Page Commentary No. 3

Gunwild: "Psu, draw me a big space battle with lots of stuff going on."

Psu: Jimminy Christmas what were we thinking...

Psu: Okay, some actual notes on this thing. At the time of drawing this, there really wasn't much in the way of design bibles to work from for the various factions in the story. When we did this first story, there was part of our thinking to make sure we could get these stories out there quickly and keep the energy fresh and avoid getting bogged down in the concept stages forever.

Gunwild: And I was like, utterly unconcerned with how much work it would be, because I tend to like to make a big first impression, like the opening shot of a movie - or really, the first or second page splashes of oldschool comics.

Psu: They're nice, but usually very ambitious.

Gunwild: There's a comic that got around on Twitter recently I think we quite recognized...

Psu: Sounds bout right, but I remember wanting to take on the challenge here. There are a number of things here that I got to do differently than almost any other page in the comic. Because this is a singular splash panel pretty much at the very start of the comic, I think I got to treat it more like an illustration. There's a lot of "perfectly" placed spaceships pointing in the directions I want them to, to bring your eye around the page. Ideally you can do this everywhere in a comic but here there were hardly any constraints about what needed to be there to tell the story. You just needed to know a battle was going on.

Psu: And speaking of battles, this was supposed to be a drone ship war between Vanaa and Regency ships right?

Gunwild: Yeah, but this was before we knew what the Vanaa would look like (we just had a name I thought sounded cool) or that their ships tended to look like human skulls... by coincidence, coincidence!

Psu: Again, it was because we hadn't developed any design bibles yet. We hardly had an inkling the Vanaa would be a major force in the story either. But I still had to start thinking of ways to make it look like there were two different sides. And a few of these notes actually do come up again in later comics. One thing was that the Regency ships are largely "horizontal" and the Vanaa ships are "vertical."

Psu: Vanaa ships darting across the sky would be akin to seeing spray cans vooshing across the sky. Regency ships would look like more familiar spaceships and even airplanes. The space stations in the background ended up being pretty random shapes. this whole page is pretty insane, and I'm still surprised how bright the explosions look even in the black and white.

Gunwild: I also wanna mention that this is the page where I realized I wasn't going to be funny and interesting enough to write good alt-texts for every page like Whomp! or whatever, so I just started using science fiction related quotes that felt right.

Psu: We're only two pages in...

Gunwild: We're differently-skilled partners. You draw, and I give up on things that will be hard very fast.

Gunwild: Seriously though, I like thinking up the alt-texts, although of course I have to go check the exact wording if it's something I only heard on an episode of Space: Above and Beyond two decades ago, and that can be tough...

Psu: I do have to say, finding all those quotes is incredible to me. Have you read all the books you've referenced?

Gunwild: Once in a while I want to throw in something I heard at some point from a work I'm really not familiar with. Or from an author whose work is connected to the situation and I want to touch on, but maybe I haven't gotten to everything they've done. But usually it's something from a sci-fi TV show or film, and you know I've seen a lot of those.

PAGE 2

(Panel 1: Splash with credits. Come on, you want credits, right? Change of angle so that Cassiopeia is looking up at a massive, hard-to-draw space battle she's not far away from. In fact, she's basically in the middle of it. There are balls of light as ships explode, starfighters on each others' tails, lines of laser fire streaking sideways as ships go on strafing runs, etcetera. I think you could do this well, so that there aren't a million stupid things happening at once you can't catch. It's a static image, so everybody can enjoy it as they like, at their own pace, appreciating details and stuff – I know I don't need to explain it to you, I'm just excited by the idea. This is a fight with two sides. Both armies involved are military powers obeying the rules of war. No scruffy pirates or anything like that, so on the plus side it's fine if their ships look simple and clean. Meanwhile, Zeke the buddy robot is coming through on Cassiopeia helmet radio in jagged-edged static bursts.)

Caption 1: In the middle of a space battle. One where you don't even have a ship.

Caption 2: A VERY bad time.

STATIC BURST 1: Cassiopeia! Are you readin' me?