A defiant surrendering Elijah and a pinup re-intro to the villains  who have been pulling the strings  bring us full circle to a set up for the last 4 pages of the story…. basically a setup page for the reader to take a break before the final act.

This page really ended up being a great way to show a cocky surrendering Elijah, head down at an angle with his hat obscuring his eyes… giving attitude even in surrender… and I love the gun in hand mode- he’s out of bullets, so there isnt much to do now, but he wont drop his gun.  The other panel is the pinup pose that Jessica and Sheriff needed- they didnt get one yet outside of the cover, and I wanted her to look sexy, angry and psycho in one glorious pinup closeup with the Sheriff to really showcase them before the end in a larger shot.  I tried for a “Billy Idol/Sid Vicious” scowl on Jessica’s lips to go with her crazy eyes as I tried to give her a 9/10th profile view, unlike the mostly front on views we have gotten of her to mix it upa little bit on her look  (a tip from Zoe at FFGames about my women) , and I also made sure to cross elements by having the Sheriff and Jessica overlap (thanks Jeff Lavezoli) .  Also I really wanted to show the Sheriff’s obese size as I worked towards having him as my first “big” person character with a good deal of body fat- (thanks Darren Auck).  So three pointers from three pros came into play on this one- thanks everyone!  I think this page worked to re-introduce my main villains and show a surrendering and wounded (defeated?) Elijah Holman- how can he get out of this?  Read on in a few days as more updates come in to find out! And thanks to my wonderful wife Crystal  for the hand modeling on Jessica’s right hand, I needed an immediate hometown assist on that one to get it right!

Page 16 finds Jessica Belmont and the Sheriff coming back to clean up the loose threads of their killers failing to eliminate Elijah Holman- El Alacran’s shot is halted just shy of killing Elijah by a shotgun blast through his mid-section.  Jessica watches her man kill this loose end (they dont have to pay him now, or deal with him!) then they walk over the bodies to confront Elijah for the final showdown!

Technically I wanted to mix up the angles and went for some extreme and odd angles- gun through the body hole to background, and feet over body.  Jessica of course lifts her skirt- gotta be a lady even in cold blooded murder of shooting a man in the back! I think it works while keeping hte page layout, panels and camera angles changing and not duplicating. I liked Jessica’s small facial expression in panel 2- she has a neat snarky/evil look every time I’ve drawn her.  And I had alot of fun drawing the hole through our Mexi-Bandit leader’s body, and extreme shot for some extreme characters.

Aftermath- 4 dead- 2 injured… and the man known as El Alacran shoots the Chinaman in the back, killing him… and prepares to elimnate Elijah Holman who is out of bullets and not able to walk well after getting shot in the leg….. Amping it up for the big final 6 pages….

One of the big things PLOSQ has taught me is reminding the reader of space, and the first panel of this page is all about the space they have been fighting in the bodies are laid out in the phyical locations I defined the kills from 13-14 in, and Ive been trying to keep the light sources to the building to the characters motion location and interactions straight in my mind, to the paper so it all makes sense from a physical aspect of “who is where when and how does it interact with the others and how can we properly show this relationship(s) etc.”

Overall, I think Ive achieved a fair sense of consistency with this project in that regard.  And I love the last two panels- El Alacran is a bad man, symbolically by shooting an honorable fighter in the back, we tell the reader just exactly how bad of a man he is, so that is also a success on this page as well thematically.

And the smoking gunman with his hat slid up the sword his head was impaled on was just classic detail to add into the background!

This is the combined 2 page fight scene as it was meant to be seen, along with my thumbnail guide- Red for Elijah, Blue for Chinaman, and a deleted set of Green panels for El Alacran, which didnt flow well, so I cut it.  Again, you can read this as a top and bottom parallel track, or read it regularly, it is slightly different each way, and both work well.

The Shootout ends- #2 death by sword (don’t bring a knife to a gunfight Chinaman?) #3 Death by playing possum with a revolver shot to the gut when a killing blow was about to be delivered-!

I loved the top jaw head hat stabbing into the smoker’s head (we need a name for this guy!) and his cigarette is falling out – he never stopped smoking, and I loved the three bottom shots of the cloaked villain- esp his feet in the bottom right panel the raised foot shows the knietic power of the bullet impact! Again you can read this as two parallel actions top across and bottom across or read this page top to bottom L to R and it makes sense both ways with page 13 as both series of events are happening concurrently.  I was really pleased with the action, camera angles and fluid motion and sudden action on this page- I felt it quickly summaraized a fast and deadly fight between 5 armed men.

The Shootout starts- part one of a two page fight spread- you can read the top panels accross parallel to the bottom ones, or go left page to right page -it reads well two ways- this is a top down view to start two chains of actions- Chinaman’s vs smoking beard guy and Elijah’s vs. two guys wearing cloaks- yeah we dont have names for them yet- some great motion, action and camera angles- I love the head shot panel and the top right one of the bottom up view of the smoking guy spinning to get a second shot with his 2 barrel shotgun on the Chinaman, I tried an inconventional layout- and I felt it had some real dynamic action.

A closeup on a headless corpse and enemies united against a new common foe- the Chinaman and Elijah get ready for a showdown with 4 killers on this page.  The bottom right panel is a nod to panel 1 on page 2 of the Chinaman’s shadow as he went to the Sheriff’s office, now it is redone with it being joined bby his now ally as the goe side by side into a shootout with a sword and 2 six shooters.  Also a nice low angle closeup of El Alacran’s eyepatch side of his face.

The gig is almost up as the Injun rushes Elijah Holman- with a meat cleaver only a few feet from chopping our protagonist apart at the seams, and his 1850’s single action revolvers can’t lock on to this one man killing machine with time and bullets running out, and just as it is all coming to an end for our hero… The Injun loses his head and  left hand, and an unlikely ally appears, The Chinaman- Xi Chou Long.  Realizing that he’s been set up to die in a double cross, and his enemy was an honorable one, he decides to save Elijah’s life and team  up to fight for their lives.

Now, I did diverge from David’s script here, but as I have been doing the work on the pages, this made more sense than Chinaman just fighting Elijah with the Banditos.  Of course, that’s my .02 cents on the story at this point… The readers will tell us if it works when it’s all done! 

From an art point of view- I loved these three panels, lots of action, movement and emotion, and lets get down to it, a really cool decapitation!