That one took a long time . . .
I've changed the previous page and replaced Khafre's sphinx with a statue of Nea-Isis, also known as Cleopatra Philopator. I was hesitant to use Cleopatra, since she has such a goofy place in pop culture, but the similiarity between her and Sina is compelling. Cleopatra Philopator was the seventh Cleopatra in a massively inbred line, she had two of her siblings executed, seducing Julius Caesar led to the death of a third, she considered herself the reincarnated goddess Isis, etc etc. After reading her Wikipedia article, I wonder if she wasn't the main reason Rome became an Empire and eventually collapsed, bringing on the Dark Ages. Did Cleopatra set the human race back 700 years? I'm no historian, I'm just googling around, but - without Cleopatra, there would have been no Caesarion (her son with Julius Caesar), and Octavion would have been the uncontested ruler of Rome. Mark Antony would have likely remained married to Octavion's sister Octavia Minor and not become an enemy. There may not have been the civil war that allowed Octavion to seize total power and become the first Emperor of Rome. Rome may have stayed a Republic, with a distributed power structure and more competent leadership than the Empire possessed. Maybe it would have had an industrial revolution in the 13th or 14th century and become what England or the U.S. became, several hundred years earlier.
The theme of going back in time and assassinating Hitler has had a fair bit of play in scifi, but assassinating Cleopatra might be more interesting. In Star Trek terms, if we had our 700 years back, Captain Picard would be 400 years in the past. We'd be sending time travellers back to study him.
I love the symbology in the second-to-last panel of this page - it's accidental, but it couldn't have worked out better. It looks like the ship is a big monster about to bite down on the little pyramid and wreck Cleopatra's world. What a nice tie-in to Sina and Rau.
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After page 16 there may be a short break while I finish putting together the first volume for the printer. Due to the unevenness of issue/chapter sizes, and the amount of work it takes to make covers, I'm back to the volume plan. I'm going to throw in a bunch of concept art and such, try to get all that stuff together, and differentiate the individual volumes from the final graphic novel. At least that's the plan ATM. The volumes will have the story at an older and less polished state (what it is now), but they'll have concept art and other illustrations that the GN won't have. When I get through the end of TDDW, I may rewrite/illustrate portions of it, run a Kickstarter to have it colored and re-lettered, and get it as professional as possible, with the idea that the GN will be a significantly different product than the volumes.
It's looking like the volumes will be 130 pages each, and the GN will be 180-200 pages.
Jack the R 
JOhannski, on 15 March 2012 - 05:39 PM, said:
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