Page Commentary No. 159 (Patreon)

Psu: One of my favorite pages.

Gunwild: It can be hard when honestly the thing that would be most heartwarming for the audience is for the main character to adopt the cute orphans and be their mom and stuff, but that's just not in the cards for what we wanna do with the story. Hopefully this does a good job getting across that Cassiopeia's idea of "being there for them" is stealing nice stuff for them, but it's very heartfelt!

Psu: I think... Cassiopeia thought like what we thought when we started the chapter. She sorta thought of the kiddos as being decoration. As cold as that sounds. When she decided to bring some kids on this trip, she thought she was doing something nice and awesome and didn’t really think of THEM. But over the course of an adventure and a short trip, she kinda grew to care about them like we did. Kids are often unplanned, is what I’m getting at. You still love em.

Gunwild: What a bunch of happy accidents! Just like the Kents found.

Psu: Speaking of the caretakers, here we see the two who actually keep the orphanage together. Though letting the kids go on a trip with a Space Adventurer Buisness Mogul is questionably child endangerment, they’ve done a good job with these five. And we’ve barely ever given them anything to say in the comic!

Gunwild: I guess we can get away with letting them seem like a comforting presence by not having them say stuff, so people are like "Oh well they're taken care of, that nice lady and robot handle things!" Whereas if we put more detail into them people might start asking questions.

Psu: Well we are a space adventure, we’re not supposed to wonder how they eat and breath in space and whatnot.

Gunwild: Or if that sign means we're trying to fit this story into the DC Comics universe. Don't overthink it! All the sci-fi is true! It's fun!

Psu: I do like the robot helper. I think in the script, Gunwild didn’t give me too many directions on what the two should look like. So I kinda imagined the robot is like... a cheap boxy robot that’s been around for way longer than most people keep robots for. But it’s got a lot of love and remembers every kid that’s been in the house. Never deletes them from it’s hard drive! 

Gunwild: In the comic tags he's "helperbot." Shows you how clever we are with names!

Psu: Heh. Other design notes... okay well. When designing the place they live, which is supposed to be gross and covered in smog and unhealthy and maybe a little sad looking. I pretty much drew inspiration from local places in New Jersey. Old houses, industrial buildings just across the fence. Big ol Saturn like planet hanging out in the background. Rainy streets and shiny asphalt. Giant spaceship double parked. OH, the most subtle design thing. We don’t mention it AT ALL (and I kinda forget about it a lot myself...) did anyone catch Zeke’s new hat in panel 4?

Gunwild: He's probably got plenty and swaps them out at the slightest whim! Same as people playing Red Dead Redemption 2.

Psu: Nothing better than settling down with videogames at home after a long trip.

Gunwild: Even in Space New Jersey!

Psu: Oh shoot... does this mean that Zeke just gave Nisa a slightly burned hat?

Gunwild: I've often wondered that but I decided it doesn't matter. Yee-haw!