Liquid Thoughts #2

The first scene with Vascar feeding in mid-flight on a handglider, and the next scene with a Werewolf in full beast mode both show a vampire and a werewolf in beast mode but in control of themselves. A very tiny clue which is hard to see is that the clothes on both of them are not ripping or tearing. A sign that both of these creatures come from a world where they design clothing to make adjustments for transforming. In this case clothing made with rubber like stretching qualities.

Another thing to notice is the army green soldiers are the ones advancing while the high tech soldiers stay by Danes side to protect him.

During the interrogation scene we start to learn a few things about Ashe. Namely he being a werewolf (and in this moment in human form) (again notice now in his smaller size form as a human his clothes still fit him). A mall not notice the insignia on Dane's sleeve, that's the new Wetworks logo.

The next scene with Vascar in the alleyway bears a continuity blooper which won't become apparent until issue #4. Vascar is dressed as he is dressed in issue #4 but in issue #4 he has two stripes on the front of his jumper. The correct version is the one with stripes. This is my fault. That's what you get when you as a penciller don't keep track of your pages. You see issue #4 there is a big flashback with Vascar and others wearing the same outfit.

I really like everything about this scene. It's a great intro for Vascar and the kind of a person he is and it sets-up events to come all in two pages. The addition of strong white highlights (by Wendy) really add to the form of the figures and most importantly the mood of this scene. Here also is where we strongly establish the broken shadows motif that follows Vascar and his dastartly actions. Large irregular blocks of black used as a mood enhancing design element...here they are in full black ink while in later issues we play with changing the opacity and color of this blocks...all part of experimenting with the medium...

The next page with Mother still unconscious we see one of the code "enhancements" done to this page to keep it safe for kiddies. Yup, this issue also was originally done when this new relaunch was gonna be for mature readers only.

The next scene holds lots of little touches. The computer guy is Dane's man. He is the Wetworks complex head geek. We also see next to Dane in panel four Dane's attache, the one we were introduced to in the second preview. This is the guy who runs the Wetworks complex. And also notice Dane's gaurds flanking the jumpjet.

Next we show Dane levitating the team down to San Francisco. Here we showoff another of Dane's abilities and thereby start to get into dangerous ground. It's called the Superman complex, when a hero gets too powerful, too infalleable, he becomes boring because no one can beat him. Which is why Kryptonite was created for Superman. So we must create something to bring Dane down a couple of notches. The hint is the headgear he wears, which is the result of an event in Dane's past...which we will slowing reveal as the book goes on...not now...

Originally Mike had Mother fully waking in issue #1 I told him I thought after having her dead for all this time and then wake her up right away was to subservient to the story and therefore her wakening should spread out and take longer and have complications so we can later allude to errors in her reboot...so the prior Mother scene in this issue and this brilliant Frankenstein-ish wake up scene was Mike's answer. This exemplifies the kind of working relation we had. I would suggests things and explain my point of view and if he saw my point he would deftly weave it into his story as if it were apart of his original first take.

In the next few scene's we see the team for the first time in combat and it's not that pretty, in the sense that it's not a coordinated attack, it's sloppy, it eventually results in a win of sorts but not a decisive clean win. We also start to see Mike weaving this new kind of a battle field, the Dead World. We have already established this other world and it's creatures that can transgress into our world and now we introduce a character (Ab-death) that can effect them in their world. A new possibility. We start to see as readers a new need. Question is can Wetworks answer that need. Is the original team or this new team equipped to handle this new battle field? This is a conscious effort to expand the reason for reviving this book and its characters.

Notice too how even tho' Dane doesn't understand exactly what Ab-death did and how he did it he quickly and quietly accepts the win and immediately sees the new threat and the path he must take and goes. This is pure Dane, pure military. He doesn't understand why the creature exploded but knows it has something to do with Ab-death accepts it and files it away for later use. This means he doesn't fully accept Ab-death either. Notice also he doesn't berate Red and Ab-death for the sloppiness of the fight but blames only himself. He is the leader and it is his fault if he hasn't pulled his team together properly. So you can bet he is on his silent intercommunications system and is putting the old team on alert...what started as a simple mission of capturing a single lone vampire is growing into a complicated mess...how big will it get...how much must Dane adjust his resources to this growing threat...where is this all leading?

Attached image is a compilation of some of the sketches done for Vascar...all done on a computer tablet PC...