Page Commentary No. 41

Gunwild: Black and white!

Psu: Booo black and white! Kill that lazy artist.

Gunwild: Ehh, maybe Theira would prefer to have a "noir" character introduction... we know she's a fan of gangster movies.

Psu: Apart from the black and white, there's a lot of acting I like on this page. A lot! Theira sleeping and Talps looking tough. I think this next set of pages really set Theira as a quick fan favorite. Something about a lady who shoots really big space guns seems to satisfy a lot of people.

Psu: Also I guess her sleepy bug noises are cute.

Gunwild: A few military folks mentioned in the comments and elsewhere that they totally buy a warrant officer being this lazy. Burn! Uh, I guess.

Psu: I don't even know what a Warrant officer is. I just trust Gunwild here to know and I put it down.

Gunwild: Basically it means she doesn't have a commission: she's been made an officer by warrant thanks to technical expertise and specialization. In this case, shootin' stuff-- er, I mean, weapons operation.

Psu: I think it might be worth elaborating on how we picture the "shooting" ability in Cassiopeia Quinn. Cassiopeia and Zeke are expert marksmen as well but Theira is serious about her ability to hit a fly between the wings. I like to think that's because the three of them are seriously good at math and manipulating weapons own targeting systems better than the guns themselves know how to do.

Gunwild: Maybe we oughta show Theira using some preternaturally good aim in an offhanded way sometime soon, as a reminder to people.

Gunwild: I mean it'll be plot-relevant again, but still.

Psu: I don't think we're the old fantastic four comics. We don't need to be like Mr Fantastic, stretching his neck whenever to remind people that he's Fantastic. She doesn't need to be like Bullseye in the Daredevil (2003) movie and randomly hitting things with her abilities. I feel like people know her thing. She's just come up against targets that she's hit but required bigger or different guns.

Gunwild: You say that, but realistically, would you use your superpowers more to risk your life and fight crime, or just make things easier around the house?

Psu: Well a lot of those panels is just him stretching his neck or something. He could probably just put more of his documents nearer to him!

Psu: Anyway, on a couple other visual notes, this page marks the return of some of the holographic displays we haven't seen in a while. Infact the last time I remember these kinds of floating displays were when Cassiopeia was using her space helmet and targeting a moving ship. I better remember that as a thing to do when making a big shot in space...

Gunwild: Swapping out "flow" for "go" is one of my best bits of Vanaa-speak.

Psu: One thing I'm not sure about on this page though, is that I'm not totally sure if a reader can really identify what's going on in panel 5. The reader isn't familiar with Madison's new ship OR the Vanaa ship at this point. And in black and white I bet it makes it more confusing. Still I like the dynamics of it but if this were a TV show you'd have seen both ships a lot while they were separate, earlier in the episode.

Gunwild: I cop to not writing enough establishing shots in comics - it's common practice to put them at the tops of pages and the fronts of scene transitions, and I only came to that practice lately.

Gunwild: Look for it in our comic now!

Psu: Establishing shots can also just eat up our limited time. We've gotten a lot better at managing both.

Psu: That was a lot of words to say, look at Theira. She is the best.