Poor Jakob, always facing the chop.

This is a darker piece, excerpted from Project Future page 622. It turned out quite a lot heavier than I'd envisaged, thanks to Merlin drawing Jakob himself getting sentenced to death instead of some random demon. It definitely worked out well, apart from the fact that drawing the comic was extremely depressing. So on the basis that misery loves company, here's a close-up.

One of the things I wasn't sure about was whether Jakob should have a blindfold as he's led to the blade. However, my researches couldn't determine at what point you'd be blindfolded when executed in this manner, indeed a lot of historical accounts seem to imply that the person wasn't blindfolded at all. Jakob, having a bit of a guilt complex about the people he guillotined himself as ruler of Ha'Khun, would probably refuse the blindfold anyway as penance. So here we are.

The other thing is that, as usual, I went nuts over the guillotine. Merlin's original was fairly plain, and had the 'generic guillotine that probably won't work' design which most comics use. It makes a handy mnemonic for 'guillotine', but it won't work because the blade is dangling on a piece of string and will probably spin around when it's released. It may even flip over and whack them in the head instead of decapitating them or causing serious injuries.

So. I started using the German Fallbeil design as usual, because those are short enough to use inside a room like this. However I then had to decide on a release mechanism that would work given the position of the demon executioner (whom I gave gloves on a whim). Putting a lever there would risk him accidentally knocking it, and the pull-chain design wouldn't really fit. I tried to do the fallbeil design where the lever is flush with the uprights and releases the blade at the top, but that would mean a lot more faffing around with the blade and I was running late on the comic already.
So instead I decided to go wild and designed a modern guillotine, with an electrical release button and an arming key (that resets and has to be turned for each release) plus a winding motor on the top. Rather than having a cable that hooks into the blade to retrieve it, I imagined a design where there's a chain running down the interior of the upright, with a peg or something to pull the blade back up. The release switch could use a solenoid to poke the pin out of the way allowing the blade to drop.

I put far too much thought into this horrible thing.

For those concerned about Jakob's wellbeing, the comic itself is here: http://projectfuturecomic.com/strip.php?strip=622
...wherein you can see that this is a particularly vivid threat rather than me killing him off as a character.

Anyway, I think that's that. Lines by , story, colour and guillotine refurbishment by me.

I should have something far more cheerful soon.