Transcript: Chapter 2, Episode 30
A view shows of a row of brick two-flat apartments and silhouetted trees in front of an early morning sky, the magenta glow of sun just barely beginning to show behind the rooftops. From off panel, Alastor’s voice asks, “Change your mind about finding my killer yet?” Blaze’s voice replies, “Nope.”
Blaze walks down the street, shooting a mischievous glance over his shoulder at Alastor. He says, “But I wouldn’t mind doing that again.”
Alastor looks back at Blaze and says, “You’re crazy, you know that?”
As they continue down the street of two-flats, Alastor says, “I thought for sure that would be too much for you. But you just kept demanding more.”
Blaze looks wistfully up at the sky and says, “I’m surrounded by the dead all day. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that I’m alive.”
Blaze raises an arm to his face and sniffs himself. As Alastor watches him with raised eyebrows, he says, “I only wish I didn’t smell like an ashtray now.”
The view zooms in on Blaze’s eyes as he blushes and glances away. He says, “Anyway… uh…”
Then he glances back up at Alastor with a sheepish smile and says, “I kinda have a thing for smoky ghosts. It’s a problem.”
Alastor continues to stroll nonchalantly on the sidewalk beside Blaze. He says, “Ha! Amazing. Isn’t that a conflict of interest or something?” Blaze asks, “How?” Alastor replies, “Well, you make a big deal about how you want to ‘save’ me from the smoke and send me into the light.”
With a sly grin, Alastor asks, “But how do I know you’re not just keeping me around to get me even hotter and smokier?”
Blaze furrows his eyebrows. His gaze shifting away, he says, “That’s not why I’m keeping you around…”
The view pans down to a corner building with a sign that reads, “Smoke Top Diner.” Alastor and Blaze stand side by side at the building’s entrance. Blaze, pauses, then asks, “Wanna get breakfast?”
Inside the diner, Blaze stands alone at the hostess’s counter. Holding up two fingers, he smiles and says, “Table for two, please.”
A logo appears: Into the Smoke. Intothesmokecomic.com
An image shows nine ghost hands converging to pet Otto, a content fat black cat. Each hand has several names written on it. Text reads: Special Thanks to my Patrons. Pledge on Patreon at patreon.com/bob_artist. The words “Pledge on Patreon” are crossed out and replaced with the words, “Pet Otto.” An additional URL reads intothesmokecomic.com.
And we’re back after a quick break! Or at least I hope we’re back. This episode is queued for the usual morning hour before I’m awake, so I won’t be up to see whether it posted correctly like it didn’t last time. (Boy am I currently maxed out with frustration about my web host…)
If you follow me or pledge on Patreon, you know there was a slight chance of this episode not going out on time due to web hosting/migration issues. Fortunately, those *appear* to have resolved without much technical downtime, just half a day’s lost emails and my websites essentially on read-only mode. So everything should be up on time as normal. But let me know if anything’s behaving weirdly on your end!
Over the past 3 days, I got a flood of what looks like spambot subscribers on the ITS newsletter. Since I previously outgrew my free newsletter plan, I now have to pay based on subscriber count, which means I really have to prune anyone who’s not a real subscriber. If you are a real person and you subscribed to the newsletter in the past 3 days, please open at least one email you’ve received. That way I won’t accidentally delete you in the upcoming Purge! (I’ve also now enabled double opt-in, so it should hopefully stop the flood.) And also, thank you for subscribing during these turbulent times. 😆
My graphic novel ink schedule is kind of killing me, so I’m not sure if we’ll have to delay the next episode. Hopefully not, since it’s sketched. But I’ll keep you updated on Patreon as usual! Schedule announcements generally go up as free posts. I’m aiming to have it up the first Wednesday of November.
We had another fun round of Patreon sketches last month. This time, it was the “actors” of ITS and Demon of the Underground on the red carpet. One ITS actor’s appearance was especially scandalous….. We also had some other fun monthly extras, including a hopefully helpful artists’ resource for the Secret Gallery tier.
No time for a new incentive this month, but as usual, I super appreciate everyone who drops a vote for ITS! Voting helps new readers find the comic. You can vote for Into the Smoke here, up to once per day!
