Page Commentary No. 68

PSU: Oh my glob.

GUNWILD: I actually wrote this before I was aware of... do you know about Squirrel and Hedgehog? It's a North Korean propaganda cartoon with animal-people representing the nice North Koreans and evil foreigners. Except that they accidentally made the dangerous, menacing Americans and the Russian bears and so on look like total badasses. I wish I were a baseball bat wielding werewolf-man!

PSU: I had not! I mean, supposedly Kim Jong Un's father was a big film buff. Films and entertainment are important to a nation's psyche!

GUNWILD: Well, the point is, you either take what's happening in the propaganda seriously, or your first impulse is to be amused by it. Sure, Kwah probably isn't happy with the idea that his species is being portrayed as a buncha child-liquidating monsters... but a wheely battle-wagon with arms and armor on it? Hey, that might be fun to take for a spin.(edited)

PSU: I kinda forgot that I drew Kwah in the bottom left panel with puffy cheeks for his smile. That doesn't happen anymore but it does make him look a little more friendly than his boxy self usually looks. I really enjoy this page, the city panel at the top even features a few fun cameos. My friend's character Tara is in the back, my own Colette is there. The weird tentacle face squid guy is back. But I love that it's a solid reintroduction of our favorite crew and getting a moment to say everyone's names was good for the long run of the comic.

GUNWILD: Next time we do a Vanaa story that isn't just a one-off appearance, we'll have to do another establishment panel like that I think. This last time we featured them in the double-pager where Nimoo gets his collar symbol, almost everybody's name was said in dialogue as a reminder. That's okay, but sometimes it's nice to do the name captions thing instead. Do you have a preference on that in comics in general?

PSU: You mean introducing characters with a caption? I think it's fun in a very comic-booky kind of way. If I were making modern comic reading apps, I would have those captions be hyperlinks to character Wikis. When I'm watching My Hero Academia, I'd like to just see a hero and click on what their background is. I don't think it'd be a good idea to do it all the time though. If we had to keep reintroducing ourselves everytime a character pops up, we're probably doing something wrong. We just have to show them actually doing their jobs from time to time. I think people are under the impression that all Cassiopeia does is lie around in her hoodie around the house.

GUNWILD: Well... much like a cat, she often naps, conserving her energy for sudden, brief periods of exertion!

PSU: Ya know what's fun, we don't see the Vanaa mecha suits all that often throughout the comic. In fact I think it's just this page and a couple more. But these aren't really that far from the mark. Some earlier suits are just powered by the Vanaa inside them. They could just operate all the parts that would normally require gears or motors with their own bodies. You'd just have to be an extremely adept Vanaa to do it.

GUNWILD: Well, they can't all be like King, but I'm betting that's an element of military training. Luckily our crew of cuties just get nice collars... and a cape, of course.