"COSMIC CUSTODIANS" Gloom Of The Glooms - Part One Post Three

In many way this entire first episode, and certainly the penultimate three panels, are all about setting the scene for the final frame - the arrival of the Cosmic Custodians. When writing this story I wanted the cliff-hangers to be especially good, and was somewhat torn between either having the aliens not appear until the last shot or have the heroes arrive at the last minute.

 

In order to get the action going as quickly as possible I had already written for the Glooms to be seen shooting up the Pentagon. This therefore left me with little choice but I was still in something of a dilemma as its always a bit of risk having a new serial start and you don't actually see the main characters until you're already a quarter of the way through the story.

 

The final panel took quite a bit of time to draw, as having pencilled, inked, scanned and then redrawn Mistress Tendril and Galaxian, I then had to erase most of my lining in order to create a simple outline for the teleportation effect. Having scoured the internet for a suitable effect, I eventually decided to superimpose some somewhat translucent light beams over my drawings to give the impression of them materialising in front of the General and his military staff.

 

What the last frame doesn't show is that all four Cosmic Custodians have actually teleported into the Pentagon. However the sudden appearance of Tortoise-Shell Eddie and Sagittarius do not become evident until Part Two. If I had my time again with this story I would probably therefore re-draw this scene, either resizing the final panel to include the entire super-team or cutting some of the dialogue from the earlier panels, and extending the last frame to encapsulate the entire bottom of the page.

 

The Cosmic Custodians have arrived. But why should the American Military trust the fate of the Earth to three more aliens and an arcade-machine obsessed Human..?