So here it is! A draft of instalment #3 (pages 5 & 6) of The Poisoned Rallis, a new tale of the Trigan Empire.
Again, credit where credit is due—the art is mainly by Don Lawrence, recycled and reprised from previous episodes of the Trigan Empire. Plus, in this instalment, a couple of panels are not by Don Lawrence. The penultimate panel (panel #7 above right) is painted by Miguel Quesada, one of the other Trigan Empire artists.
My original plan had been to publish this story in 10 monthly instalments, commencing February and concluding by the end of the current year. But then . . . it didn’t happen! This instalment should have been published back in May. Now, if I’m to meet my original self-imposed end-of-year deadline, I’ll have to revise my plan and publish the rest of the story in 8 daily instalments.
It can be done!
In fact, I more or less finished writing the text of the story back at the start of January. The delay in publishing has been mainly due to the great many hours it takes to get the artwork for the panels even roughly right, and having not been able to find the time. So, in order to publish the remaining instalments by the year’s end, I’m simply going to leave some panels blank save for the captions and speech balloons. (See, for example, panel #3 above left.) After all, at this stage all instalments are draft instalments. I’ll come back later to fill in the blanks and rework some of the panels that aren’t quite right.