(Warning: Knowledge of Basic Poker Terminology Required below.)

So this page title is gonna need some explaining to most people. Simply put, a lot of two-card poker hands (mostly in traditional five-card texas hold-em style poker), have nicknames with them, and a lot of them are pretty clever. For example, a Jack and A 3 is called a “Lumberjack”, (since three sounds like tree), a pair of 8s is called “The Snowmen”, etc. However, a “beer hand” is having a two and a seven, specifically of different suits. The 2/7 is famously the worst hand in poker, since you have the lowest card (a two), and a 7, which it can’t make a Straight with, and the fact they are different suits means you aren’t getting a flush either. Simply put, having a 2/7 means you may as well buy yourself a Beer, since your money’s about to be gone anyway. Or that to play it you’d need to be drunk, because it’s a really dumb move. Either way, this has little to do with Octavian being a really bad liar, but he’d probably be bad at poker as well, and that’s close enough, right?

(Knowledge of Basic Poker Terminology Is No Longer Required.)

As for the actual page itself, this was a really neat case of the art dictating the dialog itself. The rough script would have been the same, but all the stuff about Octavian being a bad liar wasn’t there, being more of a typical greeting come sit down yada yada. However, something about Octavian in panel 1 looked weird to me, and I also realized that asking someone for a private meeting during a public gathering is… really kind of a strange thing to do. So, instead of redrawing him (which I could have done), I decided to run with it, and have him be acting strangely due to nerves. As for what, well, that’s the next page, but I think I prefer it this way. It gave Octavian a neat bit of character (that he’s a bad liar when he’s nervous), and honestly saved me having to draw him again.