels, but they don't have to be square, though most of them are. So think of them as a frozen moment in time." He flipped to the back of his small notepad and the last ten pages drew a little kitsune running along the bottom of the pages until it jumps off the final one.

"This is animation, the drawing looks like it moves." He flipped the pages to show her the kitsune running. "But see how each drawing is a part of the action? That's like the panel, it's part of the whole story."

Lillith watched him sketch and then clapped her hands together, entranced by the appearance of motion. She understood it intuitively, as it was similar to the way a static illusion came to have motion as she grew more practiced in illusion magic.

"So, it is as if you have put together many tapestries or wall paintings to tell a whole story, but instead of doing so in a shrine, it is done in a book," she mused aloud. "And must the stories always be of superheroes?"

"That's it exactly!" Mack was excited that she understood what he was trying to say. "And they don't have to be about superheroes at all. They can just be about regular adventures or friendships."

"May I?" Lillith extended a hand for his notebook. She had an idea. "I would like to try to draw a 'comic' for you." She was uncertain about the "panels" but she liked the concept very well. It might add an interesting dimension to her artwork.

"Of course." Mack handed her the notebook and his colored pencils, curious about what she'd draw. "I can't wait to see it." And he meant that sincerely.

Lillith sat for a long minute in quiet, considering. She thought his story might be personal and felt, then, that it would be easiest to translate the medium using a story that was personal to her, as well.

The day that Vox Machina saved her from the Broker came to mind, but it felt too large for a first effort and confusing for which pieces to include and how to make the 'panels'. Instead, when her charcoal (she chose her own rather than his pencils for comfort) began its first arcs across the page, she realized she had chosen Beatrycze's story instead.

The first panel came instantly, a closed door with the sound bubble showing sobbing from behind it. The door loomed, crooked and evil and cruel like all dungeon doors in Palac Lusterka, and there were no people in the image. That seemed important to Lillith, that there was fear and sorrow and no one to know or care. Also, it seemed important because it would make her surprise in the next panel more powerful.

Mack watched Lilith draw. It was always fascinating to him to watch others draw, especially something new. His brow furrowed as he concentrated on the emerging image.

The second panel emerged less smoothly than the first, a pause for deciding whether it should reveal first Beatrycze or herself. In the end there was neither, simply a clawed hand twisting the knob of the door opened enough to cast a plume of light down a shaft that would prove to be stairs eventually.

The third focused squarely on Beatrycze: tiny, innocent, and terrified, wearing nothing but a simple white shift-dress (best to show the blood, Lillith recalled thinking in horror) and bound atop a blood-stained altar. Her upturned face sought the light, her mouth a mask of terror, and all sound silenced.

Mack's eyes grew wide as he watched the scenes emerge. Dark images weren't new for him. There were a few graphic novels that he'd kept hidden from his grandfather. It was just unexpected, but it was amazing. She was able to show tension and fear without showing thoughts or any words. Or really much action.

She struggled for a few minutes, fangs worrying at her bottom lip, because she was unsure how best to get from 'here' to 'there'. There had been so many thoughts. So quickly. It seemed maybe she should crowd a 'panel' with all of them, too close together and in too many languages to read.

But then she recalled that all of the thoughts had vanished into clarity. A single, sure thought.

On an impulse, she turned to look at Mack. "Is it done to split panels between? To have persons in separate places in the same panel?"

"Oh sure." He answered with a quick nod of his head. "Sometimes the panel can be split horizontally and sometimes across it diagonally. Sometimes they even insert a circle within the panel. So pretty much anything you want to happen can."

Nodding, Lillith moved surely to the next panel and split it on a diagonal. The top half was a pair of wide, wide eyes and the suggestion of horns at the top of the stairs. At the bottom half, a mouth and a wordless cry.

Next, the little girl squirmed in her bindings at the sound of footsteps. And the next, a clawed hand covered the child's mouth, arms came around her, lifted her, and more running feet--a single panel in four tight slices.

The next, a bubble, large and filled to the edges with one word: "LILLITH!"

The next was below large, a flurry of movement and the slash of claws across a face not one of those already shown. On impulse, Lillith drew the rake of claws across the entire large panel.

And then a final, smaller panel crowded to the bottom right with Lillith carrying a very small child at a dead run through a forest of eyes.

[EP] When Real World and Comics Collide - Open

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