Bonus
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Avoiding Overdramatic
In the story, “A Firm Offer,” our original idea was the opposite of what comes to pass in the final version. We had planned to have Wade somehow learn that Eva had been unfaithful. There would have been a violent scene, where Wade hits his wife. Blascovitch would have arrived and defended Eva, or even killed Wade.
Naturally, we prefer our final script, where Eva isn’t a victim who makes a decision in the heat of the moment. When Brookbank and Blascovitch make her an offer, she analyzes the situation coolly, and it’s her own ambition that leads her to turn her back on her life. We feel that, in this scene, Eva gains more personality, which creates some interesting dramatic potential.
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“Happy to be Alive”: Reframing
“Happy To Be Alive” was originally supposed to have five panels in the last strip. But the illustrator forgot one panel in the original version and then later made the correction. However, we decided to move the panel to emphasize the solitude aspect. Click on the image to see the three panels.
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“House of Cards” As Inspiration
The scene between Valasquez and Shirley at the end of the story, “Footing the Bill,” is liberally inspired by the behaviour of Francis Urquhart (played by Ian Richardson) in the British series “House of Cards.” Urquhart would be double dealing with his close partners but would ask for their total trust while also bullying them physically. Valasquez is not a copy of this character. He’s much darker. But we like the idea of the unconditional devotion that Urquhart demands from his own partners, so that’s the aspect we tried to transpose to Valasquez.
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But what were they saying? (Extraction – Part II)
There is a lot of Russian dialogue in this story. We won’t translate it all—we have to maintain the story’s magic after all—but here is an essential segment.
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Profile of Etienne Choquette
Étienne Choquette (see photo) has an background in Programming Technology and has worked for various communications agency. Since 2010, he has been working for the Sainte-Justice UHC Foundation in Montreal. He was involved in Les Apatrides from the very beginning, developing the technological architecture for our website. This architecture included both the visual component for the readers and the administrative aspect of content management. Thanks to his understanding of the project, he was able to translate our needs into an operational system. Because of scheduling conflicts, we were forced to go our separate ways, but we want to express our deep gratitude for his contribution.
