Issue 02 · Print view
20 pages · 65 panels
Recap Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Recap splash — 1 panel
[art pending]
Saturday morning. Soft, low desert sun through the open garage door. The garage from Issue 1 — but flipped inside-out. Boxes everywhere, dragged out of corners, stacked along the walls. Marisol stands in the middle of it with a clipboard. Jesse and Dev, sleeves rolled, mid-task. The Simulated Guitar is propped on a sawhorse, watching the scene like a third sibling.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
Jesse opens a box. Old factory uniforms — DeciCorp Manufacturing patches. Folded carefully. He looks at the patches for a long beat.
No copy.
[art pending]
Dev opens another box. A child's drawings — crayon, in the hand of an eight-year-old. The top drawing: a stick figure father, a stick figure mother, two stick figure boys, all holding instruments. Above them, in crayon: SCOUTER FAMILY BAND.
[art pending]
Jesse beside Dev now, looking at the drawing.
[art pending]
Marisol, across the garage, has stopped working. She is watching them. She doesn't say anything. Allred — her stillness is the panel.
No copy.
[art pending]
Dev quietly folds the drawing and puts it in his jacket pocket. Not in the keep pile. The pocket. It is staying with him.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Three hours later. The garage is mostly empty now. The boxes are sorted into stacks — keep, donate, recycle. Marisol is taking a break against the workbench, drinking water. Jesse drags one last heavy crate from the back corner.
[art pending]
Jesse drags the crate aside. Underneath, in the floor where the crate used to be — a faint outline. A square set into the concrete, almost invisible. A seam.
[art pending]
Jesse kneels. Brushes dust away. The seam resolves into a clear shape — a hatch in the concrete floor, roughly three feet square, with a small flush keypad set into the surface. A trap door.
[art pending]
Close on Marisol. She has set the water down. Her face is unreadable. She does not move toward the trap door. She does not move away from it.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
Jesse looks up at her from the floor.
[art pending]
Mom doesn't answer. She just looks at the trap door. Her hands have gone to her elbows — she's hugging herself, very small.
[art pending]
Dev kneels next to Jesse. He looks up at Marisol. His voice is gentle.
[art pending]
Marisol closes her eyes. Allred — show us the calculation a mother makes when she finally lets go of the thing she has been protecting her sons from. Decades of fear collapsing into a single breath.
[art pending]
She opens her eyes. She walks across the garage. She kneels beside her sons at the trap door. She places her hand on the keypad — but does not enter a code.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Dev pops the cover of the keypad with a small tool from his pocket. Peers at the circuit board inside. Already analyzing.
[art pending]
Jesse stands. Walks to the wall of pinned-up photographs. The same wall from Issue 1 — diagrams, magazine clippings, family photos. He stops in front of one photo: Alex Cruz, holding both boys, both boys very small.
[art pending]
Dev at the keypad, eyes closed, listening. Sticks out, tapping a code combination on the keypad and listening to the mechanical click.
[art pending]
Close on the keypad. The last tumblers fall into place. A soft mechanical clack.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The trap door opens, hinging upward. Inside the floor cavity, lit from above by the garage work-lights — a single large, flight-cased black road case, hard-shell, vintage clasps, faded stickers from venues nobody alive has heard of: FILLMORE EAST · CBGB · WHISKY A GO-GO · RED ROCKS. The case fills the cavity. A faint green light seeps from a hairline gap along the case's lid seam, casting a sickly, beautiful glow up onto the faces of Jesse, Dev, and Marisol leaning over the opening. Allred — pull the Cosmic register for this single panel. The green light is the entire color palette of the page. Everything else is desaturated to make room for it.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Jesse and Dev carefully lift the case out of the floor and set it on the workbench. It is heavy. The green glow leaks from the seam, brighter against the garage's tungsten light. Marisol stands back. She has not touched it.
[art pending]
Jesse undoes the clasps. One. Two. Three.
[art pending]
He lifts the lid.
[art pending]
Inset / smaller
What is inside: a guitar. A 1960s offset-body electric — Jazzmaster-shaped, Mustang-scaled, single-cutaway, set-neck, custom-built. The body finish is a hand-rubbed nitro green so deep and saturated it does appear to be glowing. Pickups are bare-bobbin alnico — visibly hand-wound. The headstock is unbranded. The pickguard has a small inlay: three tiny waves curling into each other. The wave symbol.
No copy.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
Jesse lifts the green guitar from the case. He holds it out at arm's length, both hands under the body, the way you would hold a child. The green glow lights his face from below. Behind him, Dev — frozen, in awe. Behind Dev, Marisol — one hand over her mouth. Allred — this is the iconic image of the book. The cover of the trade. The hero shot. Compose it as such. The musical-staff motif in the margin: every line of the staff glowing the same green as the guitar.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
Jesse holds the guitar against his chest now, fitting it to his body. It fits him perfectly — like it was built for someone exactly his size. Which, the reader will understand later, it was.
[art pending]
Marisol, voice small.
[art pending]
Jesse looks at her. She looks at the guitar.
[art pending]
Close on Jesse's hand, fingers closing around the neck. The wood is warm. The strings shine.
[art pending]
Close on Dev. He has crossed to the Amp-Sim Box at the workbench. He's already plugging in a cable.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Jesse plugs the green guitar into the Amp-Sim Box. The LED comes on. The cable is shorter than the cable he uses for the Simulated Guitar. The hum is different — cleaner.
[art pending]
Marisol moves to the garage door. Closes it. Locks it. Stands with her back against it.
