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T5 Commentary:

Oh no, this isn't an end-page, and last week was a cliffhanger! The next end-page is at the end of the book at this rate we won't get there for years! Fortunately, I think a number of you figured out the answer to last week's question anyway. I used some aspects of real animals to inform my monster designs, and I left blank panels for readers to sketch in their own Hurricanes because drawing in books is super fun! But let's stop living in last week...

This page was drawn early on, and because I had a very strict page limit for the book I worried that I wouldn't have space to thank anyone at the back of the book. So I started drawing little secret thank-yous in the background right away. If you look in the broken building you can see me there drawing a page from "Bears in Space" a comic I did with my friend Nate McDonough who you can see in the window drawing a page of another comic! There's also a poster on the wall for TMSIDK a now-defunct podcast by Jim Rugg, Jason Lex, and in later episodes Ed Piskor (all of whom were big inspirations to me as I drew my first few hundred pages of comics). There are probably more secret messages and thank yous on this page, but I don't remember them all! Originally this page came after Pen and Olive spent a night huddling in their basements as a Hurricane raged outside, but again because of the strict page limit, a lot of subplots and storylines were cut from this book. We'll talk a little bit more about below when we see the creatures I call Scrappers.

T6 Commentary:

We’re still in the early matter here, but I wanted to take advantage of every page. I've talked already about how there was a strict page limit for this book and as someone who consumes a lot of prose novels and manga, I always want more than a short story in my comic books. I want everything all at once, and that’s how I pitched this book. Originally this book was submitted as a part-prose (illuminated manuscript style) trilogy, and I had written a subplot with these little snail creatures (I call them SCRAPPERS) that would be a kind of tiny “Where’s Waldo” style c-plot taking place in the background of all the pages (trying to achieve what I called “maximum story” in my younger days). Unfortunately, once that background plot was removed during the editing process it became nearly impossible to write back in since the number of scenes and shots that would allow the important moments in the scrapper’s adventure to be seen were jumbled up and lost in the mix. I did get to keep these fun little Cloud Critters in the book though, and I hope they will have a larger role in the future!

T7 Commentary:

Dedication pages are a special part of a book, and I always have too many people to thank. So I’ve settled on using dedication pages to set the tone of the story and let the reader know that I’m dedicating this book to you. The sum of my life’s experience and years of work is always for you. At the end of the day, even these little silly posts are for you, whoever you are, reading in the middle of your swirling life, flickering away from other thoughts, and back.

The longer I work to make stories the more I think of it as an act of service. I know there are more important and practical ways to serve others, and there’s no shortage of other stories, comics, movies, and other entertainments for you to enjoy. I know that if I stopped now most people wouldn’t notice, just like you couldn’t notice a Valentine’s Day card you never received. But this path has become precious to me because it is the one I’ve walked, and since there’s no such thing as turning around I hope and believe that one of these days I’ll make something wacky and wonderful and powerful enough that a few of you won’t be able to imagine what your life would have been if you hadn’t gotten the bundle of imagined experiences, thoughts, and feelings that I’ve been making alone in my room for you.

T8 Commentary:

This page was a last-minute add-on, but in a way, it’s the whole first act of the book.
It occurred to me just before sending the final draft to the publisher that there was no space in the front of the book for me to sign and sketch in. At this point, I had gotten used to explaining to the architects and programmers sharing the co-working space I used to draw in that the book was about “two teenagers going to a new school after their school was smashed by a giant monster.” So as I thought about what to add at the beginning of the book, that might give me space to doodle, I thought why not old Cloud Town High. I’m proud of this page, and it took me about 1/3rd the amount of time as similar pages I drew early in the process of making Cloud Town—Drawing a book is a lot of practice!

I hope this page does a decent job of setting up the premise of the book, though it is admittedly odd to only show the aftermath of the inciting incident. If you join my Patreon you'll get to see the prequel I’m drawing right now, which shows the day Cloud Town High was destroyed and the day that Pen and Olive became friends!

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

-Daniel McCloskey

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