Issue #3: “The Long Way Back Home”
Original release date: May 28, 2019
Remastered edition release date: August 16, 2024
It’s time for another edition of Liner Notes, an ongoing series that reveals secrets, trivia, easter eggs and behind-the-scenes info about every issue of Corinne Morgan, Corbie! Today we’re exploring the newly remastered issue #3, in which Corinne’s first outing as her superhero alter-ego takes an unexpected turn when she’s confronted by Morrigan’s sisters, the villainous Neamhain and Macha.
1) If anything has defined the production of this issue, it’s been the loss of the original color layers from the 2019 version. I experimented with a few different approaches to get around this, but ultimately ended up using the final pages from the original digital edition, upscaled and with the line art removed, as an underlying base layer. This was far from ideal, as it resulted in a lot of messy digital artifacts that needed to be cleaned up, but it helped me get to the finish line far quicker than I would have had I needed to start from scratch!
2) Every issue of the remaster series so far has had the occasional bit of rewritten dialog. Usually this is just to make things snappier and flow better. This time around I must admit that I softened a few lines and took out some of the casual cursing that was present originally. Not that I’m getting prudish in my old age, I just think it reads better this way! (I still reserve the right to have the occasional mild curse word in the comic if I deem it appropriate: as I’m not beholden to the whims of any publisher or editor, it’s not like anyone can stop me.)
3) Through flashbacks in this issue, we learn more about Corinne’s father, Carlton. The tech firm he founded, Carmoline, is a melding of his own name with that of his wife Caroline, who has since passed. The events that led to the pair meeting and preceding Corinne’s birth were depicted in a series of comics I worked on between 2012 and 2015, a dry run of sorts for Corbie. None of these tales will ever be made available for public consumption as I don’t think highly of them! Meanwhile, Caroline’s past and appearance remains shrouded in mystery, but there will be further clues as to just what her deal was scattered throughout future issues.
4) Speaking of future storylines, two sub-plots from this issue weren’t revisited in issue 4, which was released all the way jack in January 2020: Carlton and Jennifer looking to question Corinne as to the whereabouts of the Mystical Sphere, and the IC’s scheme to cover up their embarrassing defeat at the hands of Corbie. Neither of these topics will be explored in the issue 4 remaster, but we’ll finally pick up where we left off with these themes in the all-new issue 5 – hopefully by the end of the year – a full half a decade on from where we left off. Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait!
5) With a new issue come three new additions to the Corinne Morgan, Corbie official soundtrack playlists on Spotify and YouTube Music. Here’s some suggested listening to accompany your reading of “The Long Way Back Home”:
– “Oh!” – The Linda Lindas (2:35)
– “Go Wild in the Country” – Bow Wow Wow (2:42)
– “Long Way Back” – Sheryl Crow (5:08)
The last of these three tracks inspired the title for issue #3 back in 2019. You might have noticed that there are a lot of Sheryl Crow references in these early issues: I promise to refrain from them in issue #4, which will only contain my routine Steely Dan homages.
6) During the flashback sequence, we get a rare appearance of a real-world figure in the pages of Corbie, or at least someone with an uncanny resemblance to one: for legal purposes this is not the late Mike Levey of “Amazing Discoveries” fame, this is Mike Expy, appearing alongside Carlton as the host of the late-night infomercial “Astonishing Developments”. Probably the most fun I had while working on this issue was replicating Mike’s colorful and busy sweater in a comic book style.
7) The flashback sequence also incorporates a stealth introduction of a new character who will make a major impact in future issues of Corbie. (Perhaps it’s Mike Expy… then again, perhaps not!)
8) Issue #3 was intended to be released at the end of July, but ultimately got pushed back a few weeks to allow me some extra time to apply the finishing touches it needed. Upon reflection I think that was the right decision, and the release turned out to be far less stressful than that of the previous issue. As I was wrapping up work on the last few interior pages, I began toying with different ideas for the cover art. One concept was that it would involve Corbie being watched from behind a veil of fog by the wolves who appear at the end of this issue. Another was to simply update the original issue 3 cover, which is one of my favorites, but upon reflection I decided I wanted to give you something all-new instead. This one had by far the quickest turnaround of any of the covers in the remaster series, and it took a bit of tweaking to get it to the point where I was somewhat happy with it. Is it a little self-indulgent to do two meta-textual covers in a row with characters breaking the fourth wall? It’s early days yet, but I think I might need to mix things up for issue #4 and come up with something more grounded.
That’ll do it for this round of Liner Notes. We’ll do this again in October – hopefully – as we conclude the Remastered and Expanded era of Corbie with issue #4, “The Cairns of Auld Tamiragh”!
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