AD 1997 Sketchbook

Author notes

Ep. 5 Page 17 (original)

Abt_Nihil

on Dec. 30, 2007

This is the first version of page 17. For the finished version I replaced the last two (or more exactly, three) panels with a new panel.

There are two reasons for this change:

1.) It's very unsatisfactory to see Naomi strike out without showing the impact, but just "boom".

2.) The original version is - for anyone not directly familiar with the Golem legend - an obscure reference which adds nothing to the story at hand. There may be some among you who have watched "Innocence" (the Ghost In The Shell sequel), where this is explained a bit. The basic idea is that the Golem, a being of clay, comes to life when its maker inscribes the word "aemeth" on its forehead. The Golem then does whatever is inscribed on a piece of paper which is fed to him. When the "ae" part in "aemeth" is erased he goes back to being an inanimate piece of clay. I don't quite remember if in the original legend he is fed a piece of paper with "maeth" or if the "ae" is erased on his forehead, maybe there are several versions. You should probably look up the exact reference of the aemeth/maeth wordplay, it somehow makes the linguistic difference between life and death.

You can also see some changes in dialogue I made here; they are not that grave, and only slightly more revealing than the original version. One of these changes refers to Deckard's and Kim's dialogue on this episode's second page, where Kim says "I'm not a psychologist"; here he refuses talking about a soul, stating (in the revised version) that the problem is "just" one of physics (that's not to say that he denies the existence of a soul, he just holds the opinion that there is nothing beyond physics to correctly and completely describe a soul).

And last but not least here you can see my original lettering (which I used to write on a separate piece of paper, then scan and cut+paste onto the digital page) as well as my lineart without gray toning. Needless to say, IMHO the toning adds a lot.

I reccommend opening this page and the revised version in separate browser tabs and then clicking back and forth for a nice psychedelic effect :-D