This page was a bit of a cheat, I suppose. It has a half-page splash on panel five, and one with a really easy background. But I needed a really big beat for that scene, so the story called for it.
It also occurs to me that this is the first daylight scene on Abby's balcony. Abby's apartment is based on an apartment building in Willowick here in Ohio that overooks the lake and kind of stands alone. I originally had that apartment in mind when I was creating Windstar, since I wanted him to have a location he could come and go from without being seen.
With Abby's apartment, I've added a bunch of trees around it, too, to try to make it seem more secluded. I haven't been able to work in the lake, since it tends to look like the ocean and I don't want it to seem like Abby has some ultra-swanky apartment either. In my mind, she lives about 30 minutes outside of Deco City in an adjoining suburb where she can afford the rent.
If I can do one more page between today and tomorrow, I will be completely on track with my compressed schedule for issue #10. I'm trying to get a little further ahead, since there are some of these holiday things that I keep hearing about coming up at the end of the month.
I'm pretty happy with the way this issue is coming out. I think it's definitely going to be my strongest Free Comic Book Day entry yet.