Last week’s Sarah-centric preview created quite a stir. Jareth is back again this week, only he’s sharing the stage with Mizumi. She seems all too happy to share the spotlight, but Jareth appears to have something else on his mind. Emotions aside, this week’s pic features yet another pretty costume debut! There are certainly a lot more dresses in this volume, aren’t there? By initial count (and not counting the cover), Toby, Moppet, Jareth, Sarah and Mizumi each get about three costume changes this time out. If there are any RtL cosplayers out there, this volume is the meatiest yet!

Also for those of you who aren’t already fans of Return to Labyrinth on Facebook, there is a bonus picture of Sarah posted over there for members. Just click on the link to the right to become a fan. Some people have asked for a dedicated forum here on gobblin.net — to that end, there are forums on the Facebook fan page which you can feel free to use.

At long last, Sarah makes her volume 4 preview debut! And before you ask, “why is she blonde?”, the answer is, she isn’t. This page just hasn’t been toned yet, so her dark hair hasn’t been filled in. Why is Sarah dressed like that? What does she see in the crystal? And where exactly are she and Jareth that fairies would by flitting about? These questions must go unanswered for the time being, but for now, please enjoy this sneak peek.

It’s back to goblins for this week’s preview pic:

The goblins of Return to Labyrinth serve a very different role than the goblins in the film. For one thing, the movie goblins were mostly adversarial and their primary role, outside of the battle scene at the end, was to riff off of Jareth. There’s something very alien about them — they absolutely aren’t of our world. They aren’t just irreverent and incompetent — they have an air of indifference about them. Sarah’s core friends aside, it was a little scary the way the goblins she encountered really didn’t care if she lived or died. In Return to Labyrinth, as Toby was going to spend the majority of the series living amongst the goblins, I ended up humanizing them, giving them clearer roles and histories. In the Goblins of Labyrinth art book, Terry Jones weaves a rich nonsense  history for the goblins that suggests that they are more than lackeys, and hopefully I captured some of that. With the final volume, though, I really wanted the goblins to, as I mentioned in a previous post, “return to their roots.” Not every one is as kind as Skub or as high-minded as Spittledrum, and it was crucial to remind readers of that.

Next week: Sarah!

After a string of nice inked and toned pages, this week we’re back to a rough sketch featuring Moulin and Nimbus.

In other news, lately I’ve been a graphic novel reading machine courtesy of the fine selection offered at the public library. I’ve been catching up on everything from the funky Umbrella Academy to the heartbreaking Footnotes in Gaza. After reading a couple dozen diverse titles, the one that I keep coming back to is The Rabbi’s Cat by French cartoonist Joann Sfar.  This gorgeous graphic novel explores faith, family, colonialism and compassion in a truly intimate and often funny way. And the smart-ass titular hero is one of the most memorable characters I’ve encountered in any medium. The Rabbi’s Cat gets my highest recommendation.

On the prose front, I just finished Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman, first volume of a planned series called the Vineart War in which magic is distilled from grapes, like wine. It’s a concept that works surprisingly well, and Gilman does a great job introducing us to the intricacies of magical viticulture. The volume ends with a feisty princess, a sarcastic rogue and the promises of many cloaks, brooches and dirks to come — all the hallmarks of the kind of fantasy novel I’m not so into anymore — but as long as there’s more grapes to be stomped, I’ll give the series another volume at least.

Feel free to share your recent reads and recommendations in the comments!

This past week I started writing a new story completely unrelated to Labyrinth and I’m really excited to explore this new world more. It’s a little bit fantasy, a little bit horror and a little bit American history. I’m trying to straddle the line between a folk tale and a more contemporary ghost story. I’ve never written anything quite like this, so wish me luck!

In the meantime, here’s your weekly RTL4 preview pic. I’m not going to put this pic in any context, so you’ll have to use your imagination to figure out what exactly is going on.

