Issue 13 · Print view
24 pages · 77 panels
Recap Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Recap splash
[art pending]
Same composition as Issue 12's final splash, slightly closer in. The crowd in the salvage yard, packed shoulder-to-shoulder. The stage in the center. Jesse at the mic, green guitar in his hands. Dev at the kit, sticks raised. The Christmas lights overhead. The Vegas night sky above.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Jesse at the mic. The crowd, hushed. Dev behind, ready.
[art pending]
Jesse glances back at Dev. Dev nods.
[art pending]
Dev, eyes on Jesse, sticks raised. Allred — this is the panel where the reader sees a brother who has spent his whole life carrying his brother, finally getting to let go. He doesn't have to hold Jesse together anymore. Jesse is holding himself.
[art pending]
Close on Jesse's hand finding the chord on the green guitar. The fingers, the fretboard, the green wood — the third time in the book we have seen this composition (Issue 1 page 11 panel 3; Issue 2 page 10 panel 4; here). The visual rhyme should hit the reader like a chord itself. Different chord this time. Different player.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The opening chord of the homecoming show. A full-page splash. Jesse mid-strum, head back, eyes closed. The green guitar at full bloom — pickups blazing brighter than they have all book. Dev behind him, in motion, sticks blurred. The two amplifiers on either side of the stage roaring. The Christmas lights overhead, the salvage yard around them, the city beyond. And the crowd — thousands of upturned faces, all of them, for the first time in their lives, hearing it. The musical-staff motif in the margin: the staff is infinite — notes pouring off both ends of the panel, breaking the panel borders, bleeding off the page. In the deep background — visible across the city, far behind the salvage yard — the DeciCorp Spire. One window on the 188th floor goes dark for a full second. Allred — biggest splash in the book yet. Bigger than the smash. Bigger than the warehouse. The reason we hired Mike. Pull every register at once.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The crowd, post-chord. A girl in the front row — twenty-one, Beat Pad just dropped in her pocket — has her hand over her mouth.
[art pending]
A father in the middle of the crowd, his arm around his teenage son. The father is crying. The son, twelve, is looking up at his father with confusion and wonder. The father has not heard live music since he was the son's age.
[art pending]
At the back of the crowd — HOLT from Issue 4. In civilian clothes. Standing alone. The Compliance supervisor who said I'm sure your neighbors won't mind us looking. He has come. He is not reporting. Allred — give us his face. Slow it. He is hearing the future open.
No copy.
[art pending]
On the stage. Jesse, hand on the green guitar, eyes still closed, into the song. Dev, behind, on the kit. The two brothers, locked into each other across the years. The salvage yard ringing.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Mid-song. Jesse at the mic, singing. The lyrics — placeholder pending Darrell Thorp's mix — running as floating captions.
[art pending]
The crowd. Bodies moving. A wave-symbol painted on a kid's cheek, lit by the par cans.
[art pending]
Dev on the kit, eyes closed, in the pocket of the groove. Allred — let the panel show only what matters: the hands, the sticks, the snare, the cymbal.
[art pending]
Wide of the stage and the crowd. The salvage yard, alive. The Vegas night above. The lights of the city in the distance.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
The chord lands. The song ends. The salvage yard explodes. The crowd is screaming. People are jumping. People are crying. People are singing along to a song they have never heard before. Allred — show me twelve different faces in this panel and let each one tell a story.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse at the mic. Breathing hard. He is smiling. Allred — that smile is the answer to every panel of armored Jesse from Issue 1 onward. Slow it.
[art pending]
Dev counts off again. A different rhythm. A different song.
[art pending]
Mid-song. The salvage yard from above — drone-shot view, the stage in the middle, the crowd radiating outward like a slow-blooming flower. In the foreground of the panel, low and small, three more people walking into the yard from the street. Then six. Then twelve. Then twenty. The crowd is growing. News has gotten out.
No copy.
