This is deditated to whoever likes Jack - and to those who don't, too!
Script by Mondo47, art by me.
Update: this comic has been translated into Russian here www.gamer.ru/mass-effect-2/novyy-fanatskiy-komiks-dver-istoriya-dzhek
Disclaimer: I have no control over the translation nor the website (and, besides, I can't speak Russian), so please contact the website owner if you have problems.
Click on the thumbnails:
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Direct link fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/318/7/e/me2_door___a_jack_story_08_by_epantiras-d32tnmn.jpgUPDATE November 16, 2010
This is from Mondo47:
Door – A Making-Of Story
Door came from something really simple for me; I love Jack. Not in a hot, sweaty, banned-in-32-countries kinda way, in a very dull,protective, band-aids-on-knees motherly kinda way. The first time I saw her in the Fight For The Lost trails I chuckled to myself and thought “oh, BioWare, you clever little boys… a bisexual bad girl cliché, whatever next – a robot with feelings perhaps?” Yes, I know, more than a little judgemental of me, but I calls ‘em how I sees ‘em… and that’s how I saw “The Psychopath.” Now where’s my darling Wrex…
Then the game came out, I played through, discovered I was completely wrong, and wound up romancing Jack a good eight or nine times with my multitude of Sheps. Why? Because I loved the puzzlebox that was her character; coaxing each new detail out of her, seeing her tough exterior falter, and in the end I got off on seeing her happy. I mean, here is a young woman that has been through it all; torture, imprisonment, human experimentation, all manner of unspeakable violations and depredations, has further made her karma toxic by spitting all her pent-up anger and fear out like a cannon at anyone and anything that got in her way, and has grown this shell of iron and spikes around herself to avoid anything else in the universe from ever hurting her ever again… and to see her take a risk, to feel for someone else, to do things that have always ensured she was hurt or used… it’s like watching your kids take their first bikeride, I tell you. I felt proud of Jack. There were tears in eyes the first time – and only seeing Wrex again could coax those out of me (and granted, that scene stil makes me tear up after, oooh, nearly 24 trips through the game). But Jack’s romance arc, gives me the fuzzie-wuzzies. It’s the payoff for all that pain for it to end in happiness… and it’s that kind of hope for things to be better we all indulge in from time to time.
I know Jack’s not the most popular gal on the Normandy; she’s not as cotton-candy-cuddly as Tali, not as foxy as Miranda (conventionally-speaking at least – some of us like tattoos and foul language), not as girlishly-adorable as Liara, not as do-right as Ash. She gets called a crazy b*tch, a marginal psychotic, a plain and simple murderer, and a few things that I’ll not bother repeating… and while occasionally she is all those things, at the same time she is so many more other things. Good things. Laudable things. Loveable things. And it can’t just be
because I think krogan are big cuddly softies with cheeks I want to pinch, because other people see those things in Jack too (I know that when it comes to the krogan, I really am a bit warped). It really is a triumph of multilayered
character writing that she can get such contrasting reactions from an audience. Taking her as a killing machine and someone you’d rather not interact with is just accepting the tip of the iceberg as all there is to her… and look where that got the captain of the Titanic?
So I wanted to take all those things Jack talks about with horrifying frankness, all the things she implies, all the things I can imagine trying to chew up and spit out this little teenaged Frankenstein’s monster as she tries to survive the big, wide galaxy at large, and talk about them. Show how brave the character is. How tragic. How truly pitiable at times. And then give her something for that arduous journey. Yes, I’ve made a few leaps of faith on things inferred by the dialogue, but it’s all based on my gut reactions to what was said… the kinds of things that my imagination dredged up. And it had to go pretty low for some of them. But for me that makes the final message in Door all the more resonant. That and I’m a sucker for a good ol’ fashioned happy ending. Sue me. Jack’s earned one. With interest.
I was pretty sure Epantiras was the right person for the job when we started just playing with the idea, so I just poured the story out (it had only one draft, and in the end, changes were exceptionally minimal) and knocked the ball into her court. As soon as I got the first pencil test back I knew my gut had been right. Every frame just turned out like I imagined it. Each new page made me giddy and ever so tempted to share with people, but I resisted
and kept quiet until it was all done and dusted. Epantiras deserves a lot more credit than me for what she put into this – though I think she should be the one to tell you about that. I’ve gone on enough to put a thresher maw to sleep. I just came here to tell a little story to entertain a few people and make the Jack fanbase smile. I hope I did…
For Jack’s sake as much as my own.
UPDATE November 17, 2010
Here's some technical stuff from me ;-)
My task consisted of turning Mondo47's script into images. She wrote all dialogues, captions and game me a brief description of each panel; however, she was open to suggestions and I contacted her whenever I saw something that didn't work (mostly it was text placement).
