Art Update No. 160 (Patreon)

NOTE: $7+ Patrons will get this Art Update and an extra holiday one! Everyone else, enjoy giggling at the silly sketches!

Gunwild: The first image could be canon... Theira is just really excited for her turn to use the rad awesome giant Power Loader!

Psu: "LEMME AT IT! I WANNA SEE IF IT CAN CARRY A STARSHIP RAIL GUN"

Gunwild: Aliens isn't really a horror movie so much as an action movie... but hey, it is a creature feature, and if this isn't the time of the year to celebrate monsters from the movies, when is?

Psu: It has scary moments! But yeah, compared to the first film it's a little low on the human horror and high on the "holy cow space marines are kinda rad." But yeah, we've kinda been talking about getting some costumes for our characters. I think that's something worth playing around with more. And Halloween is as good an excuse as any.

Gunwild: As to another one of these sketches, ya know, at New York Comic Con I went to three separate panels about horror comics. All three times, I asked the panelists to list horror comics that had influenced them, and in every case, Junji Ito's name was mentioned before anyone else's.

Psu: I think he's doing some web video series for Viz right now where he does some silly things like rate scary videoes on youtube. And he's also like, reading children's books. He seems like a totally nice guy! And pretty fun. Unassuming regular middle aged Japanese man, who has a rather fun job. I think it's helpful to dissuade people from the notion that the people who make horror and scary stuff are themselves disturbed. Many are perfectly pleasant folk!

Gunwild: Ito has an ability I think we've praised before, where he can make depictions of normal everyday stuff really beautiful and exciting... although in his case the beauty and detail just ratchets up the tension before the horror is revealed! Speaking of artistry, I had no idea Cassiopeia was so capable with hammer and chisel! But I guess she does have a better-than-normal understanding of mass and force and spatial relationships...

Psu: She might just be showing a hammer and chisel, I would've used one of her laser guns or something. She probably exaggerated a little too. Oh maybe we should clarify the Junji Ito story I was referencing. Enigma of Amigara Fault. It's pretty easy to find online, and a quick read. It would be a shame if people didn't get all our 20th century references.

Gunwild: "Gyo," the book it's from, was actually released in 2001, at least in the U.S....

Psu: Close enough...

Gunwild: But yeah, there was an idea that we toyed with for a sec where we could actually reveal that Cassiopeia was a time-displaced or frozen person... from the 1990s! But one, that's the basis of Futurama. Two, it's also the basis of Spacy Lucy, a comic that runs on Slipshine, the Hiveworks-affiliated NSFW comics site (where I have a new Halloween comic up right now, cough cough). And three, it would have shut off giving her a bit of future-based backstory, which we have used to pretty good effect I think.

Psu: We can just say the only movies in her orphanage were the classics. Conveniently the same ones WE grew up with!

Gunwild: I mean if all sci-fi is canon to Cassiopeia Quinn, then Jason X, the Friday the 13th movie set in space, is canon. Which means the previous entries in the series are also canon. She's just a student of history!

Psu: Even the parts that possibly contradict other parts in the series?

Gunwild: Especially those parts!