Some historical context:
Back in the day (we’re talking 16-18 years ago), comic creators had a habit of creating new, “redux” versions of their own comics, sometimes as soon as just a few months after. Andres and his long-lost CRISIS series was a pretty well-known case, he would rather remake the first parts than actually continue the series.
Generally people remade their own comics, but one infamous case (and one of my favorite comics of all time) was Shazbot’s Infection 2 Prologue remake, which took Pyren’s comic and completely reinvented it in Shazbot’s at the time very popular style.
It takes a certain degree of hubris to take someone else’s comic and remake it in your style, so of course I had the idea to do it as well. I thought it’d be an interesting way to contrast styles and show just how different the same comic can be depending on the author. I also wanted to show just how far one can push GMod comics if they’re willing to practice and learn. And frankly, I just thought it’d be fun to do (it was).
I liked Dusk’s first part of her Unforeseen Consequences series and thought it fit my own style well, so I went with that. I didn’t redo the prologue since there wasn’t much to redo and part 1 of The Facility stands alone fairly well anyway. I stuck to the original dialogue with some very minor changes that I felt worked better in my version. By complete coincidence, Dusk’s birthday is coming up, so consider this an early birthday present.
I don’t intend to make any more parts, this is standalone. Though if anyone else wants to do the remaining parts and Dusk is okay with that, be my guest.
Some notes:
- The idea came up to me on Sept 20, which means this took me around 2 weeks to finish – not full time, of course, I’ve been busier than you can imagine, but it’s just five pages and simple enough to pose and edit;
- Since I already had Dusk’s comic as a basis and had a fairly good idea of what I wanted out of my version, I ended up doing the layouts first, as it was quicker than posing. This helped me immensely in figuring out the position of characters in the shots and I’ll probably stick to it in the future;
- I couldn’t have done it without ESToomere, who recognized the map from the early pages as a Black Mesa: Blue Shift map – I initially used the first Black Mesa map, which has that exact session, but it’s culled from the angle the shots were taken;
- Most shots are entirely in-game. Turns out a poor RTX 2060 is still tough enough to handle half a dozen lamps and Super DOF at 4K. Thank God for Source;
- Much like the Jeff guest episode last year, I had a ton of fun making this – I honestly kept thinking about it most of the time I wasn’t making it! The fact that I didn’t have to bother with writing a script and it was mostly two or three characters talking helped make it quick and painless to create;
- Not sure if I’ll throw this one in the archive - maybe I’ll change “Mythos’ Old Comics” to “Mythos’ Other Comics” and put it there? Either way, I’m semi-retired of the archive as is, I just did this one for fun.
