Far Out There

Okay, I held off saying it last week to avoid more spoilers than necessary… but yeah, Antonio totally called it many pages back. Which is pretty impressive, since this whole plot point was pretty much invented on the fly. MOST of Astrid’s character was made up on the go, actually. Originally, she was just a nameless side character who’s only role in the story was “be less attractive than Layla”. As soon as Layla stole her date to get into Disonar’s party, we weren’t supposed to see her again.

But that just seemed wasteful. Everything about Astrid’s first appearance seemed like the set up for a larger joke; even though I didn’t have one planned, the lack of one would have been a letdown. So I brought Astrid back to flirt with Disonar and get in Layla’s way. That was funny and all (and provoked more boob talk than this comic had ever seen before) but she still would have disappeared once the real action started. And that seemed… well, kinda mean. I mean, at that point, her whole existence as a character had consisted of being one-uped by Layla and throwing herself at a guy who’s pretty sucky as a person. That’s a lame fate to wish on even a fictional person, so I tried to think of something else for Astrid to actually DO. And somehow, that ended up being “undercover cop”.

You can only imagine the emotions I experienced when, after FINALLY figuring out a satisfying plot twist involving this character, you guys went and guessed it before I’d even started dropping hints.

Oh, and guess what? NEW VOTING INCENTIVES ARE FINALLY BACK! It’s a small miracle, too, since I’m STILL not finished with the new batch of Conventional Wisdom comics. I really shouldn’t have had time to draw a new anything. But for better or worse, I’d hit that point of mental exhaustion where I had to drawn something – ANYTHING – other than what I’d been working on all week. SO, here ya go!

EDIT: Okay, if you’re looking for a new page… I don’t blame you, there’s supposed to be one right now. But the big Conventional Wisdom MAGFest update is FINALLY ready to go online… but it took about two days straight of editing and crap and I just don’t have the remaining brain cells to get a Far Out There page together right now. So, I’m gonna go get some sleep as soon as the MAGFest comics are finally done, and get SOMETHING online later tonight. Many apologies for the delay, but Conventional Wisdom’s been getting delayed for over a week now, so it’s finally Far Out There’s turn 🙁

(Historical Notes: I’ve debated removing some of these “next is on the way” edits, since they literally serve no purpose at this point… but nah.  We don’t get to chose which history we preserve.  Besides, the more of these that start showing up, I’d end up forgetting and re-posting the whole block of text anyway, so why bother?  Anyway, I went through all the trouble of cleaning up the line art for the characters in this page, then nearly re-posted it before realizing I’d forgotten to fix all the terrible, TERRIBLE lines on the “KABLAM” effect.  And that was the LEAST frustrating thing about this batch of re-posts.  Just you read on…)