This Doesn’t Make Any Goddamn Sense
The mystery continues to unravel. God, Dacosta looks good on this page. Oh, my, yes. It’s a huge relief to have the thing on the ropes for this chapter.
Bizarrely, it only takes a small bit of time on one end or the other to turn the drawing of a page in this comic from a tremendous chore to something incredibly pleasant and uplifting, and that’s how it was this week. I dithered and wavered back and forth on things like layout and colors, and I pored over the excruciating minutiae of the way the dialogue was presented; but then, come Friday evening, I found myself waking up from a post-workday nap to have the whole thing in my head, and it all came out on the page just exactly as I thought it should. I suppose Sherlock Holmes had it right: “And now, Watson, I commend to you the universal solution to nearly every problem: sleep.”
A year from now, no doubt, I’ll be quibbling again about all the ways I could have or should have done it better – it’s in my nature. But for now, I feel fully relaxed and accomplished for the week. Thank God.
Beyond that it’s just business as usual, I suppose. The long, hot summer wears on, and I’m just rolling along. We are approaching the final throes of Chapter 4. I can hardly believe I’ve made it this far into the story without flagging, so far. Whew. Gives me hope.
Anyhow, I hope everyone has a good week. I’ll keep plugging away, as I do. All the best, folks.
you /nailed/ the look of the linked printouts btw
Yep, you sure did.
Heh heh… Thanks, guys. 😀
–M
It makes sense to me… I’m thinking you just don’t want to accept it Haulley.
but of course he doesn’t! he doesn’t really like the idea of his most expensive tank becoming a sentient being and running off on its own
A sapient superheavy tank would, at that point, be at best a mixed blessing.
–M
He probably just doesn’t like the idea of not being able to control or command.
People in such positions such as Haulley’s get used to everyone obeying and listening. It can be very hard for them to be ignored.
Well, especially when he’s bearing the responsibility for five thousand some troops stuck in the middle of a lethally irradiated warzone. I have come to identify more fully with Haulley as the story has gone forward. He’s under an awful lot of strain.
–M
“YHB”… Took some time to figure it out.
I’ll bet I would not be myself after getting nuked as well (should I survive).
Yeah, it’s a bit of a motif. Mikey’s under orders… But whose orders? 😀
–M
His own, looks like.
Why do I suddenly picture someone setting Mike up on a blind date with Sheila from Red VS Blue right now?
They’d have to paint him light red.
–M
Sheila is on the Blue team. If they sent Mike to the Red team, Sarge would probably drive Mike insane
heh. I like it how this universe has sapient, reality-altering, superheavy tanks, but still relies on dot matrix printers… It’s schizo tech like this that I really enjoy in alternate reality scenarios.
Also, I’ve just noticed the quilted, padded right shoulder on their uniform tunics (even though that’s been a round for a while)- is that for recoil absorption when shooting?
Yeah, I’ve enjoyed that myself – Tesseract Sci Fi is fun to do because you can mix those kinds of things together plausibly. I’ve been trying to make their base feel retrofitted and “used,” not flashy and new. So they have these advanced weapons all over the place, but they still talk on rotary telephones and headsets. It’s a fun aspect of the story to design.
–M
Actually backup phones in bases are rotary because you can’t EMP kill them. The numbers might wear off but its still usable…
Heh. The backup analog phones in Romanian bases I saw (and I saw some two days ago, since I was at a communications base) don’t even have dials, because they’re connected through a manual switchboard and the operator makes the connections for you – you just tell them where you want to call. In the military, “manually operated” is the best redundancy, because you’ll always have a few extra warm bodies to throw at a problem when high-tech solutions fail (and they do fail, with alarming regularity – the demon Murphy is everywhere).
Well, plus, not everything is installed at the same time, and frequently, there’s no reason to replace something that’s working just because a newer model is available. This is especially true in things like ships and fortresses, which are very large and thus hard to keep continuously supplied with one of the latest thing for everything.
–M
True, True.
As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
I’ve seen my share of 70s and 80s top technology still in use in those two locations. One example that stuck in my mind was a visit to a “MUSCA” class minesweeper (I think it was Nr.24, “Lt. REMUS LEPRI”) that were made in the mid 80s. Everything on the bridge was, of course, of that vintage, except for the modern GPS display, which they had placed on a purpose built rack screwed into the bulkhead. It was also covered by a crocheted lace doily, for some mysterious reason.
Here is an actual photo from a sistership (Nr.29, “Lt. DIMITRIE NICOLESCU”). The GPS is the gray-green thing in the middle, stuck to a piece of wood (the GPS on NR.24 was actually on the left wall just in front of where the sailor’s nose is in the picture). No doily this time. http://i1219.photobucket.com/albums/dd422/topolnita/MCMPOSEIDON09r.jpg
I get some flashbacks with that, or the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, where they explain just why it is that if Galactica is an FTL capable space going battleship, built by an advanced space fairing civilisation, why does she have phones with cords, printout paper readouts and no networked computers.
The answer? The Cylons. As machines, the Cylons could hack into any computer systems and shut down whole fleets by infecting them with viruses. The complex and high tech a ship, the more vulnerable they were to cyber attacks, so the Galactica and her sister ships, along with their fighters, were redesigned to be low-tech as possible.
As such, I imagine the South American Colonel being played in the Six Commando movie, by his supreme Gravel-Voiced’ness Edward James Olomos.
E.J.O. As Colonel Zaballa would be pants-wettingly awesome, even though I designed him to look more like Benicio Del Toro.
–M
I’d pick Edward James Olomos, not just because he was awesome as Adama, but also because long before that, He was Gaff of the LAPD Replicant Detection Division
It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again, who does?
–M
“My congradulations, you’ve done a man’s job sir…”
I guess you’re through… Eh?
…FINISHED.
I can recite that flick backwards and forwards. It’s a work of pure, unadulterated genius.
–M
Unadulterated? Sure, once you get into the Directors cut. The original theatrical version? Not so much, being a prime example of how studio meddling and focus groups can ruin a movie. I still get brought to tears by Rutger Haur’s ‘Tears in the rain’ speech, probably the greatest example of ad-libbing in a movie, at least untill Johnny Depp playing Captain Jack Sparrow
I’ve only ever seen the Director’s Cut, because, as a lifelong admirer of Philip K Dick, I knew to stay well clear of the other, executively mangled versions.
Interestingly, this year, the BBC and Sir Ridley Scott have plans to begin filming another of my favourite books, “The Man in the High Castle”, as a four-part TV miniseries. Since the BBC have a long standing tradition of quality science fiction TV series (Dr Who is a shining example), I am cautiously optimistic this teamup will deliver.
Da Costa looks nice, agreed.
Oh the joys of “endless printer paper” (or whatever it is called in English). Kids these days don’t know the noise and dust of a heavy duty needle office printer.
The UN-logo on the command code books…?
It’s the logo of the IACA, the International Atomic Control Authority, which issues regulations in the UNA world for anything that is atomic-powered or has the ability to carry atomic weapons. Mike’s code procedures are issued by the IACA. The logo is the same as the real-world IAEA, which has a similar but less militant function in world politics.
–M
Remember those sheets. Long time since I’ve seen them though.
I think it’s awesome that you actually had to type all of that out, so now I’m poring through it for foreshadowing.
The last three lines though – ominous.