Another example of the space telling the story as much as the dialogue.

On that note, I spent a maddening amount of time researching antiques. Statuary, hutches, dinnerware, etc, etc, etc... I catalogued TONS of reference material that ultimately was never put to use, but that sort of study is necessary and I think shows through in the hopefully authentic composition of the surroundings.

As mentioned last week, I tend to think of comics filmically (Oh, film-to-comic irony). For this project I felt I needed to start with a strong character-believability foundation, so I cast the book as I would a film.

Which director was it who said, "Hire the right talent and more than half your job is done for you."?

Taking care to not type cast (this practice in Hollywood drives me nuts), I went for actors I felt would best embody what I was shooting for in depicting these people.

Jim, is current Michael Caine channeling a young miser of some of his earlier career.

The Stranger, is a younger, meeker Gary Oldman.

Jenny, I couldn't help myself, I did type cast. Rosemary Harris just sang to me over a glass (bottle) of wine when reading the script, every time. I figured, why fight it? I'll probably wax poetic more a little later about the pros/cons of this approach.

Shi's colors on the page really sing here. Those nice ambers in the first panel, giving way to the cold blues amping up the warning of the archer statue in panel one, into panel two. That's story-telling talent on display, that is. (Gosh, thanks, Jerem! - shi)

Panel three is one of the first images that jumped out at me during the first script read-through of the Neel/Ansin script. I knew it had to be worked in. And thankfully Shi's color-execution kept it from being flat and confusing. This is where I began to see how much I'd not just rely on her, but how much the collaboration could really sell the story.