Page Commentary No. 44 (Patreon)

Gunwild: The ring that holds the ball power source thing turning into wings was not planned from the ship's first appearance.

Psu: Man, I'm just thinking about how cool our comic is sometimes.

Gunwild: This page: first appearance of Theira's mandibles.

Psu: Heh, the whole wing thing and the mandible thing, this page had a lot of on the spot inventions! I think I always intended Theira to have mandibles, and they definitely got more extreme as time went on. But this page with the ship "wings" thing, I knew I couldn't use the "miniature sun" concept without the ship probably ignighting the entire atmosphere too early. So, hey we embraced the Vanaa's maleable nature and gave it a transforming mode. One where the little sun thing turns off and doesn't burn up an entire sky.

Gunwild: Kwah and Farring are teamin' up even though they were at odds a few pages ago!

Psu: That was a big one! I think they both harbor some animosity towards the other side. But I think they dislike disappointing their commanding officers even more!

Gunwild: They're hard-headed. Well, metaphorically. Kwah's head isn't all that hard.

Psu: He's got that little tough spot though... Anyway I can't remember if we talked about it. But I think I really had to be sold on that joke. But now I can't imagine the story without it. It's just such a goofy pleasant moment. The whole page has this mysterious aura to it with the alien landscape and the ship dipping beneath the clouds, it's a nice way to cap it off.

Gunwild: Juxtaposing spacey stuff and goofy stuff is sorta our stock in trade. I do think I've drifted away from thinking of "grand-scale" images like this to center pages around though, which is not such a good thing. But it's a consequence of the whole comic becoming more character-driven, too.

Psu: We haven't seen a new planet in a little while, so there hasn't been much need to imagine things like "What would the rocks be like on a planet covered in methane?"

Psu: But I think as a comic grows older, character building is always welcome. And we have a number of characters that could be built on even more. It took a lot of pages to start to mention Farring's past like we did here.

Gunwild: I hope he DOESN'T smell.

Psu: Eh he's a solid, all solids smell alike.