There's a lot of dialogue on this page (even more than usual for Shades!) and, in the last few panels, it does tend to crowd the artwork more than I would have liked.

Ideally, this amount of dialogue probably needs another two panels but, if I'd added another page to accommodate it, two-thirds of that extra page would have had to have been filled with talking heads and sidelong glances!

I know some comics do like to have panels with only one or two lines in them but, given the style of the rest of Shades, I felt that would give too much emphasis to a sequence which is really just setting the scene for the next two chapters.

It was a tough call to make but, faced with having to squeeze this dialogue into one page or spread it over two, I chose one. Despite the fact that this doesn't really allow the artwork enough room to breathe, I think that was the right decision for the pacing of the story. I doubt I'll never be entirely happy about it but, on balance, I think this approach was the lesser of the two evils!

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