This was not a very happy page to draw. It’s bad enough, though hardly surprising, when bad people do bad things, but to me it’s even more disheartening when good people are forced to do bad things. The governing class in those days included some truly nasty characters. I guess some things never change…
On a lighter note, I suspect I just broke some sort of record for the number of times the word “bad” is used in the same sentence 
the middle panel of the three faces… the shock, the smug, and the realization and disgust… wonderfully done…
Thanks Vonbek! I was trying to think of some menacing lines for the eunuch in the middle panel there, but then I thought if he could threaten people with just a smug look it’d be even more sinister, so I went with that. When I try to convey a character’s emotions by facial expression alone (without the help of dialogue) there’s always a nagging fear that the particular emotion won’t be recognizable, so it’s very good to know you can tell he’s making a smug face
The “good old days” most notable aspect was slavery. It was universal and slaves where treated far worse than animals, which had a value…slaves did not have any. Much worse, for instance, a Roman showing kindness to his slaves was deemed “weak” and a host of “false witnesses”(a roman institution)would strip him of property and sell him as slave for unpaid imaginary debts. An archaeologist can immediately tell if some bones belonged to a slave as they are all heavily damaged and very young. To be safe, a Roman had to publicly torture and even kill his slaves, which where sold a dime a dozen.
More recently, when Dracula(Vlad the Impaler)was asked by the Russian ambassador where his “funny” tastes in impalement and torture came from, he said he was raised as a slave hostage in Turkeys and he said the streets of Istanbul where like a butcher house, with Christan slaves getting chopped up everywhere. There was so many dumped by the Barbary pirates that you got one for less than the price of an onion!
It is certainly true that human lives were not valued very highly in the days of the Three Kingdoms (actually you can probably say that for a rather large stretch of human history). And while we’re on the subject, it is perhaps worth noting that while a large majority of eunuchs were slaves, there were some who voluntarily became eunuchs in order to gain employment in the Royal Palace.
It all boil down to “empathy” or civilization. In the old days, people where just not very civilized. Even domestic(civilized) animals have often more empathy than humans. It would not occur to the yard pig to kill his humans
but they dont have any scruples doing so to same pig.
And slaves, just for survival, had to be pretty swift with the dagger.
It is said that a Roman lived all his life with the constant worry
of being murdered by his slaves or by his sons, which he treated like the slaves.
You’re totally right I think – there’d be a lot less problems in the world if we’d all learn to walk that proverbial mile in each others’ proverbial shoes.
Well I’m all caught up. You should have no fear of this not living up to the material it came from…it’s great so far! I really love how you’re using the inking style so consistent with oriental art. Lovely work!
Thanks Darwin
Always good to hear from fellow comickers. And everyone check out Darwin’s comic for some mutant shark action!
Well… that was bloodier than the book.