To anyone who may be visiting the comic for the first time– or for the first time in a long time– and would like to know what the heck is going on here, may I suggest the synopsis on the New Readers page? Or, if you’re feeling brave, you could try Fusella’s (Extremely Opinionated) “Story So Far”.
The scenes on the wall screens were a bit of an experiment: I drew them all on a separate piece of paper (mainly so I could be lazy and cut-n-paste in the second panel) and then inked it with a crowquill dip pen, instead of the usual brush and Rapidograph pen (or Micron felt-tip) combo. I like the idea of using a crowquill, but I’m still a bit nervous about using them on the page. This method made a good compromise. But between the challenging perspective and the wee little scenes of ruin, that first panel was almost the death of me.
Did you get a chance to pop by on Valentine’s Day? If you missed it, you can see the little pin-up I made for the occasion.
Apologies if you were here earlier and this wasn’t posted yet. We were out late for Family Day and forgot to pre-post this when we got home.
These panels came out very nice. You did a great job!
.. and this is why I keep coming back every update, it’s beautifully done.
Wait, what the heck just happened? We go from deep space to real close to a postnuke clone of Earth? When did this happen?
Well I can’t say I was expecting this twist in the plot.
I like the technique change for the view screens it helps separate them from the foreground. I say keep it.
When I say the alternate Earth I did think of this:
Star Trek TOS season 1 – Miri
Ex Astris Scientia: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/episodes/tos1.htm
Good heavens! She is a Trekkie! (*little dance*)
Like I keep telling my manga creator wannabe daughter – It’s all in how you tell it.
So “No more blah, blah, blah!” More pages!!
@SysKoll and Frumph– thank you!
@Seafog– I know, I know! It’s difficult, not to mention annoying, to have to follow this stuff at the page-a-week rate. But here’s the basics to catch you up: you recall the initial jump, yes? It appeared, at first, that their jump engine didn’t work at all, and they were still where they started. Fusella was ready to turn around and head back to base, but Scavina insisted that they first do some further research before concluding the experiment was a failure. Fusella talks to her Chief Engineer, who says the engines performed properly, and she can’t explain why the jump didn’t seem to happen. On the other hand, Mal’s lab team reports anomalies in the star patterns, suggesting something odd is going on. Given all that, and the fact that they were unable to contact anyone on the com link, Scavina orders the ship back to Earth to see if they can get to the bottom of the mystery. A whole chapter later the ship finally gets there, and the scenes on this page are what they found.
(I hope that helped!)
Ok, I think i see now. It wasn’t the one a week pace (though that does slow things), I think what was missing was some indication of WHY they thought they hadn’t gone anywhere. No one looked out a window, or mentioned they were holding steady relative to a nearby planet, or even that they had moved very far away from Earth. Just that they didn’t feel anything, even though at least one character had a vivid vision and comms were ‘down’. I mean, why were they so certain it had been a flop? That one guy said they appear to be in the same spot, but whatever gave him that idea?
Maybe add a line to that bridge guy saying ‘I’ve got triangulation on Earth and Mars (or just Earth and Moon), it looks like we haven’t moved.’ That way we get a hint something appears unchanged and dead Earth doesn’t come out of left field.
@Seafog: Hmmm… was I too subtle, do you think? The planet on the holoscreen in the first chapter was actually supposed to be Mars, and the wee little blob next to it was Horus Station. Anna confirms that they’re still around Mars at the bottom of this page.
Remember also that they were expecting the jump engines to move them some very far distance, as was the case with the previous test on the Pathfinder (you can read the story of that ship here). Before this happened to them, no one ever thought about the possibility of… moving in some other sort of way.
Thanks for the comments! I will consider making a few adjustments to the dialogue for the printed version to help make things a little more clear.
The Mars comment does help, but I believe it is too far removed from the actual jump page. I admit I thought they jumped from an Earth orbit, so the Mars comment reinforced the thought that they did move. I’ll have to read the whole sequence again, see what I think.
I’m really digging this storyline.
@Elliot: Thank you!