In yesterday’s comic, Snout sees Dominic for the first time. It is, in my opinion, a milestone moment in The Legacy. It’s also one that I swore would never actually happen, but here we are.
When I started The Legacy of Dominic Deegan I wanted to have as clean a break from the Oracle for Hire years as I could manage while still having a reasonable connection to them. It was my original intention to have Snout learn more and more about Dominic as his travels went on, and to become more enamored with him as someone would get fixated on an interesting but obscure historical figure.
But as with so many of my creative endeavors, my battle plans rarely survive the battlefield. When I drew Snout and Dominic together on the same page to promote the Kickstarter campaign to reprint Volume 2 and I saw the two of them together something in me changed. I had to make them “meet” in the comic somehow, because my heart needed it to happen canonically.
This very same thing happened with Luna those many, many years ago. I originally planned for her time in the comic to be brief and for Dominic to move on past the Travoria family’s drama, but when I saw the two of them on the same page my heart knew there needed to be a change. I’m so glad I listened to my gut because this comic would not have been the same without Luna.
This, however, is going to be a much different meeting. As I mentioned in a previous blog, Snout’s time as The Legacy’s protagonist is drawing to a close, so this isn’t the beginning of a years-long shift in the dynamics of the cast. A few months ago I changed the direction of Snout’s ending to (what I hope will be) something better than my original intention.
Plans are fun to make, but when I see a better plan form I have to listen to my instincts.