[art pending]
A montage panel — divided into six small frames — showing the news spreading across the city. A taxi driver pulling off his Beat Pad and listening through his rolled-down window. A nurse running out of a hospital on her break. A teenager at a tram station looking up the salvage yard's address on a screen. A grandmother grabbing a hand-built ukulele from a closet she has not opened in fifty years. A bartender flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED and walking out the door. Two cops in uniform, off-duty, climbing on a tram heading east.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The Spire. 188th floor. A glass-walled boardroom. Dim. An emergency klaxon flashing on a wall screen — red bars, GRID INTEGRITY: 73%. A figure at the head of the boardroom table — the Operative from Issues 11/12. Tailored grey three-piece, slightly less perfect than before. A small bandage on their temple from the warehouse collapse. They are alone at the table. Other chairs empty. The Operative is listening — to a faint, distant sound coming through the boardroom window. The chord of the homecoming show.
[art pending]
The Operative crosses to the window. Looks out across the city. They can see the salvage yard from here — a distant cluster of lights and motion, far to the east. The Spire's logo overhead glowing. The wave-symbol — graffitied on a wall on the building across the street from the Spire — visible to the Operative for the first time. Allred — small but important detail. It got that close.
No copy.
[art pending]
The Operative makes a decision. They cross to a desk. They open a drawer. They pull out a coat — long, grey, well-cut. They put it on.
[art pending]
The Operative walks out of the boardroom. The boardroom door swings shut behind them. The boardroom is empty. The Quiet Grid integrity bar on the wall screen ticks downward: 72%. 71%. 70%.
No copy.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The salvage yard, 11:00 P.M. A wide aerial — the salvage yard fully transformed. The container-stack stage. The crowd is now enormous, spilling out into the streets surrounding the yard, packed three blocks deep. Cars stopped in the streets. People standing on roofs of cars to see. People on the surrounding rooftops. A small kid sitting on a father's shoulders waving a hand-painted wave-symbol flag. Marisol's food line — twelve folding tables now, dozens of helpers, a queue of people patiently waiting to be fed. Three more bands have shown up with instruments to back up Scouter — one of them is the grandfather from the end of Issue 11, who hauled his fifty-year-buried Stratocaster out of a basement and walked four miles to be on stage. The Christmas lights have multiplied. Every halfway-able person in the crowd has helped string more. The salvage yard glitters. Allred — this is the splash that opens the trade's last act. Pack it with details. Pull the Romantic register at the volume that broke the city.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
On the stage between songs. Jesse mopping sweat with a rag from Dev's back pocket. Dev replacing a broken stick.
[art pending]
Jesse to the mic.
[art pending]
Rubén — early seventies, a wave-symbol button pinned to his lapel — climbs onto the stage. The Strat over his shoulder. The crowd roars. He looks at Jesse like a man who is dreaming. RUBÉN: …Mijo. RUBÉN: I have not played in front of anyone since 2210.
[art pending]
Jesse, into the mic.
[art pending]
Allred — montage. Rubén and Jesse trading licks. Dev anchoring. The crowd — literally singing along. Some of them only mouthing it. Some of them, for the first time in their lives, learning what a chorus is by repetition. A few of them, somehow, already knowing the words.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
End of the blues. Rubén bows, exits the stage. The crowd roars. He is helped down by ten different hands.
No copy.
[art pending]
The Spire, in the deep background of this panel — a wider shot of the city. Three more windows go dark. The Quiet Grid is failing in waves.
No copy.
[art pending]
On the stage. Dev, between songs, leaning in to Jesse.
[art pending]
What Dev sees: at the very back of the crowd, in a long grey coat, hat-less, ash-blonde hair catching the par-can spill — the Operative. Standing alone. Not approaching. Just listening.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Jesse, sees them. Goes very still.
[art pending]
Jesse, looking at the Operative across the salvage yard. Allred — slow the panel. Two thousand feet of crowd between them. Direct eye contact across the distance. The Operative — in their long grey coat — does not move. They are not pleading. They are not threatening. They are receiving.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse, very quiet, to Dev.
[art pending]
Jesse, processing. Then nodding. He turns back to the mic.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
Jesse, playing open. A full-page splash. Jesse at the mic, eyes open — not closed against the crowd, but meeting the crowd. The green guitar in his hands at full bloom. His face — Allred, this is the panel — without the armor. Open. Vulnerable. Devastating. Dev behind him, on the kit. Not pushing. Holding the space. The grin of a man who has waited ten years for his brother to take the helmet off in public. The crowd — quiet. Nine thousand people in absolute silence, listening. The Christmas lights overhead. The Vegas night above. The Spire in the distance — seventeen of its windows now dark. At the back of the crowd, the Operative — coat tight around them, listening. The Operative is crying. It is not a performance. It is the first honest moment they have had in their entire career. The musical-staff motif in the margin: the staff is clean — a single beautiful melody line, perfectly composed, written from the heart for the first time in the book. *Allred — the most Romantic Romantic register page. The Alex Ross mythic register. The Mike Allred Madman love-scene register. All at once. The defining panel of the book.*
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Mid-song. Quiet, beautiful, exposed. Jesse singing. The crowd listening.
