About this Strip

This comic presented it's own interesting challenge.To start, the way it was told originally, the arc had two parts: first following Sprockets and Claypool (and Samus, eventually), and then again in that same time period with Blacula and Actrise. So I wanted to preserve that, but instead of one arc then the other I told them in parallel. Both halves had to pace the same, which meant drawing some parts out a bit, but I think the first half of the strip works really well for it.

Then we get to the part where Shaft travels to the past and I had to decide what I wanted to do there. The whole Essentials series has been done in one art style, but the past uses different sprites in the original arc. I elected to preserve that as it's still pixels sprites, and it really does help to sell the idea that the villains have traveled to the far past. Plus it allowed me to show off those sprites one more time, which was an extra bonus.

Honestly, this comic got pretty long, longer than the one covering CVRPG Six, Part 1, despite the original arc being 100 comics shorter (give or take). That's largely because this arc was told in a very economical fashion, with a lot of plot heavy strips coming up throughout. It took a lot of condensing to get it to work, and even then it ended up pretty long.

That said, there was a lot I cut. Everything with the villain in the woods was basically cut. Whole swaths of the battles against Shaft, both in the castle and then on the space station, were also excised. And there was a whole plotline with Shaft getting a familiar that went no where and was completely obliterated. It just so happens that what I could cut was more on the order of15 to 20 strips at a time instead of the hundreds of comics I could cut in previous arcs. Ah well.