Cover: Pastiche of the original Oceans 11 cover. As in, the sixties version.
Page 1: And we loop back to the movie that introduced this whole flashback. Dale does nice work subdividing this page into two smaller “page” units. Part of me thinks it could have been fun to do the whole thing like this, and make it feel a little like a string of Sunday Paper sized strips.
Page 2: Two guys driving towards Vegas. Except one is a robot. Sort of evocative of all sorts of Vegas mood we’re trying to play with throughout.
In my head, it’s either Outrun or Fear & Loathing.
Page 3: Sape being our alien slang for Homo Sapien.
Oddly, it appears this arc is where I’ve learned to relax and be fine with a &%&.
Page 4: We’re playing a few games with genre in the issue. Real robot pretends to be fake robot in period stuff.
Note we’re doing intros for the Stark Seven characters.
Page 5: The Bear really is a bit of a star, bless her.
Page 6: Nessa is working hard this issue.
There’s lots of hands holding in here so that the reader is following all the hard cuts, and exactly what’s going on. Which makes it strange that…
Page 7: I ended up deciding to leave it to the reader to put 2+2 together and realise how the fake-UFO was made. We can see that it’s a helicopter on the inside shooting. It’s an image inducer which we’ve been using throughout, and the one really obviously sci-fi element we’ve been working in throuhout.
Page 8: Much as 10, we’re cramming a lot in here.
Yes, I killed the dogs 🙁
Page 9: The Bear’s secret revealed. It made me smile to have a character just called “The Bear” for no discernible reason to turn into a beast three issues in. Dale pulled this out a little more than what I wrote into the script, and I can see why – it helps with clarity, etc. Since this issue is so compressed, that’s clearly important.
Page 10: Robot with a shotgun.
Dale nails the expression in the last panel.
Page 11: Another mid-page transition, yet more time compression.
Note Dale and GuruEFX pushing the red of the eyes. 451’s words are kind, but the image clearly isn’t.
Page 12: And the clean-up.
Deciding how “genuine” 451 is about his ethics and his actions is key.
Page 13: The butterflies in the final panel are a wonderfully surreal element. I believe it’s Dale’s addition.
Page 14: When there’s been so much motoring earlier, you may question spending the amount of time here. In a real way, this is the emotional hear of it all, and if we don’t give it the space, no-one’s going to believe it.
Page 15: BABY!
Page 16: MORE BABY!
Page 17: And we’re back to the future. This is a little different from the other SECRET ORIGINS is that we’re not bookending the flashback. We start in the retro-sequence, only only move out at the end. Mainly that’s about space, but partially was just not having anything meaningful to bookend it with. It’d be dead space, and after two issues of Howard and Maria, I figured the readers would go along with it.
Tony in another genre nod. Still not quite past the treating aliens as fiction.
Someone asked me about exposition in a question. Tony moving and 451 stopping him would be a good example of that kind of thing. It’s a core fact of their situation that needs to be re-established every issue.
Page 18: Us Marvel writers sure do like those Celestials.
I included the Celestials in the GODKILLER arc previously to introduce the idea of a monster of that power to the reader. Marvel readers would have understood “A weapon that can kill Celestials” is pretty powerful, but a less experienced reader, with no idea what they are, wouldn’t. So I make sure they’re onstage and being impressive so people get it.
Page 19: I quite like how Dale sells the small/large joke.
Confession: It originally read “Over seven miles” I was looking at the PDF after I Went to the printers when I realised… wait. 25000 feet is what in miles? And I realised I messed up ages ago, and typoed KM for Miles and no-one had noticed. Luckily we were able to tweak it at the printer before the presses started rolling, or otherwise it’d be the sort of thing that people would rightly mock me for.
Page 20: And the name of the previous arc gains another meaning.
25000 feet robot suit in the palm of a robot is one of those visual metaphor things, probably.
Next issue – into the Godkiller, basically. Hurrah.
Gillen, Kieron (9 July 2013).
Writer Notes On Iron Man 12.
Kieron Gillen's Workblog. Retrieved on 9 January 2017.
