… – Blank!

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/17/

This comic we decided to have a little dialog with Windwaker Link.

Link is well known for being a silent protagonist;  it’s a literary device that allows the game player, or book reader, to insert their own personality into the main character without having that main character say things in a specific mode that would be off-putting to the reader.

However, this is a dialog based comic, so Link was going to be in conversations.  How to fix this?  Simple!  Everything he says is “…” (elipses).

Or, a variation of “…”  We discovered, while discussing how Link was going to talk, that we could imply all kinds of dialog using three punctuation marks.  ”!!!” is surprise or dispair, “.,.” is an explanation, “..?” is a question, “…” is dejected or standard speech, and “$&!” is obviously cussing!

We decided to allow Chris to “understand” him so we could have conversations;  everyone else, however, hears absolutely nothing when he speaks.

A question by Dave as to how you would “translate” “…” lead to the last panel.

This might be one of the easiest comics to translate… other than the last panel, perhaps.

One final note that this is a transition comic.  Shawn, the comic artist, had been practicing the characters as he moved along.  He’s an Industrual School Graphic Designer; everything has to be broken down into components and lines and curves, so drawing people is a massive difficulty.  However, you can see in the last two frames how the character’s “program” is starting to hit it’s final form.