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This weekend I’ll be down in Portland for the Stumptown Comic Fest, tabling with my great friend Kevin (who has a zine out of his comic Wanderlost. Yay!) The fest is April 16 & 17 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR. See site for details and ticket info($7 one day, $12 weekend pass).
Also, Eisner nominations are out! No, I’m not on the list, but congrats to Barry Deutsch For Hereville, and Dave Kellett for Sheldon (download a pdf copy of his nominated book for free right now)! Also, congrats to the many other excellent works in there. Awesome. :)
“Captain, stop trying to help me so much!”
LOVE, love, love panel 2.
Also, did you just come up with “batshit crazy” for today’s strip? ’cause I’m trying to picture the Spanish it got translated from
Although I am a huge fan of the idea of human augmentation and experimenting with the human form, I’m hoping Yuri reverts to her bipedal self soon. All that power can’t be good for her.
Panel 2 actually slightly freaked me out, but I’m still laughing at the last panel.
Looks like you had some fun creating those blood splatter patterns.
the halved panel of Yuri sniffing puts me in mind of some vague internet meme.
“How interesting that she remembered to keep her cat ears,” he said calmly, while in his mind, gibbering in terror…
I’m with Dmitri – time for another drink.
Good to know that Yuri planned for her eventual cyber-psychosis.
Definitely looking forward to saying hi at Stumptown. I randomly picked up on of your cards last year and started reading the comic when I got home. Suffice it to say that was a stroke of luck. Also, thanks for the reminder that the location has changed. I probably would have wandered over to Lloyd Center on Saturday and been really confused.
@Frank, ¿”huano loco”?
@Joal, freaks me out too. And yes, it was fun. >:)
@McGee, any particular one? Or, wait, do i want to ask?
@Jordan, I’m glad! Yes, stop on by, I’ll draw yo a sketch. :)
Whoa. Okay, Yuri, wow. Why nerds should never be permitted to actually fulfill their fantasies.
(I felt like Emily should have been looking up in panel 2 – ’cause she’s got more survival instincts than everyone else?)
I dunno, Jordan, I don’t think she was planning for her eventual psychosis so much as planning to eradicate any weaknesses that anyone found.
Whoa, that’s scary. Yuri looked like she wanted to splatter everyone!
My respones to panel 2? “Aw, crap.”
@Christopher no particular one really. It just puts me in mind of some of the reaction faces some of the kids today give their mascot “trolling face” in one of those sequential panel cartoons.
Interesting date for today’s page. (2014??)
Awesome page though, glad we got it three years early ;)
“Try to keep up.” Heh.
Panel two is just freaky!
Oopsie. Date fixed. :)
Okay, when I first saw it last night, panel two instantly got my vote for the creepiest panel in science fiction webcomics history, bar none.
And Martina once again demonstrates her aplomb and sang froid even in face of all that. She’s a very good leader. The Eeb built computer really did choose the humans well–Dustin aside.
However I don’t think Yuri really planned ahead for her decent into nerd power-tripping lunacy (As a fellow nerd, I’ve sometimes been there myself.). I think she was just power tripping with free abandon. No, I think she was just telling the Eebs to invent new ways to thwart her previous set of armament just so they could then later invent news ways to make her *even tougher*.
But I think there is hope for her. After she inhaled the nanobot laden vapor, I think you see the horror and regret in her face after the fog of techno-berserk lifted. It looks like she just realized what she’s done and maybe she didn’t like it so much.
It’s funny how no one has commented on the eeb saying “try to keep up”. I’m guessing ‘e is not developing a very good impression of human intelligence.
@Larrik Jaerico: That’s just the kind of things that happen when you use FTL travel. :)
@Corpore Metal: I think it’s more of a “Crap, it still got to me. God, those eebs are geniouses!”
@Chris: Hmmm… too Caribbean. (And I’m supposing there’s a typo there since “huano” doesn’t exist).
I was thinking “Loco de bola” (literally “balls crazy”, etymologically “crazy? Hell, yeah!”, semantically “crazy because of his balls (or lack thereof)”) but it just doesn’t convey enough craziness
This seems off topic but what WILL we call a mop-bot in 50 years. I mean we call a “vacuum-bot” a roomba because thats what the company named it.
