Tapping the tire iron like that is such a great, sadistic little touch.... Certainly is an ominous little cloud to appear just when Hazel is having his big parade. Especially since... as established in one of those previous links, Hazel didn't risk actually engaging Xmarlek in a straight fight, instead poisoning him.
Felt a little nervous doing this page. I wanted to get it looking just right so I used a model, and usually feel pretty self-conscious trying those.
Kind of early in the chapter to have a splash page I guess but felt like this would be most impactful really giving it a big focus like this, since it really turns the existing Hazel dynamic upside-down; suddenly the guy he overthrew and spun a complicated web of lies around is back in the picture.
How? We'll get into that in the next one.
We'd actually kind of been meaning to do some mild building this up in Blue Blood Heroes, having Xmarlek cameo in the background of a page there, but there just hasn't been a good opening to do so of late. Not a huge deal, just felt like it warranted mentioning.
To recap.... Hazel's a very malicious villain, and he fell into the whole "I want you to suffer rather than die" trap while his old boss. He stranded the guy across the country rather than actually kill him, even though his own people later told him leaving him alive was a mistake. The guy had to realize on some level this was possible, right?
Tapping the tire iron like that is such a great, sadistic little touch.... Certainly is an ominous little cloud to appear just when Hazel is having his big parade. Especially since... as established in one of those previous links, Hazel didn't risk actually engaging Xmarlek in a straight fight, instead poisoning him.
Felt a little nervous doing this page. I wanted to get it looking just right so I used a model, and usually feel pretty self-conscious trying those.