Comic 1100 - Midnight Blue, Page 24
17th Sep 2021, 11:00 PM
in Midnight Blue
Average Rating: 0 (0 votes)
Rate this comic
Author Notes:
One of Grant's more prominent character traits that I really loved was his sense of justice, which always spurred on a desire to right wrongs. When something unjust happens, he has a lot of trouble accepting it. Contrast this to his parents who are openly self-centered and materialistic, and even view his job as a super-hero as a potential revenue stream rather than a way to help people. They also lack Marvelous Man's delusions of being a heroic person; he at least TRIED to do what he thought was the right thing, just the "right thing" was filtered through his self worldview. Grant's parents, his Mom especially, are up-front that they're selfish.
And what I like about this, is that while he's outspoken about hating injutice, Grant never brings it up around his parents, even when they're saying hurtful and selfish things directly in front of him. This page makes it clear; he DOES know his parents are selfish people, even if he doesn't bring it up. And it clearly hurts him on a much deeper level than he lets on if his greatest nightmare is acting the way they act.
I feel like I'm being unfair to Grant's Mom since she at least HAS shown that she cares about him and will try to help him, but is selfish enough that it's easy for her to blow him off or forget about him. We're gonna examine their relationship in future stories, so that's a thing.
Nicky is Grant's best friend, so he not only winds up being the person to try and shake him out of this, but immediately cuts to what the scary issue is. Grant yelling at him in the penultimate panel just feels so out of character, it was a lot of fun to type up. Actually, in general this was a great one to write; a lot of information was flowed in at once in this page about how Grant sees the world by being forced to embody the parts of it he hates.
Even giving him a put-upon assistant was a fun little touch. Wound up basing her lineart on Mercy Graves of all people.
Oh, right, speaking of Marvelous Man (pops up in two nightmares, weird), him being a mayor and Martina Ferguza being a Supreme Court justice was supposed to emphasize that this would is just fundamentally unjust, and how jaded Nightmare!Grant is if he's blowing off any attempts to change it. Originally the latter was going to be Decay Conductor, but got changed for a few reasons. Grant's fought Martina more times so he has a stronger resonance with him, he doesn't know what Decay Conductor's real name is, and honestly her becoming a Justice is too far-fetched even for a nightmare.
It's a little thing but we were trying to be a bit more involved with the background on this page than we have been of late; not really anything spectacular but there's a bit more background detail than we've been doing, though the page came together relatively last minute or probably would've given it some more thorough detail, especially in the fifth panel. Something to work on I guess. You might also notice that s of this page we're trying out drawing face shapes slightly differently, though it might not be entirely obvious just yet between Grant's hair and how many side profile shots are in this one.
You might notice the difference in dates Grant mentions in the first two panels. We were hinting at this earlier in the chapter and the fine folks at our Discord already pieced it together but this is kind of meant as effectively confirmation that Grant is pansexual. Admittedly kind of awkward first really bringing that up alongside showing him as philandering and selfish but sort of an unavoidable consequence of bringing out his dark side like this I guess.
Still getting used to this weird new style Comic Fury has for its comment posting for the record. Not that this means anything to you if you're reading on DA.
He'd also totally cameo in a dream. That's almost kinda his shtick.
Pan WOULD cameo in a dream, though, does that all the time. And if he were mature enough for a romantic relationship (BIG if, admittedly), he probably would be pansexual. ..... There's a narcissism joke in there somewhere.