[art pending]
Jesse stands at the center of the garage. Same place as the Issue 1 splash. Different guitar.
[art pending]
Close on Jesse's left hand finding the chord. The fingers, the fretboard, the green wood. Allred — same composition as Issue 1 page 11 panel 3 ("hands telling the story"). Visual rhyme. The reader will feel it.
No copy.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The chord. A full-page splash. Jesse mid-strum on the green guitar. Dev behind him at the kit. The world cracks. The garage walls bend. The air around the guitar ripples — a circular distortion that fills two-thirds of the page, radiating outward from the strings. Inside the ripple, we can see another place — a smoky interior, brick walls, a stage, distant figures with instruments, warm tungsten light. A portal. A rip in space-time, shaped like a doorway, opening in the middle of a New Vegas garage. The musical-staff motif in the margin: the entire staff has shattered into Kirby krackle. Cosmic Allred register, full op-art.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The portal is open. Jesse and Dev are frozen — staring through it. Marisol has dropped to her knees by the door, one hand over her face. What they (and we) see through the portal: a 1960s bar interior. Brick walls. Posters in 60s typefaces. A small raised stage. Three figures on the stage — two with guitars, one with a bass. A crowd in front of the stage. Cigarette smoke. A neon sign behind the bar: THE DOM. The faint, distorted sound of the band coming through — first notes of something that sounds like the Velvet Underground.
[art pending]
Close on Jesse. He has stopped breathing. His face — Allred, give us the second of his life when he first hears music played by people. Not algorithm. Not memory. Not a hidden garage. People. On a stage. In a room.
[art pending]
Close on Dev. He is reaching out toward the portal — not into it, just toward it, like a man reaching toward a fire he's never been allowed near.
[art pending]
Marisol, voice breaking.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The portal explodes shut. A concussive blast outward — the inside of the ripple collapses to a single point and the shockwave throws Jesse, Dev, and the green guitar across the garage. The garage door rattles in its frame. Dust shaken from the ceiling. Tools knocked off the bench. Cosmic Allred — Kirby-krackle blast frame, the kind of one-panel-detonation he draws better than anyone.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
Aftermath. Silence in the garage — a different kind than the one in Issue 1. A broken silence. Jesse on his back, the green guitar still strapped to his chest, the strings vibrating faintly. Dev sitting up against the wall, dazed. Marisol on her knees by the door.
[art pending]
Jesse pulls himself up to sitting. He is staring at the guitar in his lap. His hands are shaking.
[art pending]
Jesse looks up at Dev. His face is changing — the awe burning off, replaced by something colder. Allred — this is the panel where Jesse's armor goes back on for the first time in the issue.
[art pending]
Dev, slowly, getting to his feet. He is not on board with this plan.
[art pending]
Close on Dev. Quiet. Devastating.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Jesse stares at him.
[art pending]
Dev, walking toward him now. Calm. Implacable.
[art pending]
Jesse, getting to his feet. Holding the guitar up like a piece of evidence.
[art pending]
The word "Dad" lands on Dev like a hit. He stops walking. Allred — slow this panel. The two of them, facing each other, the green guitar between them. Marisol still on her knees by the door, watching.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Dev, very quiet now.
[art pending]
Close on Jesse. He has no answer. Allred — let the panel hold.
No copy.
[art pending]
Marisol, from her knees by the door, voice cracked open.
[art pending]
Marisol gets to her feet. Walks across the garage. Stops in front of Jesse. She does not look at the guitar.
Page · 3 panels
Layout — 3 panels — widescreens
[art pending]
Jesse, looking at his mother, then at his brother, then at the guitar. The longest silence in the issue.
No copy.
[art pending]
He unstraps the guitar. Lays it gently in the case. Closes the lid. Clasps the latches.
[art pending]
Jesse looks up at Dev. The decision is made and the decision is not the one Dev wanted.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Jesse and Dev lower the case back into the floor cavity. Heavy. They do not speak while they do it. Marisol stands behind them.
No copy.
[art pending]
The trap door closes. The crate goes back on top. Dust scattered over the seam. Within minutes, the floor of the garage looks like it did at the start of the issue.
No copy.
[art pending]
Dev steps back. He is looking at the floor where the trap door is. He does not look at Jesse.
[art pending]
Dev walks out of the garage. The metal door slides up, slides down behind him. Jesse and Marisol left alone with the Simulated Guitar and the buried green guitar and twenty-two years of silence.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Marisol crosses to Jesse. Puts a hand on his cheek. He is too tall for her now but she does it anyway.
[art pending]
She leaves the garage. The door closes behind her. Jesse is alone with the Simulated Guitar and the floor.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse picks up the Simulated Guitar — his hand-built Frankenstein from Issue 1. He holds it. He does not plug it in. He just holds it.
No copy.
[art pending]
Close on the photograph of Alex Cruz pinned to the wall. The work-light flickers once. Allred — same flicker as page 14 of Issue 1. The reader who is paying attention will start to notice that the light flickers when Jesse's father is, in some way, present.
No copy.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash — final page
[art pending]
Jesse alone in the garage. He has set the Simulated Guitar back on its stand. He is standing in the middle of the room, in the exact spot where the portal opened, looking up at the ceiling. His hand is at his side. His fingers are moving — fretting the chord that opened the door. He cannot stop them. He has been forbidden to play and his hand is playing anyway. Allred — this is a quiet splash. No SFX, no explosion. The drama is in his hand. Pull the camera in close on Jesse and let the rest of the garage be empty.