Something Screwy’s Going On Here
How did I ever get this page done? It mystifies me, I have to admit. I was basically working solid until Saturday morning, then out all Saturday afternoon and evening… somehow, it got done! Weird.
So, anyhow, yes! Here we are. With the tension breaking in both of the parallel scenes. You can probably see now why I have been intercutting the two – astute observers will notice that this page and the last one make up a single spread, so the big “moment” is happening at the same time. Well, anyway, I thought it was clever. But what the hell do I know?
It’s a bit odd to be writing a comic about nuclear war when we seem to be on the verge of one right now, if the media/propaganda machines worldwide are to be believed. The North Koreans are currently threatening to use the Bomb against us Americans, though Christ alone knows what we did to them THIS time, aside from asking them not to do that. And, yes, the sanctions thing, but I mean, come on. The North Koreans have been imposing sanctions on their own people for sixty years, now, so I mean, what the hell? My rational side tells me that this is all just the outward signs of a bizarre internal political dance that always happens in totalitarian dictatorships when there’s a change in power, but good God, guys, can you solve your problems without threatening us with the Bomb? Seriously.
It only really came to my mind because I happen also this week to have watched a documentary (while I was working, actually – a rare multitasking moment) on the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, which is basically as close as we’ve come to knowing what the aftermath of a widespread modern nuclear war would be like: a total ecological and human catastrophe. Which is, of course, to say nothing of the disastrous way that World War II was brought to an end in Japan. So to think that threatening that kind of destruction is such an offhanded thing, as some kind of internal political ploy, really makes me sick at heart.
But anyway, enough rambling. War or no war, life goes on, and I have a job to get to in the morning. See you next week, folks!
Good to see they haven’t started slaughtering oneanother outside. I like the concern for it’s brother (sister?) evedent in the yellow-eyed mech.
If you don’t mind a technical question, what are those mechs armed with? The pattern running up both sides of the “head” looks sort of like a missile system or grenade launcher, is that close?
Yeah, liked that, too.
😀
–M
You know, I could come up with a complex rationalization, but honest to goodness I don’t know WHAT those things are. I guess I imagined they were the plugs for fuel rods of some kind. Or something.
–M
honestly, i’d guess some sort of Anti-tank missile, given how similar they are to the TOW missile box on an M2 bradley. the hand weapons look to be some sort of recoilless rifle or maybe long barrel grenade launcher.
On the UNA, the box on the shoulder is a high-intensity searchlight powered by a small atomic battery. The hexagonal things on the FSR robots are… Well, anybody’s guess, I have to admit.
–M
Gaaaaah those kill bots are so cute. Fortunately, the first one has survived being shot before, hopefully it’ll be able to do so again.
I love the killbots. They’re very fun to draw – they’re all body language, with no facial expressions.
–M
obviously, being a russian killbot is a hard job… I hope that at least the pay is good 🙂
Also, I’ve noticed that the UNA soldiers were so frightened by their new friends that they erased their names on the power armor’s chest…. or maybe it’s a tactic to confuse the enemy ? ^^
Oh, jeez. I’ll have to fix that. Why do I always forget the insignia? Somehow it always slips my mind…
Thanks for pointing that out, though!
-M
Ha, so after all, Santelli was just scared out of his wits and with a jumpy finger. Kind of understandable, considering the kind of shenanigans that have been gong on lately… if you can call “nuclear combat toe to toe with the Ruskies” a “shenanigan”.
I do believe that when I’m working that’s the best time to see documentaries. Why, with multiple monitors on your workstation and the internet so full of them, it’s be sacrilege not to do so! Sacrilege, I say!
I for one have been on a kick of ancient cultures/ the industrial revolution lately. That and shipwrecks. You can never go wrong with shipwrecks.
Frankly, I don’t think we’re close to nuclear time this time, because I don’t think NK has the capability to launch and deliver a working nuclear warhead to the mainland US, and even if they do manage to launch, I doubt they have the sheer number that would be needed to swamp the US anti-missile defenses which, after all, were designed to deal with the far greater threat of the Soviet Union.
