Hey, thanks everyone for voting for my little webcomic so far on Top Web Comics :). I kind of hate this whole "vote resets at the first of the month" thing. I get it! But it's weird to have to push it for a few days. Anyway, it looks like Malaya's previous concerns are kind of well founded. Instincts don't lie! But hey, she found his phone! And his keys! No one stole his car, probably because it's a Ford Focus and not like, a Cadillac or something. (His car actually is a Ford Focus, just because they're not terribly hard to draw and also seems like the kind of car your parents might swing for straight out of college versus something more expensive. Plus, good gas mileage.) I ended up going with sort of "voice over" text versus thought bubbles because...I kind of hate thought bubbles. At least most of the time. They seem kind of cheerful to me, all puffy looking, and being concerned for your brother's...aliveness...doesn't seem like a puffy cloud bubble situation. A lot of people have managed to make them work just fine, but I've never gotten the hang of them, so I just...don't use thought bubbles if I can avoid it. Usually, I don't write in a way that we're supposed to know what a character's inner thoughts are, because I prefer to use facial expressions and body language instead, but sometimes you gotta use your words. Fun fact, part of the reason I've always been a shit prose writer is because I have a hard time making it clear what people are thinking/feeling in prose. Telling a story, I can do. The actual writing part...I'm not a fan of. I can do scripts, I can do visual storytelling, but I always find my prose to be lacking. I'm sure if I worked on it, there wouldn't be an issue, but that's not where my strengths lie so I don't bother lol. Granted, me leaning towards purely visual storytelling is also the reason I don't do a lot of pages filled with dialog. I like dialog, but...I kind of hate dialog. I've always been very picky about what mainstream comics I actually read, because I absolutely hate looking at a page filled to the brim with dialog. If characters need to talk for awhile, because they do that sometimes, I tend to break the pages up and give them something to do while they're talking. Otherwise, you end up with talking heads...just panel after panel of people's heads with giant speech bubbles. I find that very unreadable. I already have a short attention span, and it just gets shorter as I get older, so I'm going to assume that if I can make a page that I don't find cumbersome to read, then other people can also handle it. In fact, I kind of hate when people on TV won't shut up. (Talking is the rant I choose for today?) I don't remember what it's exactly called, but there's a type of dialog called something like...the Hollywood chat? It's the sort of conversation where a character will tell the other person everything about their thoughts, feelings, life, etc. in such a way that doesn't happen in 90% of real life conversations. This shows up on TV all the time, and sometimes movies too, where you need characters to be familiar with each other quickly. In real life, most people are fairly guarded. Even generally very open people will shy away from telling you too much about themselves too quickly. Unfortunately, this phenomenon makes so much of television nearly unwatchable to me...which is why I watch TV while working so I don't actually have to pay that much attention. Works great, except for the X-Files. (Too many conspiracy theories working together orchestrated by old white guys who I can't tell apart. Oops.) Okay, time for breakfast! Enjoy your day, friends.