I’ve mentioned fight scenes in Variables before but I think some of it is worth talking about again… Fight scenes in movies, television, and comics bother me a lot of the time. The fighters are nearly immortal. They take multiple punches to the face. They fight for ten minutes, then somehow find the strength to get up and do it again. Anyone who has been punched in the face knows that this just isn’t the case. Hell, look at boxing matches. If the fights go for 20+ minutes, the boxers are usually so tired that they’re lobbing junk at one another in hopes one of them will finally fall down… and those guys are wearing gloves and have to play by a strict set of rules! Add in guns, knives, or baseball bats and the length of fight shortens exponentially.

Which brings me to this page. A fight is about to break out in Variables! Finally! Of course, the fight only lasts two pages, or about ten seconds in real time. Punches are thrown, shots are fired, stuff happens, and then it’s over. Which causes a problem for the medium of comic books… How do I display such a thing? Laying out these upcoming pages has been a real challenge. It’s a fine line to walk between showing too many panels to explain everything that’s happening versus keeping it fast and loose to entertain the reader with vivid imagery. Initially, the fight was going to be slightly different (as you’ll see in the upcoming week) but necessity forced me to change one crucial moment in the fight, one that I happened to really enjoy. It showed how Karter would fight logically and use whatever advantage he had to its fullest to keep the fight as short as possible. The panel is still there but it had to be changed to keep the action flowing. He’s still doing the same thing but it’s from a different angle so you don’t see exactly what it is he’s doing. Hopefully you will be able to figure it out anyway. Either way, it doesn’t change anything in the fight itself; the entire battle still goes down in a matter of seconds.

In Variables, the Sui Generis are very rare. No one knows why they exist (yet). It’s really the main story point of Variables (figuring out where these people came from) and all will be explained down the road (way down the road). Anyway, their rarity means that two powered people rarely square off against one another (at least early in the series they generally don’t), which means that fights are usually fought the old-fashioned way with guns, fists, and knives. And they’re short. Then again, two Sui Generis squaring off against one another may result in an even shorter fight. I use my power, you die. Whoever hits first will almost always win, barring a few examples where the superpower allows them to take significant damage before falling. In short, it’s one of the main elements I will use to keep Variables grounded, at least as grounded as something like this can be.

Click here to see the entire work-in-progress issue of Variables.

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