Original Art Sundays No, 221: Speedy Recovery, pp. 18 and 19

Well, on schedule for another week! How does she do it?
Seriously, how? I have no idea!
I worked 25 hours overtime again this week,and I go in for another 15 hour shift in just an hour or so. Thank the Deity for archives, eh?
But it's funny. When I'm working too much and teaching, I'm more driven to create than when I'm simply working too much.
Ahem.
Back to our story.
Speedy and the girls in the band are chained to a dungeon wall, singing an off-key note (foreshadowed by showing Mae Aswell singing painfully, back on page 6). This is a desperate attempt to stop Toby Continued from opening the gateway to the sonic dimension and setting himself up as ruler of all.

I was concerned that the implosion of the sonic universe gateway was too quick, too "pat" to read well, but I was reluctant to expand the moment of crisis.
I think, in retrospect, that the cast shadows from Toby's prone figure in the top panel of p. 19 do more harm than good. But I do really like the big block "WHUMP" of him passing out and falling down in the previous panel.
Rendering on the bricks was lighter this time, to concentrate on the characters. It always annoyed me that so little attention was given to getting out of the physical traps after resolution of some mad doomsday plan. Devoting a page to getting unchained from the wall just seemed practical. And the "guitarist" reference brings the band skills back into the story.
Could I have pushed the background further on p. 18? Possibly, but I wanted the little "pop" of the gateway closing to be a key moment.
I loved Helena Handbasket's pose at the bottom of p.19.
All for this week, folks. If I keep posting two pages a week, we have 3 or 4 more weeks of Speedy!