For the second part of “Walking Home Alone,” I focused on the precautions the author took for safety.

I knew I wanted a “foil” character (the person on the right in the last panel) for the protagonist to interact with, but the challenge was in deciding what to make the foil say. I was concerned about how the foil’s dialog would shape the entire comic.

One of my concerns when designing a comic is the message it conveys when it stands on its own. Given the nature of the internet, I know that many people will read only the comic, and share only that portion through social media.

Making the foil challenge the protagonist’s concerns is one way I could have communicated the point of the story. When I tried different versions of that for this comic, however, I realized that doing it this way left room for misunderstandings. If I made the foil challenge the woman’s view, it could have been misconstrued as a commentary on how women are unreasonable/crazy/paranoid. No matter how strong a response the protagonist provided, I could easily imagine somebody misunderstanding (and potentially misusing) the comic by presenting it without context; this would undermine the entire point of the comic as an illustration of a woman’s lived experience that others might otherwise be oblivious to (…and that would be horrible).

(Also, it made me realize how much more dominant the male narrative is in our society…)

Click here to read the original story/comic.