[art pending]
The Operative, in the back, hand to their mouth. The grey coat. The tears.
[art pending]
On the stage, Dev on the kit, watching his brother. Allred — Dev's face. Pride. Love. Letting go.
[art pending]
Wide of the stage and the silent crowd and the city. The Spire's logo — at the apex of the building, miles away — flickers. Goes dark. Comes back. Goes dark.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The bridge. The chord — the chord, the one his father wrote, the one Jesse has been carrying since Issue 4 — opens up into a bridge. The green guitar at maximum bloom. The pickups are not just glowing — they are radiating. A column of green light shoots up from the green guitar's body, through the salvage-yard sky, into the desert night above. The light reaches the clouds. The crowd — heads tilted up. Watching the light. In the deep background — the Spire goes dark. Every window. Every floor. The closed-mouth logo at the apex of the building fails and goes black. The tower stands as a silhouette, lit only by the moon. *Allred — Cosmic register pushed past its limits. This is the panel where the symbol of the bad guys loses. Make it beautiful. Not vengeful. Just over.***
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The salvage yard. The chord still ringing. The crowd looks up — they have felt the city change. A few of them — the older ones — are crying. The younger ones — most of them — have no name yet for what just happened. The grandfather Rubén, at the edge of the stage, looks at Jesse with wet eyes.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse holds the chord. Dev rides the cymbal. Both let it die naturally. The salvage yard, in the good silence — the silence with something in it.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse at the mic. Breathing. He cannot quite speak. He tries.
[art pending]
Dev counts off.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The whole salvage yard, singing. Allred — give us the panel. Wide shot. Jesse and Dev on the stage. The crowd, mouths open, singing the chorus in unison. Nine thousand voices. Even the cops. Even Holt. Even Rubén, sobbing, mouthing the words. Even the Operative, in the back, the grey coat tight around them, mouth open in the chorus. Above the crowd — and this should be a visible element in the panel, treated as a real piece of the art — the words of the chorus float in giant hand-lettered, Saul-Bass-style typography across the top half of the panel: AIN'T NO STOPPING / WHAT WE FOUND TONIGHT / AIN'T NO STOPPING / WHAT WE LOST AND FOUND / WHAT WE LOST AND FOUND The wave-symbol — graffitied on every face, every shirt, every salvage-yard wall — is everywhere. Allred — final big splash of the book. Pull every register simultaneously. This is the splash. The one. The reason we made the comic.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
End of the song. End of the show. Jesse, at the mic, hand still on the green guitar. Dev, at the kit, sticks down. The crowd, breathing.
[art pending]
The crowd, applauding, slow at first then enormous. Jesse and Dev, on the stage, looking out at it. They hold hands above their heads — the Scouter brothers, the two-piece band, the men who broke the city. Allred — iconic finale pose. The cover image for the trade.
No copy.
[art pending]
Backstage — really just behind the shipping containers. The band catching their breath. Marisol arriving with bottles of water, kissing both of them.
[art pending]
Jesse, taking the water, looking back at the salvage yard — the crowd dispersing slowly, in small groups, walking out into the streets they came from.
[art pending]
Jesse, Dev, Marisol — walking out from behind the stage, into the thinning crowd, toward the back of the salvage yard where the Operative is still standing.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The Operative, alone in the back of the salvage yard. Grey coat. Hands in pockets. Looking at the empty stage. They turn as Jesse, Dev, and Marisol approach. Allred — they look smaller than they did in the warehouse. The bandage at their temple. The eyes red. A pin from their lapel missing.
[art pending]
Marisol, calmly:
[art pending]
Long beat. Marisol, considering. Allred — slow it.
[art pending]
Marisol nods. Once. She does not extend her hand. She does not embrace the Operative. But she nods.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The Operative, the brothers, alone now in the back of the salvage yard. The crowd has thinned to a few hundred people lingering near the food tables.
[art pending]
Wren — once the Operative, no longer.
