When he began "Louis Riel", Brown had increasingly been making use of notes and appendices in his work, beginning with his researching and annotating the 1994 comics essay, "My Mom was a Schizophrenic". He added appendices to the 1998 collection of short strips, "The Little Man", and the 2002 reprinting of "I Never Liked You". In "Louis Riel", the appendix totalled 23 pages, along with a bibliography and an index. Alan Moore's use of extensive end notes in his and Eddie Campbell's "From Hell", another fictional reconstruction of a historical event, influenced Brown's appendices. In the comics essay "Dance of the Gull Catchers" which closes the "From Hell" appendices, Moore metaphorically reveals to the reader the myriad choices he could have made from the available historical evidence when putting together his version of the Jack the Ripper story.