Worth a thousand words

I said no pictures from the last 30 pages or so, but I feel justified in showing this one off because, firstly, it contains no spoilers and, secondly, you would probably not stop and take it in when you're racing through to the climax of the book. Yet, like so many of Leo's and Nikos's panels, it deserves to be framed and appreciated in an art gallery.

There are few sequences that better show Leo's attention to detail. I set a few short scenes in the auction rooms of Mr Kotivedes (that's him with the gavel) which are intercut with some big, fast, spectacular, set-piece action bits. (From action to auction, a classic writer's trick for racking up the tension.) As I can never keep anything simple, even the seating plan at Mr Kotivedes's rooms is vitally important to the story. So Leo devised the full cast of attendees seen here, who have travelled from several continents to buy the sort of article that is appearing in the early days of the year: Nessus's first horseshoe, the figurehead of the Argo, the eighth color that Odin rejected for the Rainbow Bridge, that kind of thing.

But it's not just the detail. Look at the body language. This is just a snapshot moment, a brief cut away from the deadly peril that our main characters are in, and yet this single panel is a story in itself. I feel guilty covering it up with word balloons - hence this opportunity to see it in all its glory.