Chapter 4: Page 27

One Vision: Page 27

NOTES FROM JASON

You knew such a crash was probable. If we’ve been doing our jobs correctly this whole chapter, you would know it was definitely inevitable. Eventually, even the hardest, most stalwart mind breaks after enough strain, and Harker here has had quite the battle as we’ve seen previously. He can at least have the comfort of knowing it came at seemingly his own body shutting down rather than forced open by President Carnelius. The real question now is whether he was able to get whatever it was he was seeking, that something hinted at by the mental apparition of Samson Cole. Judging from this page, he seems to have hit at something, but our man couldn’t put it into words. I’m certain we’ll find out at some point. It’d be real amateur-hour type stuff if we didn’t.

I’ve talked a lot about how so many scenes in this chapter changed from the initial draft. Not so much with this one. I suppose the only alteration was adding a little more action into the scene. Watching Harker’s mind break via facial tics and spasms could work in another medium, but in my opinion, it doesn’t work as well in a comic. Or maybe it does, and I haven’t figured it out yet, but for this comic, it wasn’t quite right. Hence the addition of Harker lunging like a feral animal boxed in a corner, and Carnelius striking him with his book. Something visual and visceral. Plus, a theatrical type like Harker would be a lot more active, particularly when on his last figurative legs and at the cusp of whatever goal he is about to achieve.

Randy’s post yesterday talked about the visual inspiration for Carnelius, which was quite informative, as I didn’t know that at all. Like he said, we don’t know what the other is going to post. I thought I’d briefly talk about my inspirations for our main antagonist. First up, the name. Certainly an odd one, at least to me. The name actually came up not too long after coming up with the initial idea of The Jacket. Randy and I devised a list of bad guy sounding names when we were coming up with the characters. Carnelius was one of my suggestions. There was something about it that really spoke to me. We forgot about the list for a time, and just kept referring to him by our code name, which was Good Book. Hell, a lot of the time I still do refer to him as such. When it came time to finally give him a proper name, I went back to that list, and again Carnelius just stood out amongst the others. And so, Carnelius was the surname. What’s his first name? It’s Steven. I originally toyed with a more biblical name, like Josiah or Hosea, but I just kept going back to Steven. Flows better from the mouth, I think (phrasing). And it’s simple. There’s an old adage I remember learning back in high school, which was ‘keep it simple, stupid.’ So, I did.

Name rambling aside, I’ll end this with stating that for me, Carnelius the character is not based on anyone I know personally. Is he based on anyone at all? Well, yes and no. That, however, is for a future post, and for a future moment in the tale where it is more appropriate to delve into that. Trust me, it’ll all make sense then. I promise. For now, it’s onwards to the end of the chapter, and we have some other characters we need to check in on before then.