This last week, first time visitor Arianna asked if she was the only who felt sorry for Mizumi. Certainly the Queen of Cups hasn’t been the most benign figure since showing up in the Labyrinth, but her history with Jareth, as seen in a couple of flashbacks, definitely suggests that the Goblin King might have had a little bit of wrath coming to him. Arianna, you’re not alone — I have a soft spot for her as well!

I didn’t have Mizumi’s origin story completely worked out when writing volume 1.By the time volume 2 came out, I knew the story, but only hinted at it in that particular volume. When Tokyopop was slated to do a Labyrinth anthology, my planned contribution was going to be that story — of how Mizumi met Jareth and how their relationship came to an end. Well, that anthology disappeared into the aether, so when it came time to write the script for volume 4, this was my last chance to make sure the story was told. And the more that I thought about it, the more that it needed to be told in the book proper and not as an extra down the line, as that relationship says as much about what Jareth sees in Sarah as it says about the adversary in this series. Anyway, that scene went through several revisions and trims (as it wasn’t originally in the outline for this volume, which still went a few pages over my limit!). I’m glad this scene made it in, as it’s one of my very favorite in the entire series.

Okay, now that that setup is out of the way, you can understand why I’m so excited about this week’s preview pic. This is the page that leads into Mizumi’s flashback. It’s actually part of a 2 page spread, but you’ll have to wait a bit to get the rest of the image. Thank you, Chris, for the gorgeous design! I love Mizumi’s new coat.

In Return to Labyrinth, as with many comics, the chapter title pages offer a chance for the artist to break free from the narrative constraints, panels and balloons of the story pages and let the art sing. A while back, I previewed the Chapter 1 title page (Rough and Inked). This week’s preview art is the title page for chapter 2, Palimpsest (the title of which was revealed via word game… maybe I should do the same for chapter 3? Thoughts?) This picture doesn’t shed much light on the events of the chapter (although one cannot deny that light is shed in this pic). If we knew what the goblin scrivener was reading… perhaps it’s the script for the chapter to follow? After all, I’ve been known to draft my scripts on continuous, unbroken scrolls.

UPDATE:

In the comments, someone questioned how it is that goblins are suddenly reading scrolls left and right. Well, the truth is, they aren’t. Spittledrum and the Librarian of Prophecies can read at the 8th grade level, making them the most educated goblins in the Labyrinth. A few goblins, like Skub, can read/write at about the 1st grade level. This particular goblin can’t actually read or write, but he is quite fond of examining documents in the hopes of finding crumbs or bits of jam that might have stuck to the pages.

This week’s preview page is a sketch from chapter 3 featuring a gaggle of goblins in the mess hall. One of my favorite things about watching the series reach is conclusion is seeing the ensemble cast of goblin characters come together. Even in this rough state, I can recognize 9 named goblins from the last three volumes. I’m especially happy to see the hyperbolically named Thousand Horned Horlack return, as I think he’s probably the most distinctly Muppet-like character in the series. It’s easy to imagine him hanging out with Grover and Cookie Monster, enjoying a plate of snickerdoodles (or a Tuber Medley with blue sauce if they should dine at Skub’s rather than Sesame Street).

Next week’s preview — a look at the the Chapter 2 title page!

When we last saw Esker, the muscle of the Moraine Kingdom, he had just been sent by Mizumi to hunt down and eliminate Moppet. This image of Esker comes from very early in the book during his hunt. The heavy lines and sinewy body are in sharp contrast to the way most of the Labyrinth cast are depicted. There’s something almost Mike Allred-y about this panel, and I love it. Nice work, Chris!

A while back Chris shared a sketchbook pinup of “Young Jareth.” Now Chris has finished drawing the chapter in which this version of the Goblin King features prominently. Here’s a peek!

Sometime soon I’ll do a count of how many pages feature Jareth in this volume. I have a hunch that it’s more than the previous three volumes combined.