Chapter Three Inks Complete! (Also: "Always Never")

Join me in Happy Town this week, where we look at…

• Jordi Lafebre's BD/graphic novel ALWAYS NEVER,
• and the last few pages of Chapter Three!

As ever, I've put the same pages in the image viewer above (if you're reading this on the Patreon site) as well as below (for ease of talking about them, and if you're reading this as an email). All the inked pages come last so you can avoid spoilers if you like.

First:

Jordi Lafebre's ALWAYS NEVER

I have enjoyed Jordi Lafebre's drawings for a while, so when I saw this on the library shelf I snatched it right up. I read it over the weekend and can't stop thinking about it.

At first, I was nitpicking details. I disliked all the crossing balloon-tails (there are a lot of them). Almost all the pages are laid out in the same six-panel grid which feels like it strangles Lafebre's lively drawings. And the dialogue was not working for me—there were a few conversational turns which I had a hard time puzzling out; whether that's the author's fault or the translator's I don't know. These all ended up being quibbles.

The story is a straight-up romance. The question of "will they or won't they" is answered in the first chapter, so the rest of the book is about the way their lives weave around each other's and through their shared hometown, and I ended up wanting to know how this all started for them. I was wildly curious about their relationship, which might be a first for me.

This book exudes such a powerful air of shameless, full-hearted, perfume-scented, love-is-the-greatest-thing-of-all Pure Romance that—I have to admit—I kind of adored it. It's too charismatic, it's too confident. It felt rejuvenating to spend time with a fully committed, unapologetic love story.

The price of admission is that we are asked to accept a leading man who "can't be tied down" and whose poetic-but-unsophisticated metaphors are PhD-earning revelations. The story feels like it might be written for a male reader, so I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to identify or sympathize with him. I did neither. 

Accounting for all that, this book still has a certain I-don't-know-what about it. It vibrates in a way, and I don't know if it's right or wrong, but it set up camp in my brain. If you've read it or if you end up reading it, let me know what you thought! I'm especially curious how it is for someone who is more familiar with romance stories, as well as anyone who disliked it.

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CHAPTER THREE INKS ARE DONE!

And Alexandra and Katerina are back at it, figuring things out together.

^ After their misunderstanding at the end of Chapter Two, I wanted to friendly them up again so I figured I'd recall the scene with them sitting in the tree, so I pulled out the same 3x4 panel grid. Plus, there's a lot of back-and-forth, and it's a good layout for that.

It'll probably be more fun with the words put in.

I saved this next spread for last, because I knew it would be hard and A) I wanted to be well-practiced by the time I got to it, and B) I thought it would be rewarding as the final pair of pages …

It's a wordless sequence intended to show how Alexandra's distance has affected her mother, encouraging the reader to wonder what is so occupying Mom's mind that she stands there and lets fresh-cut flowers wilt.

But also I really wanted to draw a pretty garden.

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This week I am working on the cover(s)! Ideally, next week I'll be able to show you how things have progressed since you voted on them.

Your sweet summertime fling,

TC