One of the greatest challenges has been fitting all those panels in a single page: the average comicbook page has from 3 to 5 panels while "Door" usually has 7 or 8. As Mondo47 explained, all those panels makes it feel claustrophobic and that's how it should be, because Jack's trapped.
First the technical stuff: with the exception of the early sketches I did to study the page layout, everything has been drawn with a tablet in GIMP. I've used several in-game screenshots as reference, especially for Jack's tattoos and scarring.
Since the comic is made of several flahs-backs, I suggested to give each episode a dominant colour in order to create atmosphere and make each one stand out as a narrative unit:
Page #1: "aseptic" was the main word, but in the end I added a lot of green (from the holopanel)
Page #2: gray; I remember Bioware saying they chose that colour for Teltin and Praja in order to convey the sense of oppression and hopelessness
Page #3: from script, the scene had to happen at sunset, which was meant to mirror Jack's orange suit
Page #4: dark brown, the colour of rust and dirt, in order to convey a sense of disgust and misery
Page #5: green, mainly to make a strong contrast with the previous page
Page #6 and #7: dark violet and orange, because I was running out of ideas ;-)
Page #8: dark blue, the soothing colour of Shepard's cabin.
And now let's talk about each page:
PAGE 1
The first page is the most feared of all, for obvious reasons, but in the end it wasn't the hardest to draw. All I had to do was establishing a viusal style for the following pages. The real challenge was fitting all that text in so little space :-) whenever I had to split it in two or more parts, I tried to keep the usual reading-friendly layout aka from top left to bottom right.
PAGE 2
Mondo47's description of young Jack was very detailed, all I had to do was analyzing Jack's in-game skin texture and find the surgical scars and the medical tattoos: numbers, circles (biotic amp markers?) and all the tattoos which seem to be "broken" by scars (like the concentric circles on her shoulders). Beware, everything about her tattoos is up to speculation, so don't take my interpretation as canon.
On a stylistic side, the smaller size of the 3rd, the 4th and the 5th panels is meant to increase the pace of the narration (they all happen withing few seconds). The horizon line of the 5th panel is tilted in order to convey the sense of oppression of the whole sequence.
PAGE 3
This is a break from the small panels of the previous pages: a shellshocked Jack finds herself in a huge and unknown world. Mondo47 wrote that "The whole image should have the feel of a castaway on a tiny island surrounded by sea."
I could not get a decent screenshot of the top of the Teltin facility, so I had to use my imagination.
PAGE 4
This page is sad and disturbing. Period. But I enjoyed working on it nonetheless. Jack is meant to wear girly dress, "something slightly too old, a little inappropriate for her age... a little too short, showing a little too much skin". I portrayed Derril as a big, super manly guy (imagine Mickey Rourke), someone capable to phisically overpower other people. Mondo47 suggested to add a streak of gray hair to "give him more of a father-figure kind of air".
A little Easter Egg: both the redhair and Derril have a compass embroided on their uniform, while adult Jack has a compass and four skeletal hands tattoed on her chest...
UPDATE November 18, 2010
PAGE 5
Now Jack starts to seriously kick @ss. I was free to choose Jack's outfit, as long as she had "wildly-coloured hair". I chose to make her look (almost) like one of the concept arts drawn by Matt Rhodes. I call her "Dread Jack" (bad pun). Another Easter Egg: one skull/spine doodle carved on the cell wall (3rd panel) looks like Jack's shoulder tattoo. Jack said that some tattoos remind her of places where she's been and I liked to explore that concept.
PAGE 6
Finally I had a chance to draw one of my favourite armours: the Partisan (Batarian State Arms)
We meet Murtock, who enters the scene as Prince Charming in Shiny Armour (also surrounded by White Light). Mondo47 described him as "a tough mercenary-type; light armour on his legs, heavy boots, long hair just past his shoulders, pistols on his hips, an eyepatch over his right eye. For his battle-hardened appearance, he has some rugged good looks on him."
PAGE 7
What happens here could be a bit hard to understand if you've never played Jack's romance. I noticed that too late, my bad. Basically, Murtock stays behind to cover's Jack's escape. She reaches the shuttle and finds his holo-recording in which he explains how much he loved her and that he sacrificed himself to let her survive. Originally, the 5th and the 6th panel where meant to be one, but I suggested to split it in order to give greater focus to Murtock's bittersweet smile and to his rifle shooting out the door controls.
The last panel has a totally different colour scheme, for a reason. Everything's blue, except Murtock's holo-face, the panels and the little yellow light cast on Jack (mainly to paint her with a warmer colour and make her stand out from the rest of the image).
PAGE 8
Total change of pace. Jack's thoughts are interrupted by Shepard and now we have big wide panels instead of small, claustrophobic ones. In the prehistoric version of the script, Shepard's face was visible, but I suggested to hide it so he could become everybody's Shepard, not just the one with the "default face" you see in commercials.
Modifié par Epantiras, 27 février 2011 - 03:21 .
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