UTC: Urgent Transformation Crisis

The reading order of the dialogue boxes in the upper right of the page is kind of wonky. While I was drawing the flashback panels, I thought I would have a comfortable amount of space for the boxes, but I was wrong. To help readers understand the intended order, I used ellipses in Scurry’s word balloon and the first box.

Scurry’s flashback contains a plot point from the short comic “Urgent Thanksgiving Crisis.” This is the first time one of the shorts has been overtly referenced in the main series. (The only other reference to date has been a background element on the final page of “Double Date” with the stuffed wolf that Flint gave to Cass, which happened in “Sister.”)

At first, I hesitated to take what was written for the short as a heartwarming scene (Flint gave Scurry’s family a Thanksgiving feast! Awww!) and add a tragic outcome to it. The plot potential was enormous, though. It slotted neatly into Flint’s arc for this chapter. Plus, any opportunity to work in material from the short comics makes the shorts more meaningful to the whole of UTC. (Sidebar — I wish more media franchises would treat their supplemental material like this, rather than ignoring the side stories out of a worry that referencing them would put off the main audience.)

This page required more text than I expected when I first blocked it out. I did the usual steps to pare down the dialogue to only what was essential. Tightening up dialogue can also lead to writing shorter words or phrases, which makes it sound more like it’s spontaneously coming off the tongue. For Flint and Scurry, this is especially important in order to bring out their not-quite-mature voices.