Things I learned from doing this comic:

1. Drawing the backgrounds separately makes things so much easier when it comes to layering these shiny auras
2. It's really hard to draw speech bubbles for somebody on the phone
3. Sometimes the comics you come up with at the last minute and draw really quickly come out the best.

Also, I played with different layering effects but in the end I decided I'm sticking with the 40% transparency that I started using in the Featureless White Void because my previous filter wasn't showing up on the white. It does pretty much everything I want it to, and is a lot easier than whatever it was I was doing before probably.