I’ve notice that once in awhile I’ll end up with a page where my favorite part is some minor thing that’s almost irrelevant to the “big picture”. Like this page for example, the little inn in the middle, which does nothing to advance the story, is actually my favorite panel. Sometimes I wonder if I had an editor if he/she would make me take something like that out. But I don’t have an editor, so HA! 
i too love the last panel… but it may not be for the same reasons… i love it because it introduces Guan Yu… he of the red face, green robe and massive poled blade massiveness +3… yes, i may or may not be just a lot bit enamored with Guan Yu since i was a wee lad…
Here’s where doing the comic in black and white is a bit of a drawback – Guan Yu’s red face is such a distinguishing characteristic, but it’s hard to depict when there’s no color. I’m still trying to think of good ways to work that in without being too heavy-handed…
Call that a moustache, Liu Bei? But here comes Guan Yu with more than enough testosterone to compensate. Guan Yu is such a figure of legend that who knows if he really had a red face, or whether this derived from depictions of him in Chinese opera. Similarly his famous weapon might be well be anachronistic since ROTK was written centuries after the events it describes so vividly.
hey now, 3 bazillion chinese restaurant shrines can’t be wrong!
Red face, green robe… a scholar AND a fighter! i still remember being told (when i was a wee Taiwanese boy) that Guan Yu was the perfect man, a fighter and a scholar… while Liu Bei was just a scholar and Zhang Fei the fighter… it is almost Freudian in its analysis… Zhang Fe is the Id, Guan Yu is the Super-ego, and Liu Bei is the Ego… heh
Well I think it’s safe to say that the artistic license was applied quite liberally in ROTK… besides Guan Yu’s famous anachronistic weapon, there’s also Liu Bei’s appearance – as many of you know, in the novel he’s described as having arms that extended past his knees, and ear lobes that came down to his shoulders. That is such a freaky anatomy I’ve decided not to draw him that way.
Besides blessing every single Chinese restaurant on the planet with his presence, Guan Yu was also the patron saint of both the police and gangsters in Hong Kong where I grew up … talk about conflict of interest
And speaking of Freud, my only exposure to Freud was in a college class when I had to read some book he wrote, and I got to a part about how every boy wants to sleep with his own mother. At that point I decided Freud is nuts, ditched the book, and went back to playing Quake II …