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Transcript: Chapter 1, Episode 8
Blaze clasps a door handle with his gloved hand. “I need to go inside,” he thinks. “There could be a lost spirit in here.”
Cut to black.
In the darkness, Blaze holds up his lighter, casting a faint glow on his face as he glances around.
He holds out the lighter, illuminating a row of decorative wall panels.
Moving the lighter, he exposes a plain wooden wall.
He holds the lighter up in front of him while glancing over his shoulder and walking backward.
He crashes into something and groans, “ngh!” Behind him, something cracks.
He lowers the lighter and reveals a spider hanging beside two light switches in the “off” position.
He flips a switch, and the room is illuminated with a warm orange glow.
He turns and sees a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. Jesus’s arm is broken near the shoulder, a bare armature wire sticking out from the plaster. The Virgin Mary stares down at Blaze as if in judgment.
At Blaze’s feet is the marble arm, its thumb broken into a separate piece with another bare armature wire exposed.
Blaze stares down at it and grimaces.
Blaze looks up at the repeated “THUNK THUNK THUNK” of approaching footsteps. In a doorway beside the statue, the leg of a running figure is visible.
The thunking continues as the feet, clad in black combat boots, run forward.
The thunking is interrupted by a startled “Waaaaa-“ as one of the boots steps on the broken statue arm.
The person continues to cry out as he topples over. Blaze runs toward the person with concern and yells, “Whoa, wait!”
He reaches the person’s side and asks, “Are you okay?”
Kneeling before him is a wide-eyed man with short, messy brown hair, his face partially obscured in shadow. Sticking out of his back are numerous shards of broken stained glass of various colors and sizes, from a few inches long up to over a foot.
The man runs past Blaze and says, “Just let me out of here!” Blaze reaches out for him and calls, “Wait!”
Blaze catches him and asks, “What happened?” The man glances over his shoulder and stammers, “Y-you wouldn’t believe me.” Blaze replies, “Try me.”
The man is shown from behind, the stained glass sticking out of his back. He says in a quavering voice, “I-I saw… something fly across the room. It stuck a guy through the chest!”
As Blaze listens with concern, the man grits his teeth and furrows his eyebrows. “He’s dead,” he says. “A DEMON killed him! And it was gonna kill me too!”
As the man heads for the exit, Blaze turns and walks deeper into the church. “Go,” Blaze says. “Call 9-1-1.” The man says, “You better not go in there. That thing’s gonna tear you apart.” Blaze replies, “I’ll be fine. Just go.”
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.
Fun little story: the statue in this episode is inspired by one I grew up with. (Jesus had a broken thumb.) When I was a kid, my dad worked in a hospital, and a few times, my siblings and I stayed overnight in a hospital room while he worked because babysitters were hard to find. Being a kid walking down the hallways of a hospital lined with life-size religious statues at night is just a little creepy.
Anyway, when that hospital closed down, I guess they were giving away the statues, and my very religious dad decided it’d go great in our house. 😬 He asked if I could fix the thumb, and I said I would, but then all my sculpting materials dried out and I never did. Alas, the one thing he found useful about my art degree… I still feel bad about not doing it, haha.
Anyway, just like Blaze, I had a normal childhood with absolutely no baggage and am now a well-adjusted adult!
I’m about 40 pages into thumbnailing/penciling ITS chapter 2! That’s very close to 9 episodes. I mean, they were only supposed to be thumbnails, but like 80% of them turned out clean enough to serve as pencils. Keep an eye on my Patreon; I’m due to post some more previews soon! I generally save anything potentially spoilery for the Secret Gallery tier, but I’ll try to post some not-too-spoilery stuff to the other tiers if I can!
I’m gonna be on a panel at Citrus Con this weekend! Come check it out! I think there’s like one day left to register for the convention (which is online and free!), so be sure to do that right away if you’re interested! It closes on August 22.
I’ll be there on Saturday at 3pm ET as part of a webcomics roundtable. There’ll be live drawing too, and it’s a great group, so I think it’ll be a lot of fun.
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.
This time, I’m shouting out Kingfisher, by Rowan MacColl!
Kingfisher is an 1920s occult mystery series about an amateur scholar Seymour and his friend/roommate/bodyguard Gabriel trying to survive in a strange city while deciphering the secrets of an even stranger puzzle, the Kingfisher Box. Together, they hunt thieves, dodge the police, and look too close into the unknown while navigating their relationship with each other.
So, aside from fantasy/spec fic, my other favorite genre is mystery – particularly plot-driven mystery with gay leads. But I actually have a difficult time finding those in comics/webcomics, so I was especially excited to find Kingfisher. Plus I absolutely love Rowan’s cartooning style. So check it out!
New Episodes Every Other Wednesday
