I can hardly describe how much fun it was to draw this and not have to worry about things like story structure or whatever. Just drawing for the fun of it. And this is what came of it: Master Sergeant Alexei Vissarionov, albeit with a rather different look than heretofore. I really feel like I’m getting my style under control here, and this was how he came out.
It’s very red. And if you want a version you can put on your desktop, vote on topwebcomics.com by clicking the handy banner below! The version there is formatted for widescreen monitors, but fear not: I’ll be setting up a page here on the site where you can get it in various resolutions, either late this week or early next week.
So since I’m technically “on vacation” I’ll keep it brief. First up, last week’s contest had four entrants and no winners. I think I made it too obscure. The answer, by the way, is that the title to last week’s post is a reference to the Edward Gorey book “The Willowdale Handcar,” which is an exploration of the surreal and absurd, in which three friends travel along a train track, their linear journey intersecting the bizarre life of one of their friends in a nonlinear and increasingly disturbing way. For some reason, its implications of existential discovery seemed relevant to me, but I suppose that nobody else is a huge Edward Gorey fan, so I, well, I just don’t know. The prize was going to be a digital doodle, by me, of a subject of the winner’s choice (within reason, of course). And although there was no actual winner, I felt like they ought to get SOMETHING for trying, so I’m open to suggestions.
Note also that the guest story on reMIND is continuing apace, this week with work by artist and long-time 6-Commando supporter Joost Haakman! I make no secret of my admiration of Joost’s work, which, though very different from my own, is super-great. His use of perspective, in particular, is among the most masterful I’ve seen in the webcomics world, and so by all means check out not only his page this week, but his work in general. Definitely worth a careful examination.
At any rate, I’m just taking it easy at the moment. Actually, I’m re-reading the novel Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, which I failed to appreciate properly when forced to read it in college. This time through, it’s super-fantastic.
And aside from that, next week is Easter, and, as a Christian, it’s the most important holiday of the year for me, and I’ll be off to spend it with the proverbial Family. I will however try to get you some other good thing for the site, and all that, so do check back! And thanks, by the way, for the comments and votes, lately – it’s been terrific, and I couldn’t be more pleased!
All the best, folks.
A sidenote:
SMERSH (СМЕРШ) is actually not a military force. It means “СМЕРть Шпионам!” (Death to the Spyes!) and was a counterintelligence service.
Some SMERSH officers were assigned to military forces to look for spyes in the field, but mostly they were working “behind the lines”.
this service is most infamous for it’s working with soviet soldiers that were freed from German prisons (or even worse – claimed to have escaped on their own). Due to utter paranoya of SMERSH officers morst op people (even those who actually just escaped gempan prisoner camps were encarcerater in prisons, of shot for treason.
For some park that harsh measures were inplemented to discourage soldiers from surrendering to the enemy… Though by the end of GPW no such measures were necccery they went on and made SMERSH unpopular or even hated by military. Eventualy that led to SMERSH bein disbanded.
Here without WWII there might be no need for harsh measures. And thus SMERSH remained intact till this moment. Though I still doubt SMERSH would get their omn armed forces. After all they should be able to use NKVD (НКВД Народный Коммисариат Внутренних Дел) forces. NKVD did not get special military training (assaulting enemy positions or fortificating on any terrain) – they were trained mostly as police, but they got access to all the equipment and vehicles that military had. During GPW NKVD units were used as barring teams that were positioned behind normal military units and prevented them from falling back (mostly by shooting those who tryed). But sometimes they were engaged in actual combat and fought well (filling lack of training with fanatical dediation).
By the way Lamplight thy tou put on the tank makes id look like NKVD’s vehicle. The use of such lights in combat is limeted, becuse they are likely to get broken by a spree bullets. But it is a great police shock equipment. If you are suddenly get blinded by a really bright light so you can see nothing and you hear a tank roaring right before you (even if it does not move) it is easy to panick and run…
Mi-24 “Hind” choppers are great! 🙂
In the 6-Commando world, the NKVD still exists. Well, actually, it’s the CHEKA, and it’s the internal security service of the Russian People’s Federative Socialist Republic, which is one of the members of the FSR. The FSR, though called a “republic,” is actually an international alliance like the UNA. Like the other global alliances, it’s a highly unequal one: Russia and China dominate the twelve other member-states, much the same way as the atomic powers of the UNA dominate the other member-states and essentially make policy for the entire Alliance. And the FSR is allied with Yugoslavia, Poland, Austro-Hungary, Finland and, since the 1970’s, most of the rest of Europe, in the Treaty of Mutual Amity and Defense Cooperation, known in the West as the Odessa Compact. SMERSH is the international counter-espionage organization of the Compact.
The real-world SMERSH was a very efficient organization. If I recall correctly, one of their great achievements was capturing and ultimately executing British super-spy Sidney Reilly. They were also very effective at hunting Nazi operatives, even in the areas the Germans considered “secure.” But as you note, they were also rather paranoid and fanatical, and were not the kind of paramilitaries I have made them into. Really I just though that the acronym seemed less of a cliché than the KGB, so I used them instead.
I’m glad you like the helicopters: I’ve been looking for an excuse to draw Mi-24’s for a while.
–M
Hm… CheKa was a temporal measure, not a service… it’s name ЧК = Чрезвачайная Комиссия means it is designed to uphold some sort of order whily the situation is unstable. I do doubt that situation in FSR is still anounced as unstable…
Indeed. However, a permanent state of emergency makes routinely harsh measures easy to justify. I’d argue that the Soviet Union didn’t actually start to stabilize in a genuine way until the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. Up to then, the prevailing mentality was that Communism was under universal assault and that capitalist agents and “wreckers” were everywhere, needing to be rooted out for the good of the revolution. The Cheka isn’t really part of the story, but using it in passing references here and there makes reference to the ingrained and hidebound totalitarian government of the FSR. The real USSR gradually liberalized to the point where it collapsed and the subordinate states had to be totally reconstituted. The FSR is responding to those same forces with systematic repression.
That, and as I said, the KGB is kind of a cliché in western spy fiction and I wanted to steer clear of it. It has connotations, for Americans and Canadians, anyhow, of “These are the BAD GUYS!” in a way I wanted to avoid. Though functionally no different (and in terms of what they did in the real world, probably worse), the Cheka at least has associated connotations of being temporary, as though, some day, they won’t be needed anymore. I suppose I could have called them the FSB, but I wanted also to be clear that I’m not drawing a parallel between the FSR and the Russian Federation, either.
I never decided, definitively, who runs the FSR’s spy operations, though. In the west, it’s part of a group called the ISCI, the International Security Cooperation Initiative, which is a connection for the CIA, the RCDIE (alternate-Canada’s militant version of the CIA), the DCI (Quebec’s Central Intelligence Directorate) and all the others. I’d imagine SMERSH runs their own external operations for espionage and sabotage, but I never really came down on one side or the other, and here they act more like a military political police force. Hmm.
–M
Well… you know, having emergency state for 6 decades may really piss people off. Especially if there is no obvious and constant disasters…
And a government that came to rule through a people’s revolution (thus setting an example how pissed off people may overthrow rulers) is really unlikely to make it’s people unhappy.
In RL soviet people were in fact pretty happy. True, they were living in a totalitaristic country, but they were too busy to make the difference. Plus propaganda and censure really did their job well and all soviet people knew that they were living it the best counry ever. Even if their well-living is not that high as in the west, that is only temporary and if they work really hard they may even live to see the bright future.
That is what moder russia lacks badly…
If you want a name for FSP external entelligence try something like “ВРУ” (Внешнее Разведывательное Управление). That is simple and may give it’s oficers a nickname “Врун” (Lier) as a reference to most of intelligence reports being inaccurate or incomplete…
You speak a noble truth: having a state of emergency for that long WILL piss people off. Just look at Egypt! The propaganda measures you mention were certainly very effective. In modern hindsight it’s easy to underestimate the power of total governments to maintain control, especially in the Stalinist model, where people are prevented from having any standard of comparison by which to recognize that they ARE oppressed. In the FSR and the UNA alike, the kind of 1950’s-style constant war hysteria that they have is pervasive and all-consuming. I don’t doubt that they would make use of “emergency” measures pretty routinely in the FSR: there are constant purges in the UNA as well, communist witch-hunts of the McCarthyist variety, and though they don’t have a camp system or secret executions, people are routinely ruined and ejected from public society for being “pinkos.”
That is a great acronym though – I may use it if the time comes up in the story.
–M
Yep, that’s a Hind with railgun pods, all righty.
You better believe it is! And assuming they have mastered how to store enough power to run the things (and make them small), they’d be great for aircraft: small projectiles, low recoil, high impact and flat trajectory. Great for tank-killing.
–M
You could make this into a rally poster.
like:
” The FSR needs you! Enlist now!
For the Motherland!”
😀
looks great btw… ^^
It does have that propaganda poster look to it. But I think the FSR would choose someone more photogenic than a field soldier with radiation burns. One of these days I may actually make recruitment posters for 6-Commando as an item, though – not a bad idea.
–M
Radiation burns? That’s what those are? Why does he still have eyebrows then?
Healing radiation burns, actually. From experience with several people I know going through high-dose radiological exposure (for cancer, not atomic bombing, but still), hair does grow back, and the eyebrows fairly quickly. He was bald to begin with. And purely from the arts standpoint, I tried him without eyebrows and it was too much.
–M
Figured it was artistic. Radiation has no respect for art.
I love edward Gorey! I wish I had seen that sooner! Personal favorite Gorey book of mine is either the Gashlycrumb tinies (sp? I’m not going to look it up…) and the Doubtful Guest. Definitely an author/artist to check out if you don’t already know him all you non-readers out there!
The Gashlycrumb Tinies! God, that is such a bizarre book – I rank it at the absolute top, next to (obviously) The Willowdale Handcar and The Unstrung Harp. I am a gigantic fan of his work – when the Gotham Book Mart disappeared, it was a huge loss: I never found out definitively what became of their archive of his work. If it was all dispersed it would be a huge tragedy. The man was a graphic and literary genius, pure and simple. I have a couple of rare pieces of Goreyana myself, like a signed copy of The Fantod Pack and a hard-to-find paperbound edition of The Curious Sofa. And I have been searching for YEARS for a copy of The Black Doll’s Imbroglio.
–M
I am crazy jealous… I’ve got Amphigorey and Amphigorey also… Those have got most of my top favorites in them, so totally worth buying, but I don’t have anything else…