Page Commentary No. 69

GUNWILD: Immediate thing I want you to talk about in panel 2... the Cow Tools.

PSU: It's an ancient Vanaa salt scraper. Our comic is full of references, and it would have been a missed opportunity to mention the Far Side as we examine the silly past.

GUNWILD: I'm badly distracted by the voiceover using variants of the word "exist" three times in one page. That's the kind of thing a pro editor might be able to point out to me. On the plus side, I really do like the joke about the "Spillurian" geological period.

PSU: Vanaa have such wonderful opportunities for puns. All these creatures here, and the different Vanaa suits of armor for warfare were designed a long time ago. We had a lot of fun coming up with some of the biology. Obviously we don't have a fully detailed world book to examine how the Vanaa came to be the dominant species on their planet or why they're much more amorphous than any of the other creatures there. But it's nice to see how they're still somewhat related. Maybe it'd be like what would happen on earth if Jellyfish became the dominant intelligence. They'd just be so different from the rest of the animal kingdom.

GUNWILD: The "How far we've come" line is lifted completely from The Critic, when there's a caveman in a museum exhibit that looks just like him. It's a little less of a gag here because Moc doesn't too closely resemble the savage salt-spear Vanaa next to him, but the idea of a little jellybean alien considering with total seriousness how far his society has advanced still tickles me all by itself.

PSU: I think this entire chapter idea stemmed from just how much Gunwild and I like museums. Even though we've never been in one together. We definitely thought it'd be a fun small chapter but our ideas started growing the more we enjoyed each page.

GUNWILD: Plus you had sketched out some ideas of what Vanaa throughout their history had looked like, and we couldn't very well NOT use them. But that's info for another page...

PSU: Oh hey, two things I wanna go over before moving on. One, this is actually the ONLY time so far you see a Vanaa's head completely from behind in the enitre comic so far. And it's especially the only time where there's a strong light in front of Skwidj. I don't know how successful it was but that's supposed to be us seeing his eye orbs through his head. This doesn't really mean Vanaa can see in all 360 degrees, their eyes only really see one way but they could move them through their head.

GUNWILD: It could also work as him rotating his head around and shutting his eyes, so I don't think anyone could object to how it came off.

PSU: Secondly, whose voice do you hear when you read the museum narrator? I like to imagine David Attenborough.

GUNWILD: Richard Kiley. We've spared no expense!