Nothing Short of a Miracle
For some reason, drawing people saluting is incredibly difficult for most cartoonists I’ve seen. I really don’t know why this should be the case. The worst I ever saw was in the otherwise-excellent comic Ministry of Space. It was so laughably wrong I had to wonder what makes this basic hand gesture so difficult to draw. Then I started my own military comic, and I found out. It’s just hard to get right. Too close to the forehead, too far away, wrong angle of the arm, the forearm, the hand, it’s just HARD to draw. It’s also usually being drawn by someone who’s never had to do an actual military salute, so they don’t know the real motion involved. I have even seen people doing “pretend” salutes that involve a lot of hip and waist motion, more like a swagger. But at any rate, I finally think I’ve managed, with a lot of studying of photos and a lot of practice, to get this pretty close to the mark.
I fought the temptation to push up a lot of exposition that happens in this chapter, and to condense it for the sake of making the whole thing “clearer.” This chapter more than the others has pushed home the genuine limitations of the format I’ve chosen, because it makes each given week seem like the end of the story, so to speak. But I resisted, and so this whole thing is going to unfold as I originally planned. It’s getting weird, I know, but bear with it. As I keep saying, “I’m going somewhere with this.”
By the way, what Dr. Haakman is saying here about neutrophils is not exactly true. Neutrophils are blood elements that induce an inflammation response around infections and foreign bodies, as a “first response” in advance of a slower but more complete phagocytic white blood cell attack. As I understand it, the only way someone’s body would completely stop producing neutrophils would be if they had no bone marrow left at all, which would basically mean nearly instant death because you’d have no blood cells at all. But this was a more dramatic way of phrasing it so I thought some artistic hyperbole would be in order.
Anyhow, I wanted to toss in a special note of thanks this week to Elsa Kroese and Charlotte English, who create the excellent and visually spectacular comic Spindrift, for linking to 6-Commando. Elsa, especially, has been a kind and generous booster of my humble comics efforts, and I owe her a real debt of gratitude for that. Spindrift is an epic fantasy comic with an amazing artistic aesthetic that I strongly recommend to everyone here – it is TOP NOTCH in every sense of the word. I also want to direct everyone’s attention, also, to the new “links” page above, where in addition to Spindrift, you’ll fins links to several other excellent comics I read regularly. All the creators there have been an enormous help and support to 6-Commando, so please, show them a little love in return – their work is amazing, without exception, and I strongly recommend it to you all!
And also, I’ve tossed up a sketch of something I’ve been working on as a voting incentive over at topwebcomics.com. Hope you like it! Not sure what I’m going to do with it at the moment, maybe a desktop wallpaper or a poster or something. But yeah. Check it out.
For now, however, I must return to my rooms. This is going to be a REALLY busy week – one of the busiest I’ve had in a while, actually – so I have to get some sleep in advance of my labors. All the best, folks!
Can’t stop thinking that there is some Kubrick joke in here on how Mike is evolving from ‘smart tank’ to some Dues Ex Machina.
“But…but Mike is a weapon! Weapons aren’t supposed to heal people!”
Also on saluting: I have the same problem when I draw someone simple sitting in a chair, I have to create some crazy angle just so it doesn’t look awkward.
Dark Star, with the intelligent talking bombs they use to kill rogue planets. One of them gets deployed then pulled back so many times, it gets tired of this and decides that one way or another its going to blow up. One of the crew talks it down from detonating by teaching it about Phenomenominism (SP?) which is the philisophical theory that you know that you exist, because you think, therfor you are, but you cannot know for certain that anything else around you exists, because your senses could be deceived. The upshot of this is, that the bomb decides that since it cannot be sure if anything else but itself is real, and for all it knows, everything is really just an empty void, it there for says “Let the be Light!” and detonates
Oh yes, Darkstar! 😀
And for your wierd movie trivia of the day, did you know the Movie Alien was actually supposed to be a Re-Make of Dark Star?
Bomb, this is Doolittle! Do NOT explode yourself near the ship! That is an ORDER!
–M
You must speak to it, Doolittle. You must… teach it… phenomenology.
One of the greatest movies ever made, if you ask me.
–M
Oh crap darkstar references…I’m having flashbacks here lol. all we need is a alien beach ball with claws….
This is why its probably not the best idea, to follow the plan devised by a man who is technically already dead
There are quite a few Kubrickian moments in the story so far, I think. It’s not totally deliberate, but when you make films as comprehensively as he did, it’s hard not to have everything that follows be influenced by it in SOME way.
