As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today. I think he’s with the CIA.

— Anonymous
Chapter 15, Page 20

Chapter 15, Page 20

Whoops, I just noticed that I used ‘hell’ twice on this page.  That’s what happens when I make (slight) changes to the script on the fly.  Ah, well, I can edit it.  Any suggestions for other expressions that either Roger or Zoey can use?

↓ Transcript
Zoey: What the hell?
Roger: Why does everything keep exploding?
Jacob: Do either of you have a camera on the base?
Zoey: Oh, yeah.
Roger: Yeah. Crap. There's dozens of drones. And Jacob -- that Genocide agent who attacked the island is here. It's a hell of a mess.

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Discussion (13)¬

  1. Jay says:

    Well, any expletive works in “what the X”. Just a question of what tone you’re going for and what tone Zoe’d go for.

    I’ve been on a Shadowrun binge, so “drek” is one thing that comes to mind. 🙂

  2. Mike says:

    Frack?

  3. R.S. Laurent says:

    I think “It’s a bloody mess” would be very apt for the final panel

  4. David Cowie says:

    I hadn’t noticed before you brought it up, but I rather like that the page starts with “What the Hell?” and ends with “It’s a Hell of a mess.”

  5. Cyrian says:

    I like how the camera’s overlap is depicted. Nicely done!

  6. chukg says:

    It’s realistic, people do sometimes repeat words.

  7. jprime says:

    Who’s saying what in the last cluster?

  8. Pat Scaramuzza says:

    I was going to connect word balloons to the second panel, but I decided it covered too much art and wasn’t that important. In the transcript I assigned all the third panel dialogue to Roger.

  9. Sans-sanity says:

    @Pat, That’s how I read it. Because the balloons were on the same side of the page as his out of panel portrait, I think.(Also, as he was on ‘the’ island he’s more likely to refer to it as such, whereas it would be more natural for Zoey to refer to it by name).

    As side note, I don’t see a problem with two ‘Hells’ but would probably replace ‘What the hell?’ With “What on earth?’ if needed…

  10. Hangman says:

    How about replacing ‘hell of a’ with ‘damned’?

  11. CapnCoconuts says:

    I would like to second “it’s a bloody mess.” It seems fitting.

  12. Luiz says:

    Why not the good old fuck? Like in “What the fuck’!

  13. Pat Scaramuzza says:

    I’m trying to avoid the worst cursewords. 🙂 I think this is the first page on which I’ve used ‘hell’. I know ‘damn’ has crept in once or twice. Don’t want anything worse than that. This is a kid-friendly comic about apocalypse and mass-murder.