Issue 09 · Print view
22 pages · 70 panels
Recap Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Recap splash
[art pending]
The final beat of Issue 8 — the chorus, the jump, the DeciBot in the back clapping in time. But framed slightly closer than Issue 8's final splash, so the DeciBot is bigger in the composition. The fedora's brim. The matte-white shell. The LED band, just beginning to brighten.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The last chord. Jesse holds it, hand on the neck, vibration sustained. Dev rides the cymbal until it dies. The room erupts — screams, applause, somebody yelling "FUCKING YES."
No copy.
[art pending]
At the back of the room, the DeciBot stops clapping. It pushes off the doorway. It begins walking, calmly, politely, toward the stage. The crowd parts around it — confused but obliging. People assume it's part of the show. Some are taking videos.
[art pending]
Close on Jesse. Sweat. Breathing hard. Watching the DeciBot approach through the crowd.
[art pending]
Dev, behind the kit, sticks in his hands.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The DeciBot at the edge of the stage now. It stops. It tilts its head — a polite tilt, head-of-state delivering condolences.
[art pending]
The crowd, hearing this. Half of them think it's a bit. Half of them are starting to register that something is wrong. Phones are still up. Cam, in the front row, frowning.
[art pending]
The DeciBot reaches into its leather folio. Produces a printed writ. Holds it up.
[art pending]
Jesse, into the mic, voice level. He has decided.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The song starts. The fastest, heaviest, angriest song in the book. Jesse hits the down-stroke like he means it — head whipping forward, hair flying. Dev detonates the kit — both hands, both feet, everything in motion at once. The DeciBot, at the edge of the stage, flinches. The acoustic baffles in its head register an unexpected harmonic load. Its head tilts a fraction off-axis. The fedora slips. Allred — small detail, important detail. The hat starts to slide. The crowd, sensing the gear-shift, responds. Phones up. Bodies moving. The shy crowd of pizza-eating indie kids is suddenly a mosh pit. The musical-staff motif in the margin: the staff is shattered — notes flying off in every direction, the song breaking the box. Allred — Brutal register meeting Standard register meeting Toriyama-kinetic. This is the page they cut for the trailer.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
The DeciBot raises its right hand. The palm-port opens — same as the one that took down the bouncer at The Dom. A sonic pulse aperture, charging.
[art pending]
Jesse, eyes locked on the DeciBot, mid-strum.
[art pending]
The DeciBot fires. The sonic pulse — a visible compression wave, lettered as a translucent ring — lances toward Jesse.
[art pending]
The pulse hits the green guitar's pickups instead of Jesse — Dev, watching, throws a drumstick across the stage as a distraction, the stick clattering off the DeciBot's shoulder a half-second before the pulse fires. The pulse adjusts. Hits the guitar's body. The guitar amplifies the pulse — the pickups absorb the wave and reflect it outward as a wash of green light. The wave hits the DeciBot square in the chest. The DeciBot stumbles backward. Its locomotion subroutine resets.
[art pending]
Dev, already at the snare, hammering into a roll. He yells across the stage:
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The DeciBot recovers. It steps back onto the stage proper. Its head straightens. The fedora is at a worse angle now, brim crooked. It is, somehow, more menacing for being slightly disheveled.
[art pending]
The DeciBot raises both hands. Two palm-ports. Two charging sonic pulses, this time amplified.
[art pending]
Jesse and Dev, on the stage, in a held beat. Jesse's hand on the green guitar's neck. Dev's sticks raised. Allred — the two of them, ready, knowing the next note is the one that matters.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse hits the chord. Dev hits the kit. Both pulses fire from the DeciBot simultaneously.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
The clash. The two sonic pulses converging on the brothers from both DeciBot palms. The chord exploding outward from the green guitar — a full wall of green sound, pickups blazing. The pulses meet the chord-wave in midair. The collision detonates a spherical pressure wave that blows back the front row of the crowd, knocks the par cans off the beam, shatters two of the windows of the Desert Fuzz house, and sends the DeciBot stumbling back a second time. The fedora is gone — blown off entirely, spinning across the room. Allred — Cosmic register dropped into Standard register. Kirby krackle around the collision. Op-art compression rings. This is one of two splashes in the issue and it's a doozy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Aftermath in the room. People on the floor, blinking. Smoke from blown amps. The DeciBot on one knee, head twitching, optical band stuttering. The fedora across the room on the floor.
[art pending]
Cam — Cam from the 2026 band, who lent Dev his kit — picks himself up off the floor. Looks around. Looks at the DeciBot. Looks at the brothers on the stage. Yells:
[art pending]
The crowd, picking themselves up, yelling. A wall of human voice. The DeciBot's reset takes a full second longer than it should. Allred — the moment a 2026 indie crowd realizes they are helping a real band fight a real robot and commits to the bit.
