Locke has a plan!
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Most of the layouts in M@W are pretty basic but the angle on panel one here isn't horrible.
If you stick with me I promise the page designs get better as we go along.
As we approach the end of this arc both Locke and Daniels are starting to look a little more on-model too.
I'm not sure why I ended the last update with only page left in this chapter but I did so this page is the end of part 2! Like part 1, part 2 is exactly 22 pages - or standard comic book length. I stopped caring about that pretty quickly once this became a webcomic. (Until I didn't again but that's a story for a much later arc.)
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Welcome to part 3! SPOILER: It's five pages long. Somewhere along the line I decided M@W was going to be an OGN (original graphic novel) rather than a three issue mini-series. This turned out to be a great choice on the part of 2002 Tim. (Great job you young scamp, you.) Part three as it was originally written would have been mostly another giant Locke and Daniels action sequence and we JUST got pages upon pages of that. That point has been made and the twist is just about to drop. There's no need to pad this one out with more action.
The silhouette with the big hat in panel one is a REALLY important cameo of a character who will be introduced soon. Even I was shocked to see her there. I'd forgotten that 2002 Tim actually did a pretty good job plotting out his stories in advance and was able to seed things early as a result. Take THAT MCU! This was six years before Iron Man!
I'm sorry, Iron Man. I didn't mean it.
Is it a little bit of a stretch for Daniels to double-cross an employer when he prides himself on his professionalism? I guess, but in this case I think 2002 Tim did a half decent job of seeding that Camran is a tool and not some really in a position to hurt Daniels' reputation. (Which is the thing he absolutely cares about most.)
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This is the page that made a lot of Reckless Life casual observers into legit fans and they told me so. (Maybe it will for you too?)
Alexander Danner said it best (I'm paraphrasing here. This was 20 years ago on a forum.) "Reckless Life is taking the adolescent male power fantasy and going all the way with it."
That's pretty much it. I've often said that Locke was the id of 2002 Tim and he just spells it all out for you, dear readers, right here. When I came up the concept of a action movie style cat bugler who steals things for totally immature or nonsensical reasons the idea was to mostly play it for laughs but Locke is deadly serious here and so was I. 2002 Tim had a real chip on his shoulder and current me recognizes it's ridiculous for a privileged AF straight, white, middle class man to be whining about unfairness via a comic book but I STILL see a lot of unfairness in the world and writing comics is what I do, so if I have feelings about something it's gonna come out in these stories. (Stay tuned for Tim's abandonment/trust issues in future stories! Weeeeeeeee!)
Salvaging this page from becoming too up it's own ass is Locke's reminder at the end that this is all fun for him and that's a little meta.
NEXT WEEK: Comeuppance