If the seemingly disjointed images of the two people in the chairs confuses you, that’s OK. It will become easier to understand the room layout and proximity of the people (and alien butterflies) involved as the scene progresses.

Also, the curly-haired woman here may bear a passing resemblance to this woman whom we met during Carl Heraba’s tale of the Hiawatha’s fate, back in Chapter Six.

If you are a new reader, or an old reader who is confused by current events (and thank you to commenters for alerting me to this need!), here’s something to get you quickly up to speed:

• Read this page in which Carl describes (somewhat vaguely) the attacks on the Hiawatha’s crew
• And then the four pages, starting here, in which the Orehu leader Vanguarthe explains the Miesti from his point of view
• And then this page and the next one, wherein Patty’s strange affliction is revealed
• And finally, the last time we saw Aria before all this weirdness happened– this page and then this one.
• Oh, and I guess if you need to you can read the current chapter from the beginning.

There! I hope that will straighten it all out with a minimum of archive-diving. Of course, if you feel the inclination to do so, a complete read-through from the beginning still is the best method for full story immersion. (And if the concept of 259 clicks (plus extras) doesn’t thrill you, I encourage you to check out the books and e-books!)

Although you don’t need to be able to decipher much of the very-italic swirly words on this page and previous pages, you do need to be able to read the Miesti (yes, those are Miesti) dialogue. And after realizing that the “swirly words” are even less decipherable than I’d planned for them to be, now I’m paranoid that some of you will have difficulty making out what the Miesti are saying in their weird font. Or else, it will be so annoying to try to read that most people will just give up and click away. So, if it’s a problem, here or on any future page, please let me know in the comments and I will fix it!

If you find yourself wondering who or what the Miesti are, here’s what you need to know.

For those who may desire it: a quick link back to the beginning of the chapter.

Way back in the beginning of the Galaxion comic– and in fact, from way before even that, when Galaxion was a novel-in-progress for which I drew many illustrations– Aria wore her hair loose. You can see what I mean from the first page of that 1993 story, and this collection of some older Aria head shots. And then, somewhere along the way, I reluctantly accepted the fact that having long hair blowing all around during her Survey Contact missions, no matter how fun it was to draw, would be incredibly irritating. (Not to mention looking unprofessional.) So I had her put it up in a tidy French braid. And she’s worn it up ever since.

Those of you who have ever bought a graphic novel from me at a convention (or purchased online and requested a signature) may have wondered why, when I draw a quick head sketch of Aria in Volume 1, I always draw her with loose hair rather than in the braid. Now you know. It’s an artefact from earlier days.

This chapter is where I make up for all the previous chapters of restraint in drawing Aria’s hair tucked neatly away. Hahaha, be freeeeee! *ink brush flies crazily all over the page*

Another difference, from my point of view as a vendor, is the “traffic flow” of the attendees. At most of the shows I go to these days there is a constant stream of people wandering by my table. And yeah, often they’re not stopping long enough to look at my stuff, but you never know who might decide to stop and look so I never feel like I can take a break. At Ad Astra there are certainly busy times, but there are also distinct quiet times when everyone is off at one of those aforementioned interesting panels. The result of this is, I had lots of time to do something I haven’t done in a while– produce con sketches!

I guess you can call this cute little chibi-Worf a follow-up to Aria in the ST: TNG suit. When I drew this I was thinking it would be a nice donation for the con’s charity auction… until I realized they weren’t doing a charity auction! Oh, well.

One fellow who stopped by my table asked if I’d ever made any “Triangle 9″ mugs like the ones the Galaxion’s lab crew drink their coffee from. Well, I did paint one for my own personal use, but I’ve never had any made to sell. (I did have it on a button, though, and he was pleased with that.) After that conversation, I drew the above sketch. Makes you wonder how it could be that Aria hasn’t yet learned never to drink the lab’s coffee… I figure she probably agrees to a proffered mug from time to time just to be polite.

