The beginning was easy. I decided what the page layout should be immediately and knew I wanted to draw stairs. Looking to my sources of inspiration, I flipped to a page in my "Elements of Style" book and found this photo:

The choice for dialogue was natural. From "Hamlet" Act 3, Scene 1-- Arguably the most famous phrase in the English language. You can't go wrong with a good start, I like to think.

Everything seemed set up well except for the artistic style. As can be seen, I started out using heavy black lines. I thought it would be faster if I pencilled very rough and used thick black lines to ink almost equally as fast. While interesting enough, it led to me drawing a lot of lines I didn't like and I wasn't satisfied with the result. I switched back to my more usual style for panels 2 and 3 and continued in this vein for most of the rest of the comic. It was quite obvious that I didn't have time to learn a whole new style of drawing if I wanted to finish 24 pages in 24 hours.

In the painting behind her head can be seen the sketchy drawing of a man in the most iconic "Hamlet" pose: Holding up a skull at arm's length.

Why there is no detail in the painting in the third panel is beyond me. I think I meant to draw it but just forgot. The only thing that leads me to that conclusion is that I clearly remember being surprised later on that I hadn't done so, but perhaps I was just too tired at that point to remember clearly what my intent had been.