3-1 Chapter 3: Nightfall
Sunday, July 15th, 2007– Commentary –
Craig: Chapters 1 and 2 were both about 20-25 pages long. Chapter 3 will be quite a bit longer. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
J.D.: It’s in this chapter that we paused to go on hiatus and we were already into the teens then. This chapter is going to be at least half again as long as the others, if not twice as long.
Craig: Most of the themes that we’ve been building in the first two chapters will come to a head at the climax of this one. I’m looking forward to it.
J.D.: And *then* the story gets really interesting. 🙂
Craig: Tell me a little about this page. Why did you choose this quote from the Silmarillion?
J.D.: Asking for a short explanation of this quote is like asking for a ten-page essay on the entire history of the United States.
Craig: Heh. I remember asking you about a lyric on the Blind Guardian CD “Nightfall in Middle Earth” where he says “Never trust the Lord of Winds.” You spent forty-five minutes just giving the proper context to the question before getting into the answer. Which, by the way, was awesome.
J.D.: I’ll try to keep this answer brief. At the point in the Silmarillion where these quotes appear, the Dark Lord Melkor, later dubbed Morgoth, was corrupting the purity of the Blessed Realm by lies because force hadn’t worked for him thus far. The latter part of the quote entails the fall of Valinor as a result of both his lies and his alliance with another dark power.
Craig: That was Ungoliant, right?
J.D.: Yes. After she killed the Trees of Light and sucked their sap, she became so great and so dark that even Melkor feared her and eventually had to flee from her with the help of his Balrogs. But the quote itself refers to that day of darkness when he pierced the trees with his spear and gave her the sap to drink. I thought it was appropriate for the theme of the chapter.
Craig: I guess I can’t get into too much detail there, seeing as we haven’t published that part yet. Tell me a little about the silhouette in the background.
J.D.: It’s a silhouette of the Mythband town, including the arena, the smithies, the general store, the inn, the church, the great wall separating it from Haven, and the shadow of the evil to come floating in the clouds above it.
Craig: Oh, wow! I saw that the buildings corresponded to Mythband, but I didn’t notice the looming dark above. Very cool.
J.D.: I could only get it so frightening-looking made out of clouds. Because I didn’t want the whole sky to be darkness. I wanted it to largely look like clouds unless you were paying attention, and therefore without the text in front of it the face in the sky looks kind of lame, but it gets the point across.
Craig: I like how you have the brightest part being the sky just above the rooftops, as though the sun is setting.
J.D.: Who knows? Maybe at the end of the comic I’ll have a counterpart page to this where the darkness is being rolled back by the sunrise…
July 15th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
I just hope the story keeps rolling, with fewer delays and less misfortune.
Well, less misfortune in the MAKING of the story…