Page Commentary No. 264

Gunwild: Can't use the front door in a heist. At least not if somebody else has.

Psu: This page is a great Cassiopeia page as well as a Zeke page. I say this cause I think Cassiopeia's face in the last panel is possibly the best drawing of Cassiopeia's face in the entire webcomic so far.

Gunwild: There's even a tiny Damselfly silhouette on the moon so that's set up nicely for our later use. This comic is good... someday I'd like to do a story with a full train heist. Except it's a space elevator. Basically the same thing, right?

Psu: I think we might have discussed making the train heist longer but came to the agreement that just a few panels was enough. Looking back at it, it was clear we just did an ENTIRE chapter about a heist with some robot bodies involved. So doing it again might've been overkill. And then there's also the fact that this is presented as a flashback, so any action setup doesn't have the same stakes involved as something happening in the present.

Gunwild: That is true.

Psu: No sense drawing out each step of the heist, instead we can just have a really cool opening panel and some kickass gunplay. It's enough that Zeke is awesome. And Cassiopeia makes a great entrance.

Gunwild: Howdy!

Psu: I think we made this joke while we were working on it but I hear her saying it in the voice of the toy shark from Toy Story 1 when he's making fun of Woody.

Gunwild: Yeah that was probably what taught me in my youth that saying "howdy" if you don't normally is inherently funny. Or if you do say it normally. It's just a funny word. So anyway, the reason we didn't just make this a normal train or even a theme park monorail was because that would ask for some kind of explanation, and be a little odd, with all the robo-dudes just sitting powered down in the seats. Maybe cool... but hard to draw.

Brellom: I did a bit of work on this page, but not a whole lot. I can't recall thinking much when working on this, but I can see my handiwork. But I really like the shading on that last panel wioth Peia.

Psu: Yeah, I think Brellom did some of the heaviest lifting with how the bottom panels came out. It's really helped by the more dramatic shadows and harsher light than I usually employ in my pages.

Gunwild: Maybe it's how I've now seen Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous and its various action scenes, but part of me wishes this was a theme park monorail. Like, you're just trying to get to EPCOT and then an action scene breaks out? Now that's an exciting vacation.

Psu: It'd also be a big scene! We'd probably need to do an entire full chapter and I feel like spending loads and loads of pages in a flashback is pretty risky. Unless you're like... I dunno. The Godfather 2.

Gunwild: Hey that movie starts and ends in flashback. Really, all the Michael Corleone stuff is flash-forwards! But I'm quite happy with this page, I wanna say again. I hope Roboticist-guy rethought his life a little after this.

Psu: Oh, I have one question for Gunwild as I am unable to answer this by myself. What do you think Zeke would've done to his old co-worker here if Cassiopeia did NOT show up?

Gunwild: I think Zeke would have shot his communicator/phone there. Which is a very personal and serious place to shoot someone! But replaceable.

Psu: If you shot my phone out of my hands without actually harming me, I'd probably be really impressed and too upset to do anything about it. So I guess that plan would still work.

Gunwild: Everybody, if you travel by train soon, please obey the signage and keep your mask on! You never know who you might help out.

Psu: I'd like to go somewhere by train. Oh but before I go, I should mention that this roboticist having a similar hairstyle to our house roboticist Penny is COMPLETELY COINCIDENTAL. There is literally no connection between the two of them that we have setup. I just only know how to draw three or four hairstyles.

Brellom: Same

Gunwild: I bet you could do more with train-ing.

Psu: That pun took this commentary... off the rails.