Page 24 – And Hell Followed With Him
Well, sometimes I can do it all. And with just a little extra time, I got this week’s page in. I hope you find that it was worth the extra 24 hours it took to get it touched up.
This page is an interesting one because it’s where Major Bronniford starts to become more of an active player in all this. She is an officer, after all, and though lacking in command experience she is a well-trained soldier, vide her being able to pick the lock on her handcuffs, as she is doing here. If there’s a limitation to this story, I’d say that it’s that I have introduced the whole of the main cast in different places, making it a rather disparate group to follow. Major Bronniford is under enemy imprisonment, Major Rucker is out in the field with his tanks, Colonel Haulley is stuck in the command bunker, and Mike-One-Echo is roaming free across the countryside. In the end, war is like that, so I’m told (I’m not a soldier so I don’t know from experience): a lot of things happening in different places, with various people trying to figure it all out. And while that does add to the impact of the military verismilitude (such as it is, with battle armor and robot tanks) I question its effectiveness from a storytelling perspective. Maybe I got carried away. But still and all, I think it’s been an interesting story so far.
The color on this page really came out vividly, as I’d wanted it to, as did the overall design. There’s a brief “narrative intersection” here, where the two different storylines momentarily seem to touch, slightly. And Mike is really pretty tough to destroy, isn’t he? I guess he’d have to be, if the United Nations were going to invest all that time and effort in building a gigantic tank with a robot brain to replace a whole armored company. I had great fun drawing him all torn up the way he is, to be perfectly honest. Imagining the workings of his inner structure, under the outer layer of armor, was very interesting. Plus, it actually makes him looks more threatening, kind of the way a skeleton is more frightening than a fully-fleshed person. And this is not really even as far down as his parts go – this is just his inner hull!
Anyhow, I’m happy with the page, and now I plow ahead, feeling all proud of myself for managing to keep things on track in spite of a holiday. So here we are!
By the way, I was really pleased to see the surge in interest in the site lately – I do hope all the new people stopping by the site are finding this entertaining, and I hope you’ll be back! According to my site analyses, over 70% of my visitors these days are repeat readers! So it definitely bodes well for the future of 6-Commando, and it does me a lot of good to know you’re all reading it. Thanks, guys! And thanks, also, to everyone who’s been posting as well! The comments are all very useful to me, and I appreciate it immensely.
So until next week, keep on rollin’ people!
Original Post: SNEH! I like to think I can do it all. But I can’t. I came so close though. So very close.
But this week’s page is just not done yet, and priorities being what they are, I couldn’t simply NOT go to see my poor ol’ Ma on Mother’s Day. So this week’s page is going to have to wait for 24 hours, I’m afraid. I only now am crawling back into my hovel, you see, after some night driving in pretty hairy conditions, so finishing the last bits of this page will have to wait until tomorrow after work.
Forgiveness, please!
Until then, regale yourselves with a new feature at Vicious Print which I have started for your edification: The Achiever’s Index! There I will be looking at and reviewing webcomics that I read, and highlighting those that I think are most worth the look. Arrogant? Probably. Self-important? You bet. Entertaining? I hope so! So check it out, and check back here tomorrow evening for the REAL page 24!
Be well, folks, and happy Mother’s Day!
‘Mike’ doesn’t seem to like to get his armor tarnished. ^^
Well, I mean, if you were a 500-ton superheavy robotic tank, you might be a bit touchy about your paint job, as well. And I’ll give you a sneak peek – it actually does come up later in the story!
But you actually touch on an interesting point here, that Mike is remarkably un-charred for all the flames around him. I tried to “muss him up” in colors but his shape lost definition, so I erred on the side of cartooniness and let him be a little cleaner than he ought to be. I still think his look was pretty effective.
–M
Muahahahaha; I like Mike! *evil grin*
Mike: “Alright, who’s the unlucky SOB that fired that bomb at me?”
Yeah, the thermobaric missile just made him angrier. He’s like Wilford Brimley that way.
–M
Bottom row of panels is excellent man! Don’t get me wrong, top row is good, but the bottom row is just excellent!
Nice to see those two story lines coming together (almost). Keep ‘m coming!
Thanks, Joost! I was really happy with it, myself. That kind of cinematic bit is hard to do, even though from a drawing/layout standpoint it’s pretty simply arranged. A believable progression of motion is tough to accomplish in stills – as you must know from the work you’ve been doing on Semmie!
–M
Yeah, I know! If you do it right it looks really easy and extremely natural. But if you’re off only a little bit it will look awkward and clumsy. This looks just right!
And this is when those seeing the tank roll out, lose all bowel control. Awesome final panels! (Not to mention a testament to the engineering design to take incredible punishment)
Yeah, Mike is a tough customer. He’s even tougher than this. That’s just his outer hull!
–M
And now Mike needs theme music…he deserves it.
All in favor….
I actually had the theme to Total Recall in mind when I drew it. But “The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash might be a more folksy alternative.