[art pending]
The DeciBot rises to its feet. Slower than before. Its arm screen flickering.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Dev, behind the kit, calling across the stage:
[art pending]
Close on Jesse. He looks at the green guitar in his hands. He looks at the DeciBot, climbing back onto the stage, methodical, lethal. He looks at his brother. He looks at the audience. He looks at the green guitar again.
[art pending]
Jesse unstraps the green guitar. Grips the neck. Lifts it over his head. Allred — the moment a man decides to break the most important object in his life. Slow the panel.
[art pending]
The DeciBot, at the lip of the stage. Optical band brightening, palm-ports re-charging. Looking up at Jesse with the green guitar over his head.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
THE SMASH. Full page. Jesse swinging the green guitar down with both hands, full force, into the DeciBot's head. The neck of the guitar snaps at the head-stock. The body of the guitar shatters against the DeciBot's optical band — chunks of nitrocellulose green wood flying outward, the pickups bursting, the strings whip-cracking loose. The DeciBot's head detonates in a shower of plastic and ceramic and sparks, the LED band shattering across two feet of stage. The green guitar — Jesse's father's masterpiece, the only one of its kind in the world — explodes into pieces around the impact. The musical-staff motif in the margin: the staff cracks down the middle, splits open, ink spilling off the page. Allred — this is the page they print as a poster. The full destruction. Compose it like the Hulk hitting Galactus. Like Goku breaking Frieza's spine. The smash that has cost the hero everything to throw.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Stage. The DeciBot collapsing backward, headless, sparks pouring from its neck cavity. The pieces of the green guitar scattering across the stage. Jesse, holding the remaining neck and headstock in his hands, breathing hard, eyes wide. Dev frozen at the kit.
No copy.
[art pending]
The DeciBot's chest cavity opens — a panel on its torso slides aside, revealing a small spinning core of glowing energy. Its emergency time-jump unit, triggered by catastrophic damage. Allred — wrong-color glow, sickly yellow-green.
[art pending]
The DeciBot's chest core fires. A vortex erupts from the destroyed body — not the green of the green guitar's portal, but a sicklier, yellower color. The vortex grabs not just the DeciBot but everything within ten feet. Including Jesse. Including Dev. Including the remnants of the green guitar's pieces scattered around them.
[art pending]
The brothers, hands locked, mid-pull into the vortex. The DeciBot's destroyed body being sucked in beside them. The Desert Fuzz crowd watching in horror as the band that just played the best song they have ever heard disappears into a hole in the air. Cam, in the front row, screams something the panel doesn't catch.
No copy.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
Inside the wrong vortex. A long widescreen splash. The brothers, hands locked, fighting the vortex. The DeciBot's destroyed body limp beside them. Pieces of the green guitar — the body, the neck, the snapped strings, the pickups — floating in the tunnel like wreckage from a sunk ship. The tunnel is the wrong color — sickly yellow-green, full of static interference. The walls of the tunnel are pocked with windows showing wrong destinations: a wasteland, a flooded ruin, a burning forest, a black room with a single chair. *Allred — this is the bad tunnel. The first one was awe. This is dread. Cosmic register, but with a wrongness to the palette. Yellow-green where the green was clean.*
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
Inside the tunnel. Jesse holding Dev's hand, both of them sliding past the bad windows.
[art pending]
The DeciBot's body, limp, beside them in the tunnel. The chest core flickering, dying.
[art pending]
Dev, looking around, taking stock. The pieces of the green guitar floating around them.
[art pending]
Dev tries to fish the USB out of his pocket — one-handed, the other hand locked with Jesse's. The wind in the tunnel pulls at his jacket. He can't reach it.
[art pending]
They swap hands — a single coordinated motion mid-vortex. Dev's right hand free now. He digs into his jacket pocket. Pulls out the USB. Pulls out Alex's chord diagram. Both held tight.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Dev, in the tunnel, holding the USB up. It is faintly glowing in the bad light.
[art pending]
Jesse, eyes wide.
[art pending]
Dev — engineer mode under impossible pressure — looks down at the pieces of the green guitar floating in the tunnel. He sees the pickup — torn from the body but intact, copper coils unspooled like hair, the cerium-iron-boron core gleaming.
[art pending]
Jesse reaches out into the tunnel — grabs a floating pickup. Hands it to Dev. Dev tucks it under his chin, jams the USB against it, tucks his sticks under his arm, holds the chord diagram in his teeth.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Jesse, in the tunnel, eyes closed. Hands free. He plays the chord — air guitar, hands in midair, finger positions perfect, every shape his father taught him through a chord diagram years after his death. Allred — a panel of a man playing a guitar that doesn't exist, with the conviction of a man who has had to play imaginary guitars for half his life because the real ones were illegal.
No copy.
[art pending]
The pickup in Dev's hand — responds. The cerium-iron-boron core glows faintly green. The USB plugged against it begins to throb in time.