–M
With Kubrick covered, time for some Tarantino or Michael Mann.
And if there haven’t been any, some kafkaesque moments wouldn’t harm either (okay, Kafka and “no harm” in one sentence is a bad idea…).
Wouldn’t “no bone marrow left at all” be entirely consistent with Sarah’s level of radiation exposure?
Well… maybe. But it’s really hard to TOTALLY destroy a system in the human anatomy without excising it surgically.
–M
I was going to talk about hyperbole in science and how zero doesn’t always really mean zero (1=0 for very small values of 1) and in the process of googling some numbers for an example I found some REAL SCIENCE!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=8635902
“In human beings exposed to a single radiation exposure (as seen in radiation accidents) the simulation of the granulocyte pattern results in the finding that a reduction of the stem cell pool to 5-10% of normal is compatible with the assumption of its “reversible” damage (to be treated by conventional replacement therapy including cytokines), whereas the reduction of blood granulocytes to levels of less than 200-300 per mm3 on day 5-6 after exposure indicates that no stem cells remain from which a spontaneous regeneration could occur and hence would require a substitution therapy by stem cell transplantation.”
Unfortunately this doesn’t support Haakman’s hyperbole, but numbers are fun.
Dr. Haakmans colleague must be originating from the Dutch overseas territories in the West Indies. Nice touch with the curly hair and the thin-rimmed glasses. And good work on making his complexion different from Haulleys. I’m always impressed how well Haulleys (evil/ bad-ass trademark) bald head works.
Well, now we’ll soon see what goes on with MIKE. And that “thing” the MP mentioned. Whatever that might be…
Thank you Lex Luthor, for making all totally bald men scare me
Heavy characters ALWAYS look better bald, man.
–M
But the thing! What about the thing?
First panel, next page, a mound of flesh haphazardly sprouting human and dog limbs says “What’s up.”
No… No! It… it’s not THAT. No, that… that’d be… silly…
(erase… erase… erase…)
–M
About the “thing”?
Don’t worry! A yeoman will make sure the VCR will be properly programmed so Haulley won’t miss this weeks episode of Walker – Texas Ranger.
I suppose it makes sense that there is Walker Texas Ranger in this universe too. Afterall, Chuck Norris is so manly, that he trancends the Many Worlds theory of multi-dimentional physics and exists symultaniously in all universes. There are no alternate nor any paralelle Chucks in these universes, there is simply one Chuck Norris and all universes revolve around him.
=> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CLfm1A–i8 ^^
Also also http://notalwaysright.com/de-ting-de-ting/308
I believe Lance Armstrong finally confessed to illegal Neutrophil usage today.
With that last panel I had to trow away my last theory of what might be going on…*sigh*
I know. I’ll take your word and trust that youre going somewhere with this, and wait
Meanwhile I’ll go and take a look to those links 😉
The whole issue of saluting reminds me of my own humble beginnings in comics and just how awful the first run of Shadowless was, because I was trying to do a military comic about an alternate WW1 without knowing anything about the military. Fast forward nine years, and now, as an army reserve ceremonial guard and active reenactor, I know exactly not only what army life is like (boring, mainly), but also how it feels to wear, march and fight in actual ww1 uniforms and equipment, especially in adverse weather conditions.
When it comes to the issue of saluting in comics, the most issues I’ve seen are characters not coming to attention when they salute. Either that or saluting in contexts where a salute is not rendered, such as indoors, with the head covering off, when not either reporting in or receiving orders.
Also, there are different styles of saluting belonging to different nations and sometimes they even vary widely between branches of service. A pertinent example would be the Canadian army where the standard is the “normal” palm down salute, while the RCMP uses the “British style” open handed salute, with the palm to the front. Or the British armed forces, where everybody but the Navy use the open handed salute, while the Navy renders the palm down salute.
And then even if you do the palm down salute there’s the issue of where the palm should be on the forehead and where your elbow should be during the salute – while saluting it’s always done with the forearm at an angle of 45 degrees, those are the fuzzy fuzzy bits- the rule we’ve been given is that the arm should be perpendicular to the body axis and the tip of the index finger should touch a spot one centimeter above the corner of the right eyebrow. But practice showed me differently. For example, all Americans I’ve met saluted with their right elbow out in front some thirty degrees from the perpendicular on the body’s axis and the palm going to a point just in front of the eyebrow, without actually touching the forehead. An then there’s the Polish military salute, which, while otherwise identical to the British and French open handed salute, only extends the index and middle fingers towards the brim of the hat (it is rendered only with head covered) while keeping the rest curled in the palm.