The shard of light on Mar in panel 2 is a strong choice by Val! I think it helped to say a lot of what's unsaid here, that Mar is presenting herself in a certain way and Jane is too, that we'll be moving back and forth between a performance and the realness throughout.
I like how goony Don is here - I don't think I'd really landed on his character until around this point. Eventually I was more interested in how he interacted with Jane; there's a clear rift between them that has likely formed with age.
5 thoughts on “#794 – as indirectly as possible”
Emily W.
Meredith, what was Jane's ethnicity? I couldn't tell if she was Black, South Asian, mixed… not crucial either way but I was curious!
granulac
I never got around to fleshing out her family background, but in drawing her I always had the sense that she was mixed.
Bleh
Don's age went from like 30 to 20 in my head after seeing him without the mustache
Madeleine
I absolutely adore that shock of light on Marigold's back in panel 2. This is the kind of lighting that really screams "COFFEE SHOP" to me. And of course it brings that special coffee shop feeling with it – the relaxing escape from the morning, sitting down and letting the caffeine and inspiration hit, listening in to the casual conversations between the baristas and the regulars.
peakpointmatrix
I *just* noticed Will dropping stuff off in the back there. I’d always wondered why he was conveniently in earshot of Mar’s request.