Far Out There

Okay, so picture this: It’s Sunday morning a few weeks ago, in the middle of the sermon, and – as usually happens when my brain has fewer than three things to do at once – I’m thinking about possible comic ideas. All of a sudden, these last three panels just show up in my head, fully formed. I literally had to bite my own tongue to keep from laughing right there in front of everybody. So, yeah. This one amuses me.

I DO have to say, though, that part of me wishes I’d done a whole page just of our heroes leaping through the door and shutting it JUST before the robots get through. At least then there’d have been room for me to show them opening the door, which had to be cut for space here. Still, we’ve already had several “close call” pages in this story, and I couldn’t think of anything else that would justify giving the sequence a page of its own.

Worse, doing that would have dragged things out even MORE, exactly what I’m trying NOT to do right now. Sure, it’d only be one page, but come on! This one story has been going for… what, a year and a half now? I gotta hurry up and resolve this thing so I can start writing something NEW!

Oh, one more thing: it occurs to me now that we haven’t really heard Dr. Cruise Vanderslice’s first name very much, so Avatar’s first line might sound a little weird to a few readers. It just felt wrong for Avatar to refer to anyone by a bulky last name, though.

Last but not least: VOTE! The Tob Web Comics incentive will only be up a few more days!

(Historical Notes: You know, as much as I love to complain about things taking too long and my need to compress action and crank up the pace… none of that stuff has been bothering me anywhere NEAR as much as I read them over again.  Maybe it’s just because the pacing here seems quaint compared to future arcs, but I find myself disagreeing with Past Me about cutting down on big moments in favor of speed.  This DEFINITELY should have been two pages.)