Comic #964: Fantastic Five (Patreon)

This is the original idea I had for the last comic, which I mentioned in the previous commentary. It was one of those situations where I really liked the premise but had no idea what to do for the punchline. I always had planned to have the characters look a little bit more like their original early comic forms (dots for eyes, etc). There's a bit of "I'm a good healer!" vibes to this one that I liked. I just wasn't sure how to end it.

My intent was for each of the panels to represent a distinct player role in a dungeon, and I'm not sure that really came across. I did consider labeling each panel, for example, panel 1: The Leader, Panel 2: The tank, etc. In the end I decided that adding that much exposition just took away from the simplicity of the initial idea that I liked so much.

I did go back and forth on the final panel. Originally I had a death panel popped up above Keydar that said "Release?" and a button that simply said, "Okay". In the end I decided it fit better with my theme of the five roles if Keydar himself was asking for a rez and Gigz was dejectedly saying, "Okay..."

Here's the original final panel:

I think they are both funny, and I liked the idea of incorporating a UI element, but in the end, I think Keydar speaking makes it land a lot harder that his role is dying. You can decide which you think is better.