This page was inspired by a comment from reader Chibidrow on DeviantArt who complimented me a while ago on how naturally my female faeries looked. "No Tinkerbell-perfect faeries here!" she said. Of course, that made me think of putting one in, because the Disney Tinkerbell is cute, funny, and "perfect" only in the sense that her body type is that of a 1950s glamour model. Surely there had to be one of those in the village? At this point, I don't have a major role for this character, or even a name, but she's introduced in this page just so I can keep her in reserve for later.
Since drawing this, I've read J.M Barrie's original description of Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, which states that she wore a low-cut skeleton leaf dress and that she "tended slightly towards embonpoint", meaning she was chubby. This means that we already had two Tinkerbell-perfect faeries in the comic to start with, and also that the French artist Loisel's interpretation of Tinkerbell is a better match for the original character than the Disney version.
For this page, I hand-drew the word balloons and drew in the musical notes. Then I decided to do the actual lettering by hand as well, because my laptop was far away at the time, and besides, I need to spend more time away from screens. Not that there isn't a lot more stuff "fixed" digitally on this page than you'd expect, but it is easily the most traditional comic I've done in years, and I enjoyed doing it that way.
Summer is a good name (and an even better name if she's blonde)
I watched a lot of Black Adder over the last few weeks.
I'll stick with knowing her as "Orchid"