Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 Cover GUESS I'M DOING THIS Actually pretty fond of this cover. The blue liquid full of blue boys and the blue cables going into her back, while she herself is pink. Could this be in some way symbolic? By the way this isn't how Helpers are actually made

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #1 In this chapter I was trying a lot harder to make this look like manga. I almost used digital screentone before I realized I was working in the wrong resolution for it. A bunch of dialogue changed from the script, so the alt text for this chapter is gonna be a pain

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #2 She just wants to hang out with the girls Alt text fans: This scene is a dialogue between two characters, one of whom isn't named officially until chapter 2, and the other until chapter 8. So that's fun. You have to promise not to spoil the names for everyone else okay

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #3 Some experimentation here with big panels. But it turns out when your panels are huge you can't tell as much story and that sucks. This is one of the pages I revised for the book. These aren't even on the website yet, so you get them as a special Bluesky treat

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #4 There's a line here that sets up something very big that I have planned much later on, if I ever get there. While I'm now the stressed out jaded trans woman from that one old meme, "I'm not a boy who thinks he's a girl" was a very impactful line to write at the time

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #5 I feel weird about some of this dialogue. Partly because I think this is some of the most direct transphobia she's faced in what I've written so far, and partly because it feels weird acknowledging her penis. But I guess that is a particular preoccupation of transphobes

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #6 I was entertained by the idea of people treating being trans as a weird mystery, though it does end up implying that these characters don't know what being trans is. I think they do, they're just used to thinking of Helpers as not complex enough beings to experience it

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #7 I'm fascinated by what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil". These guys are talking about inducing identity death as an annoying work thing. In the background you've got propaganda next to stuff like shift calendars and a (partly obscured) potluck sign up sheet

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #9 Some of the art on this panel is rough, as conveying motion is not one of my strong points, but I do like the last panel

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #10 As serious as this scene is, I am quite fond of the gag that nobody else here has been reading her as male at any point. Also, gotta love ducts with loose grates. The storyteller's friend

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #11 The chapter contains a few of these slower, transitional pages where she's just thinking about stuff. I do less of this going forward as my stories become increasingly... saturated with stuff

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #12 I feel like my attempt at conveying perspective was doing okay until I tried to add some boxes at a different angle. Ah, hubris. I wrote this guy to sound like a generic gruff New Yorker but then realized the dialogue works just as well if you sub in a Scouse accent

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #13 I wonder about this guy. Could be be an ally under other circumstances? It's maybe notable that he talks to the Helpers like people, even as he's shipping them off to their fate. Capitalism makes people do horrific things sometimes

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #14 Another page of contemplation, another page where all of the dialogue changed from the script version I have in front of me. It's also very evident here that I really hadn't figured out how to draw her face yet

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #15 More characters! I pretty much had Isabelle and Zero down off the bat, but Con and Miss Fortuna took a bit longer. Also the delivery drone looks stupid as hell, but honestly not that much stupider than what we have now

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #16 I did worry that Isabelle was being too naive here, and in a future chapter I made it clear that this is a defense mechanism: She strongly suspects some awful shit is happening and she's trying really hard not to think about it

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #17 The third panel is the kind of thing I love doing when introducing new characters: everyone has a slightly different reaction to Zero failing to read the room

Pandora's Tale Chapter 1 #18 The destined encounter is imminent I wonder what's going to happen