In fact, the current estimates of NK capabilities are of about 25 weapons, far, far too little, considering that’s the weapon load of a single SSBN.
Just by looking at pictures, North Korea is eerily reminiscent of what my country used to look like before 1989. Now this in itself is not perplexing, since Ceausescu modeled his regime from 1978 onwards after that of North Korea, but this means I know first hand the endemic problems of this system of government:
First off, the idea that one country, isolated from the outside, can not only produce everything it needs to survive, but that it is also able to thrive and develop a competitive high tech industry. In Romania this turned out to be a massive pipe dream, that resulted in the almost complete annihilation of the economy and also led to widespread starvation – yes, the massive industrial plants were built, usually with outside specialized assistance, but we lacked the manpower needed to run them, so in the end hundreds of thousands of farmers were hastily converted into factory workers, which only led to poor quality machined goods do to the inherent lack of instruction of the above AND a widespread decline in the quantity of foodstuff available. This was “remedied” by the stopgap measure of using the armed forces (themselves conscripts) for agriculture, but that proved to be sufficient so, in the end, schoolchildren and even factory workers were made to work the fields, which, as you can imagine, made sure that every task, in agriculture and industry alike, was performed by people that had absolutely no instruction in it. I believe this is currently the case in North Korea.
Second – again by looking at the picture, the technological level really looks like what was available in Romanian before 1989, and since that was barely sufficient back then, we can imagine how inefficient it must be in North Korea twenty four years later, when compared to our modern world…
Thirdly, coming back to the idea of spotty quality control and shoddy industrial goods, we saw that first hand in the spectacular failures of North Korean rocketry – I severely doubt that NK manufactured rockets are capable of reaching the US mainland on their own, let alone while engaged by active missile defense..
Finally, unlike Romania in the 1980s, which was part of the Warsaw pact, North Korea stands alone against the world, with even it’s former ally, China, now set against it.
And since NK is completely dependent of Chinese aid in order to survive and China threatened to suspend said aid in case North Korea doesn’t stop playing with the damned rockets, I think we’re about to see the last act of a nation cutting off the branch it was standing on…
I mean this situation reminds me of the Black Knight scene in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, with North Korea as the titular character.
Oh, I don’t think it will come to nuclear war, even if it does come to war of some kind. I don’t think they’re crazy or suicidal; there’s a definite method to the madness. I simply think it’s like playing with a gun – it’s stupid and dangerous.
“Is he gonna shoot me?”
“No.”
“Then he hadn’t oughta point a gun at me. It’s insincere.”
–M
Oh, of course not. It’s even worse, NK are threatening with an unloaded gun and they’re doing it in a gun store… The only way this is going to go is “badly, for them”.
Cool no conflict has happened–yet. The green killbots didn’t look like they would hold up too long against the Russians..
I think the Russian kill-bots could put up a good fight if they wanted to. They’re pretty tough little monkeys.
–M
Just a thought from comparing the last encounter with the Russian power armor squad.
The insignia on their shoulder armor has a wrench and gear, does that mark them as an engineering squad? They seem to be lacking weapons also and seems the one who was shot also lost some of his exoskeleton armor around the “head” area. Combat models would be more resilient no?
The cogwheel-and-spanner device is the symbol of the FSR. It’s this world’s equivalent of our hammer and sickle, which I find very hard to use for personal reasons. I think it shows up once or twice but I generally try not to use it.
As for the armor, well, those are VERY powerful guns the tactical suits have…
–M
Ah right, reading back I saw another comment to that on the insignia sorry to ask a repeat question.
As for the weapons. Powerful enough to riddle a suit with holes but only break off a small section of armor? Though on closer inspection the suit downed already had holes and an armor fracture/crack. Seven holes originally, fourteen ( two on left chest are hidden by the bent knee) plus the large chunk hole after.
Since it had damage before and kept going I guess this time he hit the pilot and or power pack/plant eh? Oh and looks like the knee joints.
He wasn’t trying to kill him at all was he now?