–M
After that last hit how about “One piece at a time”? Or “I walk the Line”? Hell…ya know what anything by Mr. Cash would be suitable. Or for something psychotic try “Sway” by Coal Chamber, or “I’m Alive” by Disturbed, “Engine No.9” by Deftones, or even “heavy Metal” the good version by Don Felder not that prancing idiot Sammy Hagar. Oh I know “Amazing Grace” the Dropkick Murphy’s version, we used to listen to that while racing humvee’s in Iraq :). “Devil’s Dance” by Metallica has that ominous undertone to it, “Stigmata” by Ministry would be a good one too. Or “Wrong side of a Gun” from Nashville Pussy. Sorry…I get carried away sometimes.
What? He actually took damage? I’m so disappointed. 😀
For him, this is a scratch. There’s a long way to go to destroy a Rumbler.
Frankly, I admit that I’m a little surprised at how popular Mike has been with readers so far. He was originally kind of a gimmick, in my mind. But people have really taken to him as a character in his own right. Pretty cool, actually – he’s taking on a life of his own. I wonder whether you’ve had that experience with any of your characters in Outsider?
–M
Just a scratch, eh?
Let’s see. On the prev. page he took a hit of a missle in his rear panel. Now we see a fractured panel on the front… That, by my opinion, means that the damage went “all trough”. That might do little to his electronical insides, but is really mad for mechanicak as some things, like missle hatches, ca end up jammed dead.
Also we see 1/4 of left tracks destroed. And the rest 3/4 tracks are exposed to further damage.
I say Mike’s in real risk of being immobilised and than torn to shreds peice by peice… no matter how hard your armor is, if you can not leave enemy killzone.
Well, this gets into questions of the actual design of the Echo class Autonomous Armored Vehicle. These are things I’ve actually worked out, so here goes. Gearheads, start your recorders.
The Echo class Rumblers actually have three in-line quad treads on each side of their hull, which have independent drive and suspension systems connected to the main atomic motor. Mike has sustained damage to tread 4FR, or, the fourth tread on the front unit of his right side. That’s 1/12 of his drive capacity for that side, or 1/24 overall.
The blasts are actually breaking through a series of honeycombed diversion channels built into the space between his outer (or “command”) hull and his secondary (or “buffer”) hull. Inside that, there is a third hull, which is his “core” hull. All three are independently armored and have spaces between them with “blowout” panels designed to keep blastwaves and other high-pressure shocks from crushing his electronic components. His core hull is the most important one, and is made of a layering of lead-impregnated ceramic and depleted uranium, layered on a solid insulator gel that holds his CPU and his heuristics or “H-modules” in suspension. These parts are essentially Mike’s “brain,” and even if he were to be a total loss, UNA engineers would make an effort to recover these parts, since they contain his personality and his accumulated experiences – his “self.”
However, what you say is essentially true – Mike is not invincible. He can be worn down by constant fire, and this was understood by the O.V. Consortium engineers who designed him. The tactical problem is therefore how much fire it takes to stop him, and how fast it can be brought to bear. It is entirely possible that, even under a whithering hail of effective fire, Mike could manage to struggle through to his objective before being destroyed, and this would be seen as a tactical victory by UNA planners, who would have expended a single, albeit large and expensive, weapon while tying up a large portion of enemy firepower. This is to say nothing of the psychological effect such a weapon has.
In the event of a war between the UNA and the FSR, Federate commanders have contingencies to allow them to cope with a Rumbler attack. But I may be revealing too much, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.
–M
This would be a far more appropriate moment to use my favorite heavy quote.
“RUN! RUN! I AM COMING FOR YOU!”
Score: Mike 3, Commies 0.
It’s a wash for the Reds so far. They need bigger guns!
–M
Who sent babies to fight?
Your tiny baby guns are no match for me!
Whats that sandvich? Kill them all? GOOD IDEA!
We need LIKE buttons for comments like that. XD
*terminator intenseifies*
DUH-DUH DUH DUH-DUH! DUH-DUH DUH DUH-DUH!
I like Mike XD
I like that you linked this comic to us 😀
*plays the music of Terminator*
> If there’s a limitation to this story, I’d say that it’s that I have introduced the whole of the main cast in different places, making it a rather disparate group to follow. Major Bronniford is under enemy imprisonment, Major Rucker is out in the field with his tanks, Colonel Haulley is stuck in the command bunker, and Mike-One-Echo is roaming free across the countryside. In the end, war is like that, so I’m told (I’m not a soldier so I don’t know from experience): a lot of things happening in different places, with various people trying to figure it all out. And while that does add to the impact of the military verismilitude (such as it is, with battle armor and robot tanks) I question its effectiveness from a storytelling perspective. Maybe I got carried away.
Starship Troopers does this amazingly well, because it’s not an omniscient perspective. It’s someone who’s actually had that perspective, reporting what he experienced directly as his own personal experience, and what he heard as what he heard. Heinlein was an officer and was therefore placed to think about battle on all levels, and John Rico was an officer, too, and was trained to think about the strategic and operational elements of what he heard. It’s so great. Really just such a fantastic example of how to do that.