Page Commentary No. 260 (Patreon)

Gunwild: I don't think I ever explained how Cassiopeia knew who Headhunter was on sight... and that's because I gambled that the audience would accept that a professional smuggler might know of the "head of the bounty hunting clans" already.

Psu: There's a lot of time that happened between that chapter and this one! Cassiopeia also probably has loads of enemies. Maybe we should explore some in between chapters sometime. There's a lot of little gaps of time we could fill, if it weren't for the fact that producing a webcomic is a slow and steady business. We have yet to fully discuss the fallout of this page, even years later!

Gunwild: Well that's an upsetting thought. Time to do a lot more Headhunter explaining, now that we know he's some kinda Regency flunky doing uhh... what's the military term... you know what? Forget the military term. He is doing shady stuff for them on the side. Mad shady stuff.

Psu: He's a shady villain! And one we haven't quite gotten to explore a lot yet. But hey, slow webcomics are kinda the norm. Like I've heard of comics that have spent multiple years on what is effectively one "day" in the story.

Gunwild: That's true. Books can be the same way. My brother and I are Wheel of Time fans, and no shade on that series, it's a lot of folks' favorite! That's why it's getting a TV adaptation. But there are whole books where it's the slowest of burns. I guess it's all a matter of taste. It's okay with me as long as both the questions raised and answered are engaging and propulsive. Is propulsive a word people use? I've only ever heard it in criticism of popular culture, I think.

Psu: I suppose as long as the reader is learning something, they'll feel like the story is progressing! Anyway, let's talk about this page. I admit I've never heard "Jake" used in this context before.

Gunwild: Yeah I apologize, I hoped the meaning would be clear from context so it would be all right. It's not real slang, more of a running joke among Star Trek fans about how in that franchise's idea of space, shuttles are the easiest thing in the world to steal. Anybody can do it. I believe you can hear them use it on the Trek podcasts The Greatest Generation and The Greatest Discovery regularly.

Psu: Wait so you're saying it's a Jake Sisko reference? I mean that'd be cool, it'd be the second one of the entire comic.

Gunwild: Yes, although actually if I remember right, multiple boys named Jake, kids with no particular ability to pilot spacecraft or hotwire technology, have stolen shuttles in entirely different Star Trek shows. Because they needed to be able to for story reasons. It's just that common to swipe shuttles on Star Trek.

Psu: Hey man if you need to get somewhere and O'Brien won't let you on the transporter... we're kinda rambling but I think we want to avoid spoiling future story things by just talking about it, right?

Gunwild: Yeah, but I like rambling about sci-fi nonsense with you enough to spend years making a comic that financially justifies it.

Psu: We will have to talk about how we both love Lower Decks a little later. But speaking of talking, Brellom isn't available at this second but we should probably bug them for some comments. I wanna thank them for their hard work this chapter those years ago. It was really some of our best work together!

Brellom: My apologies.

Psu: Ah, I found you!

Brellom: I was playing Demon's Souls instead of doing actual work.

Psu: I was playing Kena: Bridge of Spirits, myself. What a nice game.

Brellom: Yeah, I didn't do too much work on this page. I can definitely see my hand, but the direction was largely Psu based. It does that thing where the shadows are a little grey.

Psu: A bad habit. Born mostly from expediency!

Brellom: Well no, I probably did. But we probably weren't doing as awesomely as we were on the previous pages. But I think it's always hard because those are some of our best pages, I feel. A technique we often used was to shade using a simple "Multiply" layer, and that can often result in slightly greyer hues. But then, in order to make it feel more lively, we'd airbrush some colours on top using "Overlay." That's why this center panel has that strong green and violet tint to it. It's a cheap and quick way of getting that done, but it never looks as good as manually picking our colours. But it's a process born mostly of expediency, as Psu suggested.

Psu: It's also a relatively crowded and dense page. A lot of information needed to be conveyed between a lot of different actors. The direct approach was necessary to show little things like Penny's hand waving and Minx being adorable.

Gunwild: I like Eyebot giving the bad guy a look like "You don't wanna step to this!" because someone oughta. Also, the detail of Headhunter's scary red eye being only more uncovered by the scarring of his thick... hide? Skin? Face-plating? It isn't really how human eyes work so it is a spooky effect.

Psu: My favorite panel is the "Signal Lost" one. I'm not even kidding.

Gunwild: Bweep

Brellom: I appreciate how cool Psu and Gunwild think Penny is because of these last few pages, but she's a massive nerd and her action movie quip skills leave a lot to be desired. But I guess she's appealing to the classic nerd power fantasy.

Psu: We're all nerds here. But I do think Penny would have the energy to be the top of the nerds.

Brellom: >:3c

Psu: Don't take that out of context!

Gunwild: Commentary over! Bweep