In the original layout, I had another panel in between the top two showing Kate lunging at JT and grabbing for the gun, while pulling back for the punch. But it ended up being way too awkward. I think this turned out better. She is fast, after all.

Not entirely sure about the accuracy of the arm lock she puts him in, but I think the gun to the head probably negates any possibility of a struggle.

* Military insult – “Clearing barrel,” in reference to a woman, means “whore.”

Mike is so angry he’s slipping into Cantonese here. As mentioned offhand previously, he spent some formative years on the streets of Hong Kong, despite his non-Asian heritage. Yes, there is big story there. I’ll get around to telling it someday.

Big thanks to 林泰延 (Lin Taiyan – better known to you all as ChineseWolf here on the site) and friends, for help in translating the Cantonese dialogue bits.

Here’s a quick translation [Cantonese bits in brackets]:


MIKE: You [backwoods, uneducated jack-ass ], you were supposed to keep a low profile, not start growing pot for some [cartel ]!

MIKE: Fuck Chicago, Tippit! You got a [goddammed ] PLANTATION right out in the open! You put The Plan in danger for the sake of a quick buck! Anybody else know about this? Blue? Higgy?


backwoods：鄉下佬: villagers (insulting)
uneducated jack-ass：蠢材: fool, idiot
cartel: 集團：group corporation
goddamned：死人頭: dead man’s head

Thanks again, 林泰延! You’ve been a great help! Hope you like how the final came out, here. Please thank your friends again for the help with this translation!

Had fun giving JT’s place a revisit for these pull-back shots. I was never entirely happy with the introduction of his place back on Page 46.

The Congress Hotel on the south side of the Loop is a famous landmark. You drive right past it if you come into the city via I-290. It’s pretty posh. Xiang clearly has some budget to throw at his investigation if he can afford a suite, here. The Michigan Ave. location would help ensure difficulty of surveillance, assuming the suite is facing the lake (no nearby tall buildings for anyone to monitor his room nearby.)

I totally improvised JT’s security setup here. He’s obviously got the entire property wired up and and cameras hidden everywhere, feeding into his bunker. Now you know why.

The “Wanted by the FBI” poster is roughly based on the real thing. Even though I mocked the whole thing up in Photoshop, I still went to the trouble of inking and lettering it by hand to make it look consistent with the rest of the artwork on the page.

I toyed with some texture effects to give JT’s screen views a pixelized, zoomed in on a monitor look, but I ended up rejecting them because they just muddied the image. Hopefully the iconography for the windows and buttons does the work to scream “Computer Screen!”

Yes, that is exactly what you think it is.

(No author notes.)

(No author notes.)

I wish I could have expanded a bit more on Mike’s unit, here. All of these guys have names, though I realize I was a little lax when coming to designing them. Going from left to right in panel four we have: Mike “Chink” Stuart, “Dougly” Newmayr, “Blue” Cavanaugh, “Roach Coach” Ramirez, and Captain “Higgy” Higgins (a reference to a Turlough O’Carolan Slow Aire I play on the guitar).

I based their looks off composites of various Special Forces troops I observed in the copious reference images I’d gathered. In retrospect, I wish I had them be a nod to famous characters in movies and such. Oh, well. Too late for that, now.

As I mentioned before, this entire story was originally written in prose form. I plan to print it with the footnotes when the finished book is released.