Original Commentary

The original file for this is actually quite funny looking. The middle panel, to be exact. Long story short, I'm under the weather and when I'm under the weather it makes inking hard. Kimberly's left eye was inked too high, but I inked the other eye the way it was supposed to be, which made her look quite comical. I ended up fixing it digitally, so it all worked out. XD

Terrence was worried that this story arc would be changing things too much in the upcoming week. I mentioned to him that You Say it First is, first and foremost, a relationship comic. Anything else is new territory, unless it's video game stuff. There's been plenty of that around here. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
And information!

But sometimes you need to provide context for things and the only way out of an explanation is through.

And Kimberly gets in touch with her grandfather by the end of the comic. Promises made, promises kept. - Terrence

Original Commentary

I've actually been planning this for the last year or two. I'd come up with bits of Kimberly's family history and write them down. Probably half of it will end up in this arc. But this is the first chance I've had to read it into the record in an interesting storyline. This comic has a lot of past, more than most others. A lot of the characters have pasts that I'd like to get to. Eventually. Need to show the characters' futures too. - Terrence

Modern Commentary
The Taylors' backstory ended up being explained in The New Guy about a year later.

So is Ms. Taylor getting worse or has she always been like this? I think she's in a worse-than-usual mood but Brisbane filtering things out had made her seem more reasonable - Terrence

Original Commentary

No real stories about writing this - I wrote the entire week in one sitting. The nice thing about being back in a 5 day/week schedule is I was able to fit everything in. If the comic ran three a week, I'd would've cut some things - I like this sequence but I don't think it would carry for two weeks. Now, the details of ownership are written out. I spent a lot of time working out the numbers. I'm not sure if the exact numbers will make an appearance. I don't want the details to bore people.

I'm reminded of the manga Death Note, which I read a few weeks back. The first four or so volumes were amazing edge-of-your-seat supernatural detective cat-and-mouse drama. Then this corporation gets a hold of the Death Note and starts into this discussion of who they should kill to advance corporate interests. It was page after page of text that I just couldn't bring myself to read. I gave up on the series after skipping about forty pages in a row. So I don't want to go too much into details - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Non-anthropomorphic emus. The characters eat regular beef and chicken and such. Emu meat isn't a common thing in this comic. It's a an exotic meat, hence the kind of high-risk, high-reward investment opportunity that Mr. Taylor is all about - Terrence

Original Commentary

So how old is Dan? Early 40s, I think. He's younger than Kimberly's parents. He hadn't been working there for that long when Kimberly was born. Sorry about the lack of detail, but both weeks of comics were written in batches and most of our stories about it have been covered in previous days - Terrence

Modern Commentary
That's the same designer bib company that ripped him off and left him with a few boxes of prototypes that - years later - were quite valuable.

I think this ties things in to too neat a bow. It weaves together things that would stand nicely on their own. It didn't need to all be related and I kind of wish I hadn't. The past informs the present throughout the comic but sometimes separate things just need to be separate things.

The main point is that Mr. Taylor has always been like that... - Terrence

Original Commentary

Of course I couldn't have him tell her everything all in one go. There are a number of reasons for that, not the least is that I'd rather not have too much exposition in one go. This is as much about Dan and Kimberly as it is about Mr. and Ms. Taylor, though.

Kimberly has a lot of other questions, of course. This is just the most important one she can think of. Originally, this comic was a lot closer to Tuesday's, in which Ms. Taylor's parents were referred to. There are a lot of times where I write a conversation, and there are two ways the dialogue could go, so I try to steer both in - Terrence

Modern Commentary
We never did anything with Ms. Taylor's parents. Dan knows much of the past, but his information is limited. - Terrence

Original Commentary

I was considering skipping directly to Kimberly at home, but if I did that it's be awkward to go back to Brisbane. This explains Brisbane's motivations to have edited the memos in the first place and provides background. Should I have done this a week or two ago? Perhaps. Robert's bored expression is due in part to the fact that Brisbane has been repeating the same basic speech for most of the day - Terrence

Modern Commentary
It's not surprising that Brisbane's motivations are fear and not wanting to be yelled at. That's classic Brisbane.

Classic old-school Brisbane, that is.

Dude grows a bit during this particular chapter. - Terrence