Non-spoiler alert: Jeff Nelson has not been turned into a zombie. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else at some point decides to go ahead and zombify him on my behalf. Isn’t there some sort of internet rule…? If it exists, a gruesome brain-eating zombie version will be made? Or maybe that’s just true in comics. 
Also, in regards to recent comments, I officially declare that the <mysterious squiggly writing> guys will henceforth be known (at least, in the comments section) as the Rake People. *snicker!*
That depends on your definition of zombie, I guess…
Rake People? Hm… can we use the name from the old run? (I don’t want to spoil anything. Or did you change it?)
And the rest? Where does this infrastructure come from? The similarities with Earth? Why are the indigenous people human-like? Aaaaargh! Explain faster!
I’m wondering if the number of years elapsed adds up. After all FTL travel is bound to have some temporal effects no matter how you set things up.
Rake People eh? I think I’ll keep thinking ‘more-squiggles-than-the-other-guys-people’ since that’s the only way to read their name.
<snicker> “Rake people”…I love it.
Poor Scavina. She finally got her answer; it just wasn’t the one she wanted. :-/
I think I might have been a little harsh in calling the Orehu the “morlocks’ –I didn’t mean their cannabilistic bad guys. Just that, to the agrarian rake people, the cave dwellers might seem prettty threatening.
I figure Tara has more complexity in store than ‘Good Guys-Bad Guys’—she seems to care about carefully drawn, realistic characters.
Unless, of course, these “Hunting expeditions” occur in the villages of the Rake people. Perhaps Carl has developed a taste for human flesh? That seems to happen a lot with stranded explorers…….
I won’t believe he is dead until we see a corpse or a brain hunting zombie. He is a trained engineer, and engineers can do anything! ANYTHING I tell you!
“Rake-people” huh, . . . did you come up with that name from SCRATCH?
Ha-ha, hee, hur. . . I kill me.
Love your comic by the way!
Zombies! Zombies! Zawmbees!
Lawnbees?
Maybe there was an outbreak of zombieism at Buy’n'Large Garden World.
Or perhaps a reclusive industrialist set up an E F Schumacher themed secret philosophical utopia in the middle of a forest and then before you know it someone’s synthesising DNA from tree-slugs and everyone’s shooting bees out of their hands and then some sharp words at a New Years party and whoops, there goes the neighbourhood.
(“I REJECTED those answers! I chose the IMPOSSIBLE! I chose to build… FERN GULLY!”)
I wonder if this conflict is divided across technology?
If something went bad and civilization collapsed some people would blam tech itself and react violently on everyone using it?
I am sure this idea have been up here in the comments already…
Considering how the planet and cities appeared, it does seem that this is definitely a post-apocalyptic world. The Plague Dudes may be exactly that — the result of bio-warfare jiggering genetics. The organisms may no longer be active — or more precisely, no longer infectious; but if they came up with something that would turn down the higher level mental abilities while cranking up aggression and savagery (think having your enemies lose their ability to handle complex thought and manipulate higher tech while turning on each other) and were stupid enough to actually use it – yikes.
And I should add that I need to apologize to Carl — I can totally see why he was so reluctant to get to the point.
I think it is more subtle than that. There is still some sub-text that Carl is not telling us.
Oh yes !
Like the unfortunate fact that the ground party was infected the moment they were exposed to the planet…. ?
Uh oh.
Maybe not that, but you’re probably right. Its got to be something.
So they never actually found his body, hmm? So he -could- have been made chieftain of the rake people and we would never know until three or four chapters down the line when it’s “dramatically revealed”, hmm? Which of course, nobody will see coming. Wait a second…
Rake People actually sounds pretty good.
Much better than Shovel People, Hoe People or Assorted Garden-Implement People.