Abridged Combat

Page 109

Abridged Combat
Cartoon Brian

Abridged Combat

Original Release Date: May 5, 2009

This is one of my favorite pages. I'm proud of the writing here. It has a certain rhythm that flows well. I can't take full credit, though; I detect some influence from Chris Claremont's writing on the original limited series of Wolverine comics. The page strays from the usual formula of a lot of word balloons, instead taking Stu's inner monologue and delivering it to us as a story in a series of narration boxes. I can't imagine Stu actually thinks like this, but then again, maybe he does. I know that my inner monologue does unusual things when I'm sleep-deprived.

Another non-business-as-usual element found in this comic is that Stu does not use his sword or shurikens, his weapons of choice. Instead, he elects to use a ninja chain weapon called a manriki. I assume this is because he doesn't want to do any permanent damage to this trucker; he can use the manriki to safely disarm the trucker, then finish him off with some good ol' fisticuffs. As I recall, I wanted to expand Stu's arsenal because he really only uses a sword and shurikens, and maybe the occasional throwing knife. I wanted to give him a little more versatility and unpredictability. However, these efforts did not last long. I believe this is the only appearance of the chain, and he was back to exclusively swords, throwing starts, and the occasional throwing knife soon enough.