not technically WET MOON, but that and WATER BABY both take place in the city of Wet Moon/the same continuity. Wet Moon is never mentioned by name in WATER BABY, except that Louisa wears a pair of shorts with "Wet Moon" printed on the butt (meant to be her softball shorts, as she plays short stop in the local team, the Wet Moon Worm Lizards). Wet Moon's location is revealed in WATER BABY, though, to be somewhere in Florida (i don't believe it's ever stated in WET MOON itself, but i might be forgetting...). anyway, Brody made a cameo in WET MOON 3 (and Louisa in WET MOON 5!) so she might as well be a Wet Moon character at this point. can anybody find cameos by Cleo, Trilby, Audrey and Natalie in WATER BABY? ;)
other than Louisa's cameo in Wet Moon 5, i hadn't drawn any of the Water Baby characters since 2007. this drawing of Brody was a sketch i did back in 2006, i believe before i'd even started drawing the book, and when a fan requested a new drawing of her i decided to dig out this old sketch and rework it and finish it up. in my mind this would be how Brody would look if she ever shows up in Wet Moon again, with a bunch of new tattoos.
originally i had wanted there to be a second Water Baby book which would have picked up immediately where the first book left off, and detail Brody and Louisa trying to get back home. regarding continuity, Water Baby takes place before Wet Moon volume 1; the scenes before Brody loses her leg are many months before it, and post-injury the story takes place in the summer before WM1, a few months before WM1 picks up with Cleo going to college. in Water Baby 2 Brody and Louisa were going to have a big falling out and their friendship left in shambles, so when they cameo in WET MOON, they wouldn't be friends anymore after their big break-up. i think i might do that differently that now, though, so maybe they'll be the best of friends if they show up together in Wet Moon again. :D
Brody and Louisa are 18 and the book takes place in the summer after high school is over and the graduating class are about to go to college come fall, so over the years i've had a couple people ask why Brody in Wet Moon 3 is hanging out with Fall, who's 15 and a high school freshman, when Brody should be in college: it's because Brody missed so much school because of her leg injury, she had to be held back to make up all the work she missed, which probably amounts to almost a year since not only did she have to recover but she's also really lazy, haha. i want to bring Brody and Louisa into WET MOON as bigger cast members but i haven't found the space for them yet, and i'd have to re-introduce them in a way that wouldn't be confusing for people who haven't read Water Baby. i don't want to start assuming readers know who the characters are in the way that Marvel and DC comics often do. WET MOON should always be standalone even though it has some connections to another book.
Wow, I totally missed the connection between Water Baby and Wet Moon, and even the cameos! Time to read it all again, I guess.
ReplyDeleteAlso? The "Wet Moon Worm Lizards"? That's (one of the many reasons) why I love your stuff! I can only imagine the brainstorming session that led the softball coach to accept this name (and one can only wonder what were the rejected names).
haha. a worm lizard is actually a real animal! i wanted the Wet Moon softball team to have an animal mascot like most teams do, and i wanted it to be similar to the local team in Savannah, Georgia which are the Sand Gnats, some other kind of offbeat or loathsome animal like that. so i did a bunch of research about what the weirdest animals were in the area where Wet Moon is located, and worm lizard was the best one. that's another indication that Wet Moon is located in Florida, because worm lizards are found there. check 'em out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_lizard
DeleteO I actually do remember seeing Cleo and Trilby in Water Baby! I thought they looked familiar :)
ReplyDeleteThat cheeky little remark about Marvel and DC made me laugh xD like "I'm not naming names...(cough)Marvel!..(cough)DC!"
i think Marvel and DC are aware of how they roll, it's no secret! ;) i'm more sad about that frequent aspect of their comics than anything else, because i'd like to read about a lot of their characters except i have no clue what's happening half the time because i'm not well-versed in the continuities or who a lot of the characters are but the books are usually written for people who are. it's frustrating! :\
Deleteaaaah! I'd noticed and really enjoyed the connection between Water Baby and Wet Moon, but always wondered about the GA vs FL thing! Now i know. And no, I hadn't noticed Cleo and Trilby in Water Baby...I have to go back and look!
ReplyDeletei should've said it was in Florida right off the bat in the first volume, i don't know why i didn't. most people probably think the city is in Georgia because it's heavily based on Savannah, GA, which is a perfect assumption to make. another (very obscure) tip-off that Wet Moon is in Florida, though, is that the softball team is the Wet Moon Worm Lizards and the only place in the United States that worm lizards live is in Florida. ;)
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