Page Commentary No. 141

Psu: Hey mind if I start with thanking all the nice responses to the comic this week? I'll just type it really quick. Thanks guys. Even if it was late, the response was nice.

Gunwild: Yeah, it's always a mystery to me what will get a pop from the audience. But everybody loves ice cream!

Psu: But lets get back to the adventure at hand. So... every now and then I would get one of those pages from Gunwild that would make me stop as I really have to figure out how to do it. Like... I don't have the exact wording in front of me but when I read that we have a big squid boat crashing into a space ship ramming it into some buildings... Gosh. That's cool.

Gunwild: Because someone asked: No, the Dorn scale isn't named for Worf actor Michael Dorn, who always seems to be the one to get beaten up to show how tough the opponent of the week is. It's for Rogal Dorn, Pirmarch of the Imperial Fists from Warhammer 40,000, known for being the most unyielding warrior in the galaxy. I mean either way is as geeky as the other so it's not like there's a right or wrong answer. Anyway I dunno, I just thought it would show how different from the squishy Vanaa the Old Salt is if his ship is superhardened and he pushes people around.

Psu: Salt is a really odd amalgam of things. I think he liked the idea of humanoid pirates but got confused with cowboy hats. He likes sharp pointy weapons and bullets, which are really ineffective against other Vanaa. So having a super hard armored ship is just following through with that theme. Of uh... undercutting his themes!

Gunwild: We were just watching an X-Men cartoon episode which showed the Skrull Empress, and ya know, I think when I was trying to think up dynamics for the individual Vanaa and them as a whole, I wish I'd read more about how classic Marvel handled that race of shape-changers. Like, in a society where you can be anybody at a moment's notice, they value stability and stuff. Makes total sense. As it is I've had Gleb say the Vanaa value adaptability and stuff, but it's more talked about than shown, and there's obviously backlash against it. Anyway regarding Peia, I love it when characters have no idea what larger conflict they're suddenly in the middle of and just kinda have to keep going. Like that story where Conan comes across the ancient blood feud between those two evil wizards and is just like, "Okay, I only care inasmuch as I need to not get in the middle of this and die."

Psu: In this particular scene, it looks like there's a LOT of ways to die...

Gunwild: Heinlein kinda covered this. If you wanna be a long-lived space adventurer, the first thing you should learn is how to get away from trouble fast. Personally I've heard it said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, but I figure any death you can walk away from is preferable to the more final kind.