[art pending]
Dev, quiet.
[art pending]
Jesse, looking at Wren. Allred — the panel where one villain is given the chance to become a person. Hold it. Earn it.
Page · 3 panels
Layout — 3 panels — widescreens
[art pending]
Wren turns. Walks away across the salvage yard. The grey coat, hands in pockets, head down. Jesse and Dev watching.
No copy.
[art pending]
Dev, quietly, beside Jesse.
[art pending]
Long beat. The brothers in the salvage yard. The lights overhead. The crowd dispersing. The city beginning a new life.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The brothers walking the streets back toward Vargas Drive. Past 3 A.M. The city around them — transformed. A piano on a sidewalk, two people sitting on the curb playing it. A guy with an acoustic guitar busking outside a 24-hour diner, hat at his feet, money in the hat. Two kids drumming on overturned trash cans on a street corner, a small crowd of late-night people watching, applauding. Allred — montage panel of post-show Vegas. The whole city has tipped.
No copy.
[art pending]
At a tram station, the brothers wait for the eastbound. The station — for the first time in any panel of this book — is full of sound. People talking. People singing under their breath. A boombox somewhere down the platform playing actual music.
[art pending]
The tram pulls up. They board. The car is full of people coming back from the show — Beat Pads off, talking, singing fragments of the chorus to each other.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse, looking out the tram window at the city moving past. His face. Allred — the panel where the kid from Issue 1, the closed kid, the armored kid — is gone. The man in his place is looking at his city and seeing it for the first time.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The brothers walking up Vargas Drive. The neighborhood — at 4 A.M. — has actual people on porches. The neighbors are out. Lights are on. Conversations. Marisol is on the front porch waiting. A mug of coffee in her hands. Her bare wrist. A cardigan around her shoulders. She rises as her sons approach.
No copy.
[art pending]
Marisol opens her arms. The brothers walk into the hug. Three people on a small porch in Vargas Drive at four in the morning, holding each other. Allred — let the panel hold.
No copy.
[art pending]
They sit on the porch. Marisol between them. The dawn beginning at the horizon — pink at the edge of the desert.
[art pending]
Dev, on the other side of Marisol. He pulls the daisy from his jacket pocket. He holds it in his palm. He looks at it.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Sunrise. The Cruz house from across the street. The three of them on the porch, silhouetted against the kitchen light behind them. The desert dawn pink at the edges.
No copy.
[art pending]
The garage door — across the small yard — is open. The new green guitar visible on a stand inside, picked up by the dawn light. Beside it on the bench — fully repaired, work-light glinting off its salvaged pickup covers — the Simulated Guitar. Jesse's hand-built Frankenstein from Issue 1. Marisol kept it safe. She fixed it. Allred — visual rhyme back to Issue 1's garage panel. The Simulated Guitar is alive. The book has come full circle.
No copy.
[art pending]
Inside the garage — barely visible through the open door — the pinned-up photograph of Alex Cruz on the wall. The work-light overhead flickers. Once. Twice. Three times. Like a man saying hello from a distance.
No copy.
[art pending]
Marisol — on the porch — looks at the garage. Sees the flicker. Smiles. Sips her coffee.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash — final page
[art pending]
The salvage yard. Dawn. Empty now — the crowd gone, the cleanup beginning, a few volunteers stacking folding chairs. Across the street from the salvage yard, at the bus stop on the corner — a kid. Maybe nine years old. Battered hand-me-down jacket, sneakers, a backpack. Carrying a guitar case the size of themselves. The case is almost too big for the kid. They are dragging it more than carrying it. The kid stops at the bus stop. Sets the case down on its end. Sits on it. Looks out at the salvage yard. Looks up at the brightening desert sky. Looks down at the case. Hugs it. In the deep distance — behind the salvage yard, far across the city — the Spire stands dark. The closed-mouth logo at its apex is unlit. It will not light again. A few of its windows are open. Someone in one of those windows is playing a piano. The wave-symbol is on every wall the panel can see. The musical-staff motif in the margin — for the first time in the entire book — is not in the margin. It runs across the bottom of the panel, in big, hand-lettered, full-color notation: the chord that goes home. The same chord Alex Cruz wrote in his kitchen twenty-two years before the story started. Allred — quiet splash. No SFX. No dialogue. The Romantic register at its softest. The book ends here.