page 1254 – and also socks, if we’re really feeling fancy
First off, this page should NOT have taken as long as it did. I know, just after 9 o’clock here on The East Coast doesn’t seem that late, but this is such a simple page that I really SHOULD have had it done and queued up sometime yesterday. I mean, there’s not a SINGLE rampaging dough monster in this comic! I truly have no excuse! But yeah, this was one of those times where the art just did not want to happen. Heck, I had to take time during the editing to completely reconstruct Trigger’s foot because I’d drawn it backwards without noticing. I guess the post-Christmas burnout took a bit longer to manifest than I expected.
Speaking of art, I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m REALLY trying to be better about drawing Alphonse in more logical proportions when compared to Layla. He really should not look the same when she’s holding him as when Tabitha is, seeing as how Tabitha’s two feet taller than her (or something like that, height in Far Out There is about as definite as age). Of course, in the process of focusing on that, I kinda failed to account for Tabitha’s posture in the top panel. Unless Layla’s got a booster seat under her, Tabitha really ought to be at least a little bent over. Oh well.
EDIT: New TWC Voting Incentive is finally up! Sorry it’s late, but I’ve been a bit distracted with some Patreon stuff. Speaking of which, hop on by Patreon if you wanna vote on my anime-watching comic stuff for the near future!
I don’t have personal experience here, but I’ve heard (or maybe read somewhere, not sure) that as far as stepping on nails, going barefoot can actually be safer than wearing most shoes, because you can feel the nail before you’ve put your full weight on that foot. However, that probably only applies to isolated nails. If you’re walking across an area with a bunch of nails sticking up, hidden by fallen leaves, or across broken glass or something, doing so barefoot as a normal human would be very dangerous.
There’s also the various tricks of balance and shifting body weight to consider, the stuff people use to do the whole “walking across a pile of glass” trick. I guess we COULD suggest that Trigger’s sneaking around training included this sort of stuff? Maybe?
On one hand, wearing shoes is considered the norm, and Trigger wouldn’t have walked anywhere there was danger to his feet until he left his bunker, so his feet would be as soft as ours after that. On the other hand, walking on tough terrain develops the callouses on the bottom of your feet, causing them to get hard and become less susceptible to being damaged. It’s why humans in the times before shoes were invented, or at least commonplace, managed to easily walk across stone environments without cutting their feet open, while modern humans would have trouble and possibly injure themselves in similar circumstances.
On the other hand, Trigger hasn’t exactly been mountain climbing, and the only place/s he’s been likely to injure himself was among the two Robot Armies. That is to say, the Mad Scientist Convention (where he might have been wearing shoes? I can’t remember) and the Illegal Weapons Sales Show.
Trigger only got his current hippy garb (and subsequent lack of shoes) at the end of the Mad Scientist arc, for the rest of it he was running around in that brown jumpsuit thing. He WAS totally barefoot they whole time they were on that sketchy space station for the Gun Show, though, which was absolutely hazardous to his health.