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Some words about 'Ant-Man & The Wasp #3'
🕑 Added 2022-10-09 01:20:54 +0000 UTCJust to be clear, lots of SPOILERS AHEAD.
So if you haven't read this one, go check it out first and then come back here later.
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This one took a while to get finished didn't it?
Actually, I've been thinking about this 3rd issue ever since I released the 2nd one, but it wasn't until last May that I finally had a somewhat good idea to use, and that came after watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
DR:MoM actually gave me a lot of ideas for different stories of all kinds (Illuminaughti being the most obvious one), but while I watched the film, there was this one particular idea kinda brewing in the back of my head.
I get it... Wanda went through a lot of shit in her history, but why is she being such a stuck up bitch in that film?
Well, needless to say that this is the thought that gave birth to the ending of my comic. All else was written in order to achieve the goal of having a little someone literally stuck up Wanda's tushie.
Now I had some specific roster of characters that I could use, which were the ones who appeared in the first two issues. But then again, I had set up Carol for something intriguing by the end of issue 2, so it felt a little natural that she'd get the fateful duty of fulfilling my narrative desire.
But then again, how to untangle this narrative yarn I had set up there?
First of all, let's roll way back to issue #1.
When that comic was released, it was August, 2018. There was no Infinity War and no Endgame. The first Ant-Man film had been released only a month before and I started writing that script the next day I saw it in theaters.
Back then, I was still making all my stories about Spidey and this seemed like a nice opportunity to make a story about Scott and Hope with Peter somehow involved. Their only MCU interaction by then was the Airport Scene in Civil War, so that was easy enough to pick as a starting point for character's intention: Peter was on a trip to San Francisco and decided to visit Scott to make amends about that fight.
Oh, the old days where establishing shots were more important than having some smut in page one...
Narratively speaking, the Luis story-telling bits are highlights of both Ant-Man films, so it made a lot of sense to use that as a narrative device: Have Luis tell a erotic tale about Scott and Hope to Peter. And so, my first issue was born.
Readers seemed to like it a lot, so a comic sequel was released in October, 2019. I decided to keep the Luis story-telling device in that, but this time I had him tell a story about how Peter joined Scott and Hope in a threesome right after he told Spidey his original story in issue #1.
But who should Luis be talking to in issue #2? I went with Captain Marvel because her movie had been released just a few months earlier, and I was eager to have her character appearing in as many of my stories as possible. Now, this time Luis' interlocutor wouldn't be as important for the narrative as Peter was in issue #1, so I decided to make her reveal happen only at the end of the story, and set her up for an eventual 3rd issue.
But, like I said more above, I couldn't really find that good of a story to tell until May, 2022.
Okay, so... Now I had all these elements to use:
- Issue #2 ended with Luis about to tell a significant additional part of his story to Carol. What would that be?
- Wanda needed to be a significant part of the story.
- Luis would need to be telling this to some new interlocutor.
- Scott would be in it, surely, and Hope's presence would be preferrable as well.
- Maybe I could include Spidey in it too? Could that work?
After some brainstorming, the most interesting scenario was revealing that Wanda visited Luis between his talks with Peter and Carol, which would allow me to introduce Scarlet Witch to the plot.
Not gonna lie... This saga... It's all kinds of hot, ain't it?
Also, I felt I could do as I did with issue #2, and have all those events happen still in sequence, at the same day.
So, the story the Luis is telling now, started with him talking to Spidey, then Spidey joining Scott and Hope, then Wanda coming around, and finally with Carol getting there too.
That sounded somewhat doable and actually less convoluted than MCU's-not-time-travellling.
I'm guessing Wanda did NOT get what he was sayin'!
Now, for Wanda's motivation, I also borrowed it from DR:MoM. Wanda just wants her sons back. But I played with it a little bit, making her try a different plan (or two, actually) before going the multiverse route seen in that film. I also included some little inception there for how she gets the alternate universes idea by picking Scott's brain during her hexing of him.
Okay, so now I had mostly all the pieces to build the story Luis was telling, from start to finish, leaving only the matter of who would he be telling that to?
So, I went backwards considering all recent releases on the MCU, thinking who in those could be a good fit for this.
Moon Knight? Far from Home? Hawkeye? Eternals? Black Widow? Loki...
Of course... LOKI! That series was basically about the multiverse anyway.
So, because Wanda is messing with alternate realities, it'd make a lot of sense if Luis was approached by Loki...
Or... Better yet...
LOKIS!!!
Also, why would I ever pass on the chance of having more Lokicest in my comics, huh?
Let's play Hide-the-Spidey? Pick a hole... Nope, not that one!
As for kinks, the giantess/mini-girl fetish provides for a lot of interesting variety. I used a bunch of them in the first two issues and went with some fun ideas in this third story. I still have a few more saved for a 4th installment, but the more important aspect to me is that they make sense within the general stablished lore of the MCU. Without that, it becomes just a random size-difference story, which there's plenty of somewhere else in the internet.
Well then...
With all narrative aspects resolved, I just sat down and wrote the story.
But that was not the end of it, was it?
Damn, homie... shit's crazy-fine, y'know what I'm sayin'?
Luis' stories have this very peculiar, fast-paced pocho-style vernacular that's more contemporary to a Hispanic person growing up on the West Coast than anything I'm comfortable writing.
I had done it all by myself for Issue #1, extracting most of what I could from the movie transcripts and some online memes, but I didn't feel that much confident about doing it right for a second time.
Luckily for us, those words happen to fit my partner-in-crime, Lety Does Stuff, exactly. And as she's a latina from LA, I was more than happy just letting her take the reigns in making issue #2 sound properly Luis-ish.
And that went so well, she came back for this third installment and help me crack some crazy jokes in-between Mama Djabba's beautifully lewd artwork.
Speaking of the artist, I made an unfair mistake and because of that, you can check the link again and download an updated version of the comic. It now credits Llamaboy for the page layouts he did while Mama Djabba was in the most critical period of their health struggle.
I've talked longly already about the personal troubles he was going through, which made this comic go from a 60-day project, to a 140-day one. Now, despite the delay, at least in my opinion, the art wasn't compromised at all. If anything, it gained from it! Everyone involved had a bit more time to fine-tune their performance and I think the resulting comic speaks for itself.
I personally think I managed to accomplished what I aimed for in this story. The last page gag works both narratively for this story and as a nod to what happened in DS:MoM, so I'm quite happy about that.
Wanda's really into buttstuff, ain't she?
Now, I may have set myself for a trap when I say Luis Will Return in issue #4, considering I have absolutely no clue of what that story could be about. But I do have enough faith in my creative skills to believe it's worth to make that promise.
I don't know exactly how or when that'll happen, but chances are it could be around February, 2023 when Quantumania hits theaters. I'm confident there'll be lots of juicy ideas to explore from that.
(Let's just hope patronage numbers help this campaign get there...)
Until then, onto the next release!
Kindly,
-Tracy.
