3-Questions

More characters who are also caricatures show up.  I won't be giving away much of the story by elaborating a bit on the leftmost character.  She has always been into fitness, but has recently become obsessed with crossfit.  Like any fitness regimen, it's quite possible to be like most people and not become an absolute nut about it.  She, however, has quite missed that mark and spends unhealthy amounts of time in the gym doing all manner of exercises to destroy her body.

The girl in the middle is just kinda lazy and laid back, which is a boon in many situations, but will be a bane to many of the A-type folks in the story.

Which leaves the girl on the right, who will remain an enigma for now except that she's the only one who shows any concern for Cystal at this point.  That's, of course, not entirely meaningful since the conspiracy hasn't been defined yet.  I never really set out to make the character on the right the only one not at least somewhat obvious from the start, but that's just how it happened.

2-A Secret Meeting

Personally, I hate it when things are spelled out obviously in dialog, so I'm a little critical of this point in the story, especially since it's right at the beginning.  However, I'm not quite sure how I would have spun it otherwise, so there you go.

Also, you can pretty clearly see that this is a small departure of my usual style since it is so rough.  This is a story that I want to put on paper quickly, and there is no better way I can imagine for this tale than to do it visually, so this comic will have the appearance of being hastily done.  I know most people will argue for quality over quantity, and rightfully so in most cases, but in this case, it's a matter of either getting it done so slowly that not only the people who read it might get frustrated, but I myself might get frustrated and quit at its slow progress.  So there you have it.  Dark pencil lines, and soft shell coloring and shading that doesn't bother to stay within them.  I know that this hasty appearance isn't a total kill joy for many people, so I hope you will be one of those people.  If not, I hope you can at least enjoy the story.  Perhaps for the more "critical" images, I will produce the occasional cleaner page.  But that is still yet to be determined.

And here you meet this character for the first time.  As she is the antagonist, I hope you will grow to both love and hate her.  Like many of the people I write about, she's based on people I know, and this particular character is a combination of one or two of my best friends.  I don't want to give the impression that I think poorly of my friends, so I will say that the neurotic qualities that you will see in her are grossly exaggerated for the purpose of drama and humor.  She is a caricature, as are many of the major players in this story.

1-Make It Double!

Hey, you found The Crystal Conspiracy!  That is pretty awesome.  So, this first page doesn't reveal much of the story, except that, well, Crystal is in trouble.  And these four girls have something to do with it.

Now that that inane explanation is out of the way, maybe I can write something about the place that they're in, since that probably won't be explored much in the story.  Being a huge fan of food and eating out, I've designed this place to be a sort of combination of my favorite places to dine.  I like many restaurants for different reasons, so this place is sort of my own personal Holy Grail of dining establishments.  They have a huge selection of beers on tap, and a number of specialty burgers.  On this particular night, burgers and fries are on sale for $4.99 and all draft beers are $1.00 off.  Most people who come here won't order anything like Coors, Miller, or Bud Light because the local brews they offer are much better.  Oh, and they also have fire-roasted pizza and a number of great appetizers like wings and nachos.  Basically, it's your typical all-american restaurant without the frozen-food quality of large chains.