Is my art getting better? It might be. Slowly. I’m glad I could cram all this backstory into a single page; this is the sort of thing that could ramble for 4-5 pages if I’m not careful.

A younger Thrale was fun to draw; I like his little mini-crossbow. Maybe that’ll get to show up later. (We’ll definitely see more of the Blue Knight, whom you can see in panel 5.) In my previous comic as well as this one, I have a tendency to give third-rate villains “amazing” magic weapons, like the Cinder Knight’s magma swords.

And there’s no such thing as a sex scene that isn’t funny. All I hear when I look at Panel 6 is the Tripod song King Kong: “There’s a short sex scene between King Kong and Naomi Watts. It’s tasteful though, it’s behind a screen. You just see it in silhouette.” I mean, I can draw a guy getting stabbed through the skull without blinking, but a bit of butt and I’m giggling like an idiot. Well, I like to think my writing is more grown-up than I am.