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Transcript: Chapter 1, Episode 10
Blaze gasps and gags as he struggles to pull at the wire around his neck. Behind him, the smoky black figure holds the wire steady in clenched fists.
A close-up shows the figure’s fist firmly clutching the wire.
Still choking, Blaze reaches above his head with tense, outstretched hands.
He reaches behind him, his hands grasping the spirit’s head.
His tattoos glow white hot with radiating energy.
The ghost bares its sharp teeth in a pained hiss and releases Blaze, its head burning orange like hot coals. Blaze falls forward as the wire loosens from his neck.
Blaze falls to his knees, grimacing and rubbing his neck while staring intently at the spirit.
The spirit is shown clearly for the first time, His masculine form is slightly nebulous and warped by rising smoke. He has a square jaw, and he wears a trench coat and a shirt unbuttoned at the collar. A large black splotch appears on his chest. “He’s stunned,” Blaze thinks.
Blaze wears a look of concern as he contemplates, “Spirits can touch people if they try hard enough…”
“But people aren’t supposed to be able to touch spirits.” His hand is shown, the ornate tattoos still glowing.
The view closes in on the ghost’s monstrous but familiar scarred face and lip ring. Blaze thinks, “This spirit… He’s the only one here. His energy is all I can feel in this basement. He’s the one everyone’s calling a demon.”
The view shifts to a memory of the smirking man at the grocery store, who had matching scarred cheeks and a lip ring. Blaze continues, “But he’s not the killer. He’s the victim!”
The broken gold cross in the murder victim’s back is visible while Blaze wonders, “Who killed him?”
The ghost takes a swipe at Blaze with long, clawed fingers. Blaze dodges and gasps, “Whoa, easy—EASY!!!”
The ghost swings again. Blaze ducks and says, “If you’d just… give me a second to… mourn over your body…”
The ghost closes in as Blaze cries, “I promise you’ll feel better!!”
The ghost takes another swipe, and Blaze falls backward.
Blaze, on his hands and knees, glances over his shoulder and thinks, “He’s powerful… Maybe the most powerful spirit I’ve ever faced.”
He reaches into his grocery bag and thinks, “But I can calm him with a circle of sage.”
He pulls a leafy bundle from the bag and faces off against the spirit.
He stares down at the leafy bundle, eyes wide, and realizes, “This is… cilantro.”
He remembers the self-checkout machine with his small black bag sitting atop it and thinks, “Oh no no no… I must have left my spirit kit at the grocery store!”
The ghost closes in on Blaze with a growl. Blaze, looking frazzled, holds the cilantro bundle up to the ghost’s face.
The ghost pauses, and he and Blaze stare at each other.
Blaze squirts a lime in the ghost’s face.
With a loud roar, the ghost tackles Blaze to the floor.
Blaze looks nervously up at the face of the ghost who’s holding him pinned to the floor. “Okay, this isn’t working,” he thinks to himself. “And now I want tacos.”
His eyes go wide with horror as a distant voice floats in. It asks, “Sister Constance, is the basement clear?”
A second voice replies, “No, I think he’s still down there.” Above Blaze, the ghost’s menacing white irises zero in on the direction of the voices.
Across the room, a stained glass window depicting an angel begins to crack. Shards of glass fall to the floor, and bright light spills in through the new holes. “He’s trying to get out!” Blaze realizes.
The ghost heads in the direction of the voices. Blaze cries, “No!” and tries to grab the ghost’s arm, but his fingers slip through the smoky form.
The stained glass window continues to crack and break across the depicted angel’s neck and torso. Blaze thinks, “He doesn’t know he can pass through walls yet. But those windows won’t hold him back for long.”
He watches the ghost with clenched fists and thinks,” I can’t let him hurt anyone. But I don’t have my tools!”
He thinks, “There’s only one other way to contain a spirit who’s this close to the smoke.” He lights his lighter.
A logo appears: Into the Smoke. Intothesmokecomic.com
Text reads: This episode is brought to you by my awesome patrons! An image shows a collection of signatures in various colors, sizes, and handwriting styles, alongside Otto the cat with a roughly sketched pointy hat. After the signatures, more text reads: plus additional anonymous supporters! patreon.com/bob_artist.
We’re in the home stretch for chapter 1! Only two episodes left! RIP my buffer, lol. But the good news is I have sketches ready for the first 10 episodes of chapter 2, and I can’t wait because I love chapter 2 *so much.*
We’ll have a nice, healthy hiatus between chapters because I want to post chapter 2 at a quick pace like I did with chapter 1. I might not be able to post chapter 2 as fast (without a miraculous bump in Patreon support, lol). But I like posting long episodes all at once because (1) readers don’t need to reach as far back in their memory to recall what happened 5 pages ago to make the scene cohesive, and (2) I can spend less time posting/announcing updates and more time working on the actual comic.
There will be some fun hiatus extras, though! I’ll probably also do a character Q&A. And if I have to space out the episodes more than biweekly, I’d post partial episode installments to Patreon in between full public episodes so people can read ahead a bit. (Oh, and if you want to help make a miraculous Patreon bump happen, you can pledge here! It helps a ton!)
I know weekly updates are easiest to remember, but you can always sign up for email notifications when a new episode posts! That said, if you have thoughts or opinions on update schedules, I’d love to hear it! I just want to be able to keep making comics. 🙂
With every new episode of chapter 1, I’m gonna shout out a creator and a comic that I recommend and think you’d enjoy.
And this time, I’m super excited to recommend Lies Within by Lacey!
Lysander lacks direction in his life… though he seems to be the only one who doesn’t mind. He’s content to live rent-free under his sister’s roof, get high, watch monster movies, and canoodle with Simon, the new neighbour who moved in a few months ago.
When Lys is attacked one night by a strange intruder in his kitchen, it’s soft, quiet Simon who comes to his aid. In the process, he exposes Lys to a deadly secret:
Monsters are real, and they’re tired of living humanity’s shadow.
Lies Within might possibly be my favorite currently running webcomic. It has everything I could ask for: an awesome (and supernatural!) plot, intriguing dynamics between characters I love, mlm leads who get to have their fun without it pulling away from the (did I mention great?) plot, and mind-blowing art that was beautiful from the start and somehow still gets better with each page. Often, I’ll read a comic more for the art, more for the story, or more for the characters, but this is one where I love all three completely equally.
Also, it just recently came back from break and things in the story are TENSE. I’m usually more of a binge reader, but I’ll probably be checking every update immediately for the foreseeable future, haha. So go check it out!
New Episodes Every Other Wednesday
