Sorry to stall on these - it's been a bad week in Gran world. I'll update these with commentary soon.
UPDATE: Thanks for waiting. Unfortunately we had a death in the family and I needed to be somewhere. It's rare that I travel now, particularly without my spouse and child, so it does oddly take me back to those days of flying with little more than a laptop and a few pens, cobbling a strip together in whatever place I can.
This strip was cobbled together. I was staying with a friend in Orlando, drawing it on her couch. I scanned it at a library with great frustration. After Sloane (quickly) turned around the colors, the real assembly began.
I think the comic speaks for itself, but I'll clarify a few points. This does take place over many months. The panel before she deletes the contact is a confessional to Eve about her bad night.
We see her fall off the wagon, and it's fine. These things aren't linear - they dot our reality and become, as Hanna puts it, a "dull normality". There is no victory, only a continuation where the pain subsides at an almost undetectable speed.
20 thoughts on “#742 – the witch lives”
sep332
How much time does this page cover?
bryanew710
My guess: a couple weeks.
Esc
My guess is actually a few months.
jeybork
an eternity
TheHairyCoo
My guess: both jeybork and bryannew710 are right…
Colineo
Hope you're okay <3
Dylan
All-time iconic page. Hope everything gets better soon in Gran world.
Branwyn
This is one of my favorite pages.
Katherine
Hope things get better soon! This page is probably my all time favorite in the series.
cwbuecheler
This is one of maybe my five favorite "pages" (ok it's like five pages but it's all one coherent piece) in the series. It does a great job of illustrating the slow return to normalcy, peppered with periodic backslides, that happens after a breakup. The days just go by, and Hanna just does her thing, and, well … the days just go by. All you can do is go forward.
The use of white space here is some masterclass level shit.
jaetr
Seconded—this is one of my favorite pages in the comic. I also feel like it's the point where the art and the webdesign started to work at cross purposes—the next/last page buttons get lost in the open vistas of vertical space.
cwbuecheler
Yeah, this one and the upcoming ferris wheel one, among others, are awesome designs that fight a bit against the web layout.
Jayess
Take care Meredith <3
peakpointmatrix
Hope everything is okay Meredith!
In regards to the comic, I always find myself welling up a couple of times as I scroll through this page. And then you reach the title. It's just perfect. I feel so much for Hanna.
Penguinguy63
This is my favorite page in the comic, and one of the best uses of webcomics as a medium I have ever seen. I love it so much.
Mauricio Lemos
I really wonder what's going on in that panel with Eve where Hannah looks angry and Eve despairing.
Also, I really like how the navigation arrows appear just after Hanna deletes Marek's contact, an important turning point on the page.
silentbuffalo
I always interpreted that panel as Hanna telling Eve about her drunken night of bad decisions like calling her ex. Hanna looks like she's struggling through telling the grimace-worth story, and Eve looks appropriately concerned about her friend and the awful night she had.
Julie
I'm sorry for your loss. ♥
Tommie
This is my very favorite page in the whole series. Sort of a mantra to me. Basically what I reread the series for — to get to this. After my partner died (about a month or two after I had broken up with him) I went through a long, slow, and very messy recovery and grieving process, like Hannah. It felt long at the time, but I actually started dating my future spouse only a year and a half afterward. It's funny how a few months can feel like forever when you are living through them.
Wombstone
The panel of Hanna drunk-calling Marek is the saddest moment in the series imo