There were lots of people in some sort of costume, and a high percentage of them were of the Steampunk variety. Now, Darvin is a rather dapper fellow. Of all my characters, he’s the one I imagine wold most enjoy the chance to dress up in some psuedo-Victorian duds.

Sitting across from me was a group of guys from a Maker Space club here in Toronto, Site 3. They had with them a MakerBot, which I, and lots of other people, found fascinating. I’ve read online about all the cool things MakerBots can do, but this was my first chance to see one in action. Thoughts of Maker Spaces led me inevitably to thoughts of a certain Galaxion character.

I didn’t think too hard about the logistics, not to mention the consequences, of kludging a MakerBot to run on chocolate. I suggest you don’t, either.

At the table next to me was a group of ladies selling corsets, tiny feathered hats, and other items to go with your cosplay wardrobe (Apollonie is the designer’s website). They all got a great deal of enjoyment out of playing dress-up with various Victorian-curious convention-goers who’d never had the opportunity to try on a corset before. They’d take measurements to select the right size corset and then happily lace up their customers, who were thrilled at suddenly having an hourglass figure and a soaring new bustline to match. And all the ladies behind the table would gush– quite sincerely– at how fabulous they looked, and soon after that people pulled out their wallets. Men were not excluded from this experience, by the way– several of them also got laced up and gushed over (“That looks amazing on you!”). It was so amusing to watch that I eventually had to draw the above. If Darvin would be the one to most enjoy dressing up, I suspect Fusella would be the one to most enjoy playing dress-up with her friends.

…And that was my con weekend! Despite all the time I had for the sketches, I did actually have a reasonably good show sales-wise. I didn’t end up selling any of the above sketches, though, so if you’re interested in owning one for $30 (which includes shipping), shoot me an email! Link on the sidebar.

And we are all left to wonder what Violent Aria must have looked like.

Ad Astra went well! I’d like to do more of these sci-fi/fantasy/spec-fic shows. They seem to suit me better than the Anime cons. You can read all about it and check out some con sketches in the blog post below.

Other good news! I’ve finally (finally!) updated the Donations page (the red button on the sidebar on the right) with a cute new thank-you gift– an 8-page Galaxion minicomic to download called Burden of Command. Like the last minicomic, Designer’s Dilemma, it will be an exclusive perk for you generous folks who wish to support the site with a donation of any amount you choose.

Remember, I’ll be at Ad Astra this weekend!

What you see here are only the things I use on every single page. I have other tools I pull out occasionally, like circle templates, tracing paper, and other sizes of tech pens, which for simplicity’s sake– ah, the irony– I left out of the photo. What the heck is all this stuff? Left to right, top to bottom, I have:

• An old yoghurt cup for water to clean the brush at the table
• Canon brand smooth Bristol paper, 14×17, which I trim to 11×17 for each page
• Clear plastic ruler, for drawing margins and panel borders
• Deleter Black Ink #3, one of the nicer inks I’ve tried
• Zebra Brush Marker, large tip, for inking word balloons
• Pentel Clic eraser
• Zebra Brush Marker, medium tip, for emphasis lettering and inking straight lines
• Uni-Ball Alpha Gel Kuru Toga Mechanical Pencil, size 0.5, “B” leads
• Copic Multiliner, size 0.7, for all other lettering
• Winsor Newton Series 7 brush, size 1, for most of the inking
• Ames Lettering Guide
• Mono brand eraser, large
• Kneaded eraser
• T-square
• Rolling ruler, for quickly drawing parallel lines
• Straight-edge ruler, for inking straight lines
• Scrap paper to remove excess ink from brush
• Rag to remove excess water from brush
• MacBook (and Photoshop CS2), for cleaning up art and adding grey tones
• Wacom Intuos 3 tablet

And here’s the tool that didn’t fit on the table:

I purchased this monstrosity, the Brother MFC-6490CW scanner/inkjet printer, because it has an 11×17 bed, so I can scan my pages whole instead of having to scan in parts and stitch them together, which is what I had to do before. Much easier.

