Purifier creator commentary pg.46 (Patreon)

Muskgrave and Leach are fellow CRO officers that work closely with Tilly and will be important secondary characters as the book progresses. I kind of regret not taking an extra page to get a little more of their introduction out, but maybe I'm overthinking things.I wanted to set up the basics of their personalities and relationships, and although it's just one page I got in a lot of the essentials. Muskgrave is, in a word, very "proper". I really should have made his hair neater (maybe fix that in edits and subsequent pages) because I wanted a very put-together, by-the-book foil to Tilly's relentless passion. And my hope is to emphasize that their contrasting approaches to the job are genuinely valid, at least from their own perspectives. Tilly's not wrong in thinking "plague doesn't take breaks, why should I?" but neither is Muskgrave in wanting to preserve agent longevity in this siege. Tilly fights dirty, Muskgrave fights clean. In the middle, quite literally by the framing is Ms. Leach. She is one of the more lighthearted characters in Purifier, if such a thing can exist. She's a little bit cheeky, though no less devoted and serious about the job than the others. I see her playing mediator between Tilly and Muskgrave's differing values, and might be the one with her head screwed on the most securely of all three.But we'll have to find out about that later, here comes an interruption!There's a couple of subtle details in the very last panel. The dialogue "thank christ you're still here" was meant to infer that they are still in the morning but on the cusp of moving out for the day's missions - thus, the relief to find them still around to help with the situation that unfolds over the next few pages is genuine. You'll also notice on this character and all the others like him a photographic identification card pinned to their uniform. This was something I cribbed from my research, a practice of doctors treating Ebola patients. Because of the risk of contamination, they are garbed head to foot in protective clothing, but wear printed photographs of their likenesses. Sometimes they will even write their names on their coveralls to differentiate one another and perhaps also to add what small amount of human touch and bedside manner can be managed given the circumstances. The uniforms themselves are based largely on an illustration  I found that I've not been able to source, but I've included here.