[art pending]
Dev taps the rhythm on his thigh — the seven-over-four shuffle. The tunnel responds — the sickly yellow-green begins to bleach toward clean green. The wrong windows close. New windows open — looking out onto a familiar suburban street, late afternoon light, a single-story Spanish-tile house with a workshop in the back.
[art pending]
The tunnel narrows toward a single window — the suburban street, the Spanish house, getting closer.
No copy.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The brothers — and the DeciBot's destroyed body, and the pieces of the green guitar — fall through the window of the tunnel and out into open air. Quiet desert afternoon. A residential street.
No copy.
[art pending]
They land — hard — on a stretch of green lawn in front of a Spanish-tile house. Jesse on his back, gasping. Dev rolling and coming up to a crouch. The DeciBot's body crumpled across a flowerbed. The pieces of the green guitar scattered across the yard. Allred — debris field, slow camera over the wreckage. The chord diagram fluttering to the grass beside Dev.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse, panting on his back.
[art pending]
Dev looks up. The sky over the suburban street is clean — no Quiet Grid shimmer, no holographic billboards, no Spire. Birds. Actual birds. A breeze in the palms. Allred — the sky is the point of the panel. Beautiful, ordinary, present.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The brothers, on the lawn, surveying. The pieces of their guitar around them. The DeciBot's wreckage. The unfamiliar street. The unfamiliar suburb. The wave-symbol — three quick curls — is painted on the mailbox of the Spanish-tile house. Subtle. Pinned to a flag holder. Allred — let the reader find it; don't point at it.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse's eyes find the mailbox. He stares at it.
[art pending]
A flicker of motion at the front door of the Spanish house. The door has just opened. Someone is in the doorway, holding a screwdriver, looking out at the noise that just landed in their yard. The brothers cannot yet see who.
No copy.
[art pending]
A man's voice from the doorway, off-panel. Older than we have heard it before. Familiar enough to hit the reader like a fist.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash
[art pending]
Reveal. The brothers, on the lawn, turning their heads to look at the doorway. The figure in the doorway, fully visible: an older Alex Cruz. Salt-and-pepper hair. Same wiry build. Same workshop apron. A guitar pick behind one ear. He is in his early sixties. He is alive. He is also wearing — visible behind him in the open doorway — a wave-symbol t-shirt under the apron. Underneath the t-shirt, an embroidered patch, hand-stitched: SCOUTER. Allred — Romantic register, no Cosmic this time. Just a man on a porch. Just the dad his sons have been chasing for nine issues. Make him real. Make him present. Make him alive.
Page · 5 panels
Layout — 5 panels
[art pending]
Alex on the porch. He drops the screwdriver. It clatters on the wood. He puts one hand on the doorframe to steady himself.
[art pending]
Jesse, on the lawn, gets up slowly. Walks toward him. He cannot speak. DEV behind him, slower, processing. He looks at the mailbox. He looks at the dad on the porch. He looks at his brother.
No copy.
[art pending]
Jesse arrives at the bottom of the porch steps. Alex comes down to meet him. They stop one step apart. Allred — slow the panel. The first contact between a father and a son separated by sixteen years of death and four issues of comic-book chasing.
[art pending]
They embrace. Long. Real. Alex's hand on the back of Jesse's head, holding him. Jesse's face buried in his father's shoulder. Allred — the reader has been waiting nine issues for this hug. Earn every micron of it.
No copy.
[art pending]
Alex pulls back. Looks at Dev. Opens his arm. Dev — who is still standing on the lawn, in shock — walks forward, slowly. Alex pulls him in too. The three of them, embraced.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The three of them, sitting on the porch steps now. Alex's arm around both. The wreckage of the green guitar on the lawn. The destroyed DeciBot in the flowerbed.
[art pending]
Alex, gently.
[art pending]
Alex. Long beat. He looks at the wreckage on the lawn. He looks at his sons.
[art pending]
Jesse, very still.
Page · 4 panels
Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
Alex stands. Walks down the porch steps. Bends and picks up a piece of the green guitar's broken body. He holds it. He turns it over.
[art pending]
Alex turns to face them, holding the wood.
[art pending]
Jesse and Dev, on the porch steps, frozen.
[art pending]
Alex, gently.
Splash · 1 panel
Layout — Splash — final page
[art pending]
A high wide shot of the Spanish-tile house from above. The three of them on the porch. The lawn with the wreckage. The street unfurling beyond — a real, suburban, music-having 2260, with a kid down the block playing a real acoustic guitar on a real porch step, with two old men arguing on a sidewalk while one of them holds a violin under his arm, with a small group of teenagers in a driveway crowded around an amp. Everywhere there are instruments. Everywhere there is sound. The sky is clean. The desert is wide. There is no Spire on the horizon. *Allred — Romantic register at maximum. The good ending we have not yet earned. The reader needs to spend a panel just looking.*