For those of you who are most interested in the pens and stuff, here’s a close-up of those:

I talked more about some of these items in a blog post from a couple years ago. If you’re wondering why some of the tools have tape on the ends, it’s merely there as away for me to mark when I started using them (I write the date on the tape). I’d been wondering how long some of my tools last, especially the brushes, which are expensive. My current one has only been around since the beginning of the year.

Why so many tools? Why, for example, do I need three different erasers? Well, I suppose I don’t. I like the kneaded eraser because it’s gentler to the paper and it doesn’t leave any of that eraser dust, but for some jobs it just doesn’t cut it. I like the Clic eraser because it gets into small spaces easily, and I like the large eraser when I have to erase large areas, or when I’m cleaning up the pencil lines after I’ve finished inking. Each does a different job well, or at least represents a reasonable compromise. For example, I used to use Rapidographs for lettering because with the ink I could get a much darker line (markers are never as dark), but they require a very upright position to write with. I’m not happy with the greyer line I get with the Copic Multiliner, but it does make all the hand-lettering easier. So I’m using that for now, until I find something better. Meanwhile, the Rapidographs are still good for making straight lines. And speaking of…

These are even more tools I realized should have gone in the first picture. A non-descript pair of scissors to trim the page, a Koh-i-noor Rapidograph, size 4 (or 1.2, depending which numbering system you like) that I use to ink the panel borders, the Ultradraw ink that goes in it, and a big fat soft brush. The brush is completely trivial, since all I use it for right now is to gently brush away eraser dust (too often I just use my hand, and then end up smudging the pencil lines). I had it lying around so I figured, why not.

So, yeah… that’s a lot of tools. Maybe art tools to me are like kitchen gadgets to people who like to cook– there are so many specialized tools that do specific things really well. I know my kitchen drawers are full of  little gizmos I consider indispensable and I don’t even enjoy cooking all that much. Could I pare it down to one knife, one big spoon, one pot, and a frying pan? Sure. But I probably won’t, because I like my gizmos.

These days more and more artists are switching to purely digital work, which means their entire list of tools is a computer and a tablet. Or maybe only just a tablet, if they happen to have one of those fancy Cintiqs. Think of how clean my desk would be. Makes switching to digital almost tempting. Almost.

And here we go with the new chapter! If you were hoping to find out what’s happening with Patty or what they’re all doing up on the ship… sorry. You’re going to have to wait awhile. But the good news is, in this chapter you get to find out a whole lot more about the Miesti!

If I said, “Hah, I’ll bet right now Aria wishes it was all just a dream!”, I expect a small percentage of you would laugh, and the majority of you would have no idea why that’s even remotely funny. If you fall into the latter category, you failed to remember that strange things tend to happen around here on April 1st. I’m sure you’ll do better next year! But don’t be too sad– here’s what you missed.

Also… in regards to the some of the comments over the past few weeks. See that little red button over on the right sidebar? The one that says “Support the Comic”? I hereby declare that to be the Pun Jar! Next time you find the urge to make some awful pun is just hopelessly irresistible, you can make amends by dropping in some small change. I think that’s a fair punishment, don’t you? Uh… *clink*.

If you’re in the Toronto area and enjoy your sci-fi, fantasy, and horror literature, be sure to come to Ad Astra, April 13-15! I’ll be there with– hooray!– a new Tiny Galaxion Story.

New blog post below!

And that wraps it up for Chapter Eight! To read the chapter from the beginning you can start here, or if you’re completely lost you can start from the very first page.

I wouldn’t mind getting some collective opinions on this page, so I can correct it if necessary for the eventual print edition. I wanted to make this final scene a full page shot, but now that it’s done I’m concerned some of the key details are too obscure (I leave all corrections for the print edition, and I’m sure it’ll make a fun game for somebody to go through the books and spot what I changed). Can you parse what is going on, or are you left shrugging your shoulders?

Also, if last week’s comments are anything to go by, I think it prudent to apologize in case I’ve just caused someone’s head to explode. I promise, no more REEPS after this week!