Comic #982: Mana Stew (Patreon)

Writing this one turned out to be a bit of a pain. I rarely come into writing a comic with a pre-set idea, but after the throwback post last week, I realized I really wanted to do another Gigz’ Kitchen.

I started off right away with the idea that she should cook something from the new expansion, so I looked up the recipes to see if anything jumped out at me, and the Mana-Infused Stew seemed to stir up some ideas.

Gigz making all of the snide comments to the blood elf really came naturally out of the situation. I don’t know if I’ve ever had Gigz standing next to a blood elf in the entire run of the comics. The closest examples I can think of are void elves in #626, and the wine foot fetishist from #554. I just knew she would be judgemental immediately and I couldn’t let that opportunity go. 

I originally had a small little throwaway joke in the comic involving Narya that I really liked. I kept trying to make work with the narrative but I just couldn’t get it to fit. The joke originally went like this:

Gigz: Normally this recipe calls for some Mana-Wyrm Essence, but if we want a little more kick, we’re going to need a source of magic with a bit more intelligence.

Narya: You said no more cannibalism.

Gigz (patronizingly patting him on the head): Aww assistant, I didn’t mean you, you’re barely intelligent.

It was funny, but it kept derailing the narrative and making it harder to find a good-fitting punchline. First of all, how does more intelligence make the stew have more kick? Ultimately, I knew that a different type of mana worked better, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that work with the side joke at Narya’s expense. Also, in my original plan, I hadn’t planned on including Narya in the comic at all until that point (I didn't think I'd be able to fit him, Gigz, the Blood elf, and the dialogue), so him appearing out of the blue for the joke undermined the narrative even more. I considered cutting out the Blood Elf from the start and putting Narya instead, but then I wouldn’t have all of Gigz’ prejudicial blood elf comments anymore.

However, once I started drawing, I drew Gigz leaning on her hand, as you see in the first panel. I was intending to have her leaning on a counter, but then I realized I could use Narya's head instead as a fun little visual gag. It's also a bit of a running gag to have Narya used in this way, #956 and #930 for example. So in the end I had Narya in the comic from the beginning, but at that point I wasn't going to rewrite the whole comic to figure out a way to fit in the throwaway joke. Narya being there from the start also helped the final panel not have a random corpse in it.

Also, I decided in the end to blur the NPC into the background. I went back and forth on it and decided it looked funnier that way. It was a little sad to put that work into drawing her just to blur her out, but I'm sure I'll use her again in the future. Here's the original: