You Messed With The Wrong Marine
By the way: we’re on Facebook, now. Yes, that’s right, hopping on the bandwagon. No idea yet how it’ll all function, if at all, and I’m very curmudgeonly when it comes to social media, but you can’t avoid progress forever!
This is my favorite depiction of Colonel Haulley so far. You don’t want to piss off a Royal Canadian Marine. That is, you WOULDN’T want to do that if there were such a thing as a Royal Canadian Marine, and Canada was an atomic-armed interventionist military superpower. And of course he’s also toting that gigantic sidearm, which doesn’t make angering him much smarter.
I found a photo of this telephone, by the way, and I just had to use it. The design was so awesomely retro. And the thought that they could have all this technology, including video-conferencing with their power-armored troops, and yet have a rotary telephone for internal communications – it just appealed to my “retrofitted future” sensibilities. As though this base had been built a long time ago and the computers were recent additions.
Anywahh. If anyone’s in the New York area, let me personally recommend the exhibition at the Met on Islamic art and literature. It’s spectacular – I went and saw it on Sunday. Really beautiful. But beyond that it’s been business as usual for me.
I’m accelerating the production process on my drawings, mainly because I have a backlog of corrections I have to start focussing on to get chapters one and two ready for print by late spring/early summer. I’m negotiating some preliminaries and coming up with a production schedule for the first volume of 6-Commando, with my aim still being that of getting it ready to bring, at a minimum, to the New York Comic Convention, the Philadelphia Comic Convention, and Webcomics Con next year. I’ve been saving some of my own funds for some time, and early in the new year I’ll be launching a campaign to try to raise some additional capital to get this baby out in a nice hardcover edition you’ll all hopefully want. So start saving your loose change! Until then, I’m not really sure what you can do but keep reading – I may put up a Paypal donations box, but I’m not too clear on how that works and have little time for the figurings-out at the moment.
The BEST thing you can do is keep reading and commenting, and passing the site on to your friends. The more people discover 6-Commando, the likelier I’ll be able to get the book out in an edition you’ll really want to own!
Anyhow, as regards funding, I have a job to get to tomorrow, so I’d best turn in.
All the best, folks!
Makes me think of the infamous “red telephone” line between Moscow and DC.
And what could they be covering up that is worse then nuclear war?! I’m still trying to figure something out!
A space sattilite program? Something like “Star Wars” system. Or maybe something more like Heinlign’s “Space Patrol” peacekeepeing sattelites. 🙂
And the phrases like “It is alright to kill hudreds of thouthands to protect hundreds of millions” Alwayse make me remember another quoting: “Kill one man and they will call you a murderer. Kill 100 men and they will cal you a warrior. Kil 1000 men and they will call you a hero.”
Starting a war to protect people is somthing… strange. IMO.
I’m glad the paradox isn’t lost on you. It’s easy for Colonel Haulley to think about hundreds of thousands he doesn’t know, but two of his officers being killed or wounded is harder to take. Wars are such complex things; atomic wars even more so.
Interesting guesses on the big secret… Have to wait and see though!
–M
The red telephone was very much the inspiration for Haulley’s Blue Retrophone. Good catch!
–M
Well the ‘red’ phone didn’t have a dial. it had a place for one, but it was removed. It worked on an open loop circuit, just like an emergency or elevator phone. When an Off Hook (OH) state was detected, the other end of the line would ring until answered or the first party replaced the handset in the cradle.
A rotary dial phone flashes the switch with OH pulses at a set rate to dial. If you are on a regular phone and the number pad is broken you can manually do this to dial out on that phone, or just do it 10 times to dial ‘0’ and have the operator dial it for you.
A bit of telephone history — Touch Tones were released to the public in 1963, DTMF was designed as a 4 x 4 grid of buttons with each row and column generating a particular tone. Thus Dual Tone Multiple Frequency. The 4th column was dropped on public sets. It was used on the military switching system AutoVon to define the priority of the call placed immediately after. Even though every phone physically had all 4 buttons the switch it was connected to needed to have features enabled for levels the set was capable of generating.
Another odd piece of knowledge is that up until the 90’s Bell Atlantic/NyNeX and maybe other LECs(Local Exchange Carriers) charged extra to enable touch tones on a line. Doing so was cheaper for them and sped dialing which reduced circuit time for each call and increased the number of calls a switch could complete — boosting revenue.
Correct on all points. The Blue Retrophone isn’t the hotline, it’s just an internal phone line. Actually there may be good reason for leaving a hardline phone in place in a base like CP Alpha, as it would be easier to insulate against EMP and protect against external eavesdropping.
I think my family was the last in the universe to use dial pulse, by the way. Had a wall phone we rented from AT&T way back when. What a machine that was.
–M
Only hundreds of thousands of people? So I was right about the limited nuclear exchange Twilight 2000-style?
It’s also a nice twist to the storyline. From last week I thought Zaballa and Haulley were involved in some sinister conspiracy and now it looks like it >could< be a more noble cause – even though the exitus acta probat approach won't really make them heroes.
Retrofittted future is nice. BSG anyone?
Nitpick of the day: Haulley is missing his wedding ring ( as seen in "We’re Both In This Together"). ^^
Only hundreds of thousands. That’s several dozen Hiroshimas there, so nothing to sneeze at even so. But yes the intent was that it is a limited atomic war, and with atomic bombs being relatively new they’re pretty low yield individually.
And geez, you’re right about his ring! Gotta fix that! Good catch.
–M
Interesting… I would have pegged Zaballa for an antagonist, but our South American colonel is coming off distinctly like a good guy now, a man with ethics. Another welcome about-face from them shifty mestizos we see so often on the Hollywood circuit, I must say.
He still could be a antagonist, which in return will make Haulley an antagonist, too. Depending on what kind of “project” they were talking about.
From the earlier episodes we know the CONASUR observers attached to 6-Commando even had access to the command post and [e.g.] Zaballa was even allowed to observe active combat operations from the C&C. Haulley made it clear this was a >diplomatic< courtesy and not a military on and Zaballa had no prerogatives to analyse or question or even advise Haulley style of command [which didn't keep him from doing so].
An intriguing scenario, right?
Zaballa is de facto not a part of 6-Commando chain of command, not even an official advisor, but I wonder how personal relations could influence his role or status in the near future.
To respond to both at once, a story like this with an ensemble cast is really hard to write, I have to admit, because in the end every character is on some level a sympathetic one, and each is both protagonist and antagonist, depending on the context. CONASUR is a prime example: we aren’t seeing things so much from their perspective because its not so much about the South Americans, but they aren’t just foils to the UNA, they have their own ethics and goals and ideas. The story is much more like diplomacy, with everyone trying not so much to find friends or allies as to find areas of common interest, which isn’t the same thing, and is a lot harder to write about.
–M
You call that a sidearm?
Haven’t been following 6-Commando very long but I’ve read through the archive and seen the story. Interesting alternate-timeline I must say. As of a plot, I’ve yet to see much of it – so far it’s just been building up an almost post-apocalyptic area in South America (correct me if I’m wrong about the location).
Well-drawn and an interesting idea though. Expect me to keep reading.
Actually they’re in South Central Africa. The guys in tan uniforms are from South America, though, which is a superstate called the Coalition of South American Nations, or CONASUR.
When I started writing, it didn’t seem so important what the setup was, because only a handful of people were reading it anyway. But as the story has developed, things have gotten much more involved, and I am now trying to gradually reveal more about the 6-Commando world, without disrupting the story. It’s a challenge, I have to admit.
–M
The way the colonel answered the phone, I don’t think it was the Secretary-General that was calling.
I also agree with BlackFedora on how Zaballa’s character seems to have shifted from our POV. To me it appears he is somewhat the voice of reason, though that perception may change depending on what happens from that phone call, assuming Haulley shares it with him.
Personally, one of the things I think makes a story like this fun to read is ambiguity. As I said above, it isn’t so much that anyone is good or had, its the contrast of the various goodnesses and badnesses that is most interesting to me, and which I hope is so for you as well. Haulley isn’t a bad guy, he is just committed to his sense of right, and it remains to be seen what that has caused him or will cause him to do. And the same goes for everyone else in the story.
–M
Love the back and forth between to two
One more question how the Canada of the 6 Commando became atomic-armed interventionist military super-powered; did they Canadian forefathers have to fight for their independence like the US vs the more peaceful event’s of our own time line. I would guess that a nations born of conflict would have more reasons to gear up their military.
The general Western mindset was much more conservative in the 6-Commando world than in ours for most of the XX century. There was no real counterculture movement, and the entire intellectual atmosphere has been far more resistant to modern so-called Democratic Socialism. That, combined with a sudden power vacuum with the fall of France, Britain and others in the Seventies, made Canadians much more militant and interventionist.
–M
I love that the phone is bright blue! Hopefully the numbers they have to dial don’t have too many “9” s in them.
😀
Colonel Haulley, please pick up the Blue Courtesy Phone. No, the BLUE Courtesy Phone!
There’s a general blue color motif for the United Nations throughout. A little corny, I knows but it helps identify environments. I got the idea for color scheme environments from Star Trek, actually.
–M