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Transcript: Chapter 1, Episode 9
Blaze stands within the church, his grocery bag still slung over his shoulder with the baguette and leafy greens emerging from the top. He looks around while he pulls off one of his gloves, and he thinks to himself, “So there’s a murderous spirit here, huh?”
He reaches out with his bare, tattooed left hand.
He lowers his hand onto a gold doorknob and muses, “No energy here…”
As he touches a stairway railing, he continues, “Or here…”
He glances silently over his shoulder.
Behind him is a cracked concrete staircase leading down into shadow.
He approaches the stairway, holding his glove in his right hand.
He pauses, startled, when a voice calls, “Don’t go down there!”
Behind him, at the top of a stairway leading up, three nuns kneel huddled together. One of them prays intently, another stares at Blaze with worry, and the third says, “There’s a demon in the basement. You’re not safe!”
Blaze smiles and holds up a hand, replying, “The basement, you say? Thanks!” Off-panel, the nun yells, “No, STOP!!!”
Blaze descends to the bottom of the stairs, into a brick-walled basement. He holds his bare hand up to the wall and squints.
He holds his left hand up to a stained glass window.
The tattoo on his hand glows orange, and he grits his teeth.
He holds his glowing left hand with his gloved right hand. His eyebrows furrowed, he thinks, “This basement is overflowing with dark, angry energy. But those people upstairs were wrong. It isn’t a demon. ‘Demon’ is just a label used by people who don’t care to understand the motivations of a spirit.”
Standing within a long, dark corridor of stained glass windows, he glances back over his shoulder and wonders, “Why is this spirit angry?”
He pushes a door open slightly and peers inside. A room number plaque on the wall displays the number 3 along with Roman numerals.
In the dimly lit basement room, furniture lies strewn about and broken. Debris is scattered across the floor. Along the right wall is a wide set of double doors with oversized, decorative gold hinges in a horizontal pattern.
Blaze turns to look at the other side of the room. HIs eyes go wide with shock.
Lying face down on the floor, obscured by shadow, is the body of a man in a trench coat. He’s impaled through the back with a large gold cross that stands about three feet high. The top and right side of the cross are broken off.
Blaze recalls the taunting but handsome face of the man who’d approached him in the grocery store and realizes, “It’s him.”
Looking sorrowfully at the body, he tucks his hair behind his ear.
He approaches the body on the floor. The broken gold cross stands high in his back, catching the light.
He kneels beside the body, his grocery bag on the floor behind him, and he lays his now-bare right hand on the broken cross stuck in the man’s back.
He withdraws his hand. “Weird…” he thinks to himself.
The view pans up to reveal a faint, smoky silhouette behind Blaze. Blaze, unaware, stares down at the body and muses, “No spiritual energy on the murder weapon.”
As Blaze stares in contemplation, the shadowy silhouette behind him holds up a piano wire wrapped around its black, smoky hands.
Blaze’s eyes go wide as the string swiftly passes in front of his face.
The ghostly hands pull the wire taut around Blaze’s neck. Blaze grasps at the wire and clenches his teeth.
Awhile back, I casually took bets on tumblr about which episode 6 character, (1) Handsome Grocery Store Guy or (2) Baguette, would live longer—and by how much. Well, we now have one of two answers.
Also, someone on Webtoon or Tapas (can’t remember which) commented about the fact that a couple of my characters wear gloves in scenarios where most people wouldn’t wear gloves. And now we have a small bit of insight on one of them too! 🙂
I spent most of August working on chapter 2 thumbnails/pencils. Secret Gallery patrons got a dump of thumbnail/pencil sketches ranging from low to medium-low spoilers. They’re in the offsite Secret Gallery, but when I get a chance, I’ll mirror the post directly in the Patreon feed. All patron tiers also got a smaller handful of less spoilery previews. And if you have the time to comb through my Tumblr and Bluesky, you’ll find a couple previews for free!
I also posted some inked/grayscale NSFW art of Blaze, the adrenaline junkie with a thing for smoky ghosts, getting some ghost action at a haunted house. As usual, my NSFW is more in the R-rated range and not super explicit, but there are also, uh, smoky ghosts. So if that’s your thing, check it out in the Secret Gallery.
Here’s a heavily cropped preview (blurred for suggestive content, click to view):
If we hit 225 paid patrons this month, I’ll color this NSFW art and share it with ALL Patreon tiers the following month!
You can pledge on Patreon here!
I’ll try to color and share it with all tiers whenever I hit 225. I want to do some cool spooky lighting, lol. But if it’s far in the future, I’ll likely have forgotten or had to move on to other things. So the 9/30 deadline is my best guarantee! We ended August at 218, and any dip since then is mostly declined cards that’ll get resolved soon. So 225 is very doable.
Big thanks to everyone already pledging on Patreon too! I make two webcomics, and I wouldn’t be able to do both (or either, at this level of art and speed) without the funding. I took a big hit while working on chapter 1 behind the scenes, but I’m hoping to get back to a sustainable level by the start of chapter 2. There’s already been a very helpful bump since launch, which is *awesome* considering how early we are in the story! All that’s to say, y’all are awesome. 🙂
Bluesky blew up over the weekend due to the Brazilian Twitter ban. It’s been a great place to find webcomic folks. I’m pretty active there, so come join me! I’m @bob-artist.bsky.social. If you prefer a slower pace with fewer shares of other people’s posts, check out my main tumblr @bob-artist. Or if you want *just* ITS posts and updates, check my side tumblr @intothesmoke!
Speaking of chapter 2 thumbnails, you can see Blaze’s next morning yoga session if you vote for ITS on Top Webcomics! You can vote every day for as many comics as you want, and voting helps more people discover the comic. (If you don’t want even the tiniest chapter 2 spoilers, you can vote and then just not scroll down to the image.)
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.
Today I get to shout out a FINISHED webcomic! It’s Full-Spectrum Therapy by A.L. Kaplan!
A post-invasion teen attempts to hide his connection to the aliens through booze and makeup, jeopardizing the safety of those he hopes to protect — including his troubled childhood boyfriend.
So, I’ve loved A.L. Kaplan’s work for a LONG time, and he’s doing so many cool things in comics right now that I can barely keep up. (He’s the creator of DC’s Circuit Breaker!) I’m also eagerly anticipating his next webcomic in development. But Full-Spectrum Therapy is still great, and I have the extremely pretty boxed set sitting a few feet away on my bookshelf right now. His design sense is amazing, and I just go crazy for his page layouts (and illustrations too). Not to mention his great variety of flawed-but-lovable queer characters. Check it out!
New Episodes Every Other Wednesday