Humm. Dammit, now I am wondering how hard it be to make a mop-bot. All I got is wood floors:P Damn you ADD!
@Frank, surprisingly it wasn’t a typo. I was going with my dictionary’s etymology for the word “guano” which was “ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Spanish, or from Latin American Spanish huano, from Quechua huanu ‘dung.’”
AAAAAHHH! AAAAAAAHHHHH! SPIDER! SPIDER! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!
Wait… Oh… only seven legs, not eight.
Never mind.
Interesting to note that the blood stains on panels 12 and 13 match, while those on panels 5 and 11 do not.
Panel two: “shivers” and “applauds”
Check “personel” in panel one… personnel, i *think*… I could look that up, but it would mean I would have take my eyes off of the spider (I can’t call that “thing” Yuri).
*backs away from the comic*
Oh man, I didn’t notice Yuri in panel 2 until the second time around. Yikes! Oh, cat form no-hands I could handle, but spider legs?
Also, Frank, I’ve heard the phrase “batshit crazy” before, sorry.
And everyone keeps thinking that she’ll wake up from her power-craziness soon, but we’ve been saying that since the day she first got a metal body. I think this will be a long-lasting trait.
My favorite part of this page was panel 15. Such great expressions!
Thanks, @Prairie, I’ll fix that hopefully today. :)
Batshit crazy, see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=batshit%20crazy
Hmm. I think Yuri looks more like a crab whose leg has been broken off (than a spider that is missing a leg). Or, actually, a starfish might be more accurate.
…or maybe she has eight legs and they’re detachable and one of them is sneaking up behind them right now!
Holy cow. I hope no one accuses this comic of not developing its characters. And yeah, I’m jumping on the “Panel 2 is definitely the freakiest thing ever” bandwagon.
@ Frank since you mentioned FTL Drive you get extra credit.
I’m Commander Sheppard and this is my Favorite Comic on the Internet.
@McGee: Hopefully it’ll counteract bringing so many people into chiropteran scatology!
@Chris: Spanish academies spent much of the 20th century discussing the “proper” Spanish spelling when it differed from the spelling of the native words they came from. Usually a Spanish-only etymology won out. The most notable exception was “Mexico” –pronounced “meh-hee-kow” and hence written by a considerable number of Mexicans as “Mejico”)
Waaaait a second. “Thwip” has its rights reserved! Spiderman (or rather, Marvel Publishing, Inc.) trademarked it
As an only recently acquired fan, I just wanted to thank you for creating such a spectacular piece of art. I don’t know if this sort of thing belongs in the comments section, so my apologies if this message of congratulations is misplaced. I’ve just finished reading through the archives, and was thrilled to see that this story is continuing as we speak. I was however, devastated that I now have to wait a whole goddamn week for the next installment.
But that aside, you have constructed a universe to be proud of, and I salute you. Well done sir.
Thank you, @Capflint! So glad. And this is as fine a place for such praise as any. :)
Fortunately they’re not paying the mop bot for its work, that looks like a lot of overtime!
@Rags, for the difficult to reach areas, they’ll be using Dusty’s toothbrushbot. >;-)
Nice page :) maybe they can finally get Yuri in order, because she has some tendency into berserkism and that’s never good when they have only sleeper nanobots and she’s got more dakka than any Dustinian army. Love the way how cynical Dimitri is, talks like Krep but doesn’t use any swear words.
Sooo, why has nobody simply directed a bunch of eebs to invent body part regeneration instead of using prosthetics? You have what Trekkies call the “transporter problem”. That’s where you have a bit of nifty technology that could take care of nearly any problem (in the transporter’s case by pulling the heroes out of any danger) so to have interesting plots the Magic Device must either be disabled or blocked from acting.
P.S. The eebs remind me of the Indowy from John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata series. Short, green, can do just about anything with technology… but they do have an organization that’s been fighting against their masters for thousands of years.
@Galane, Lol! Um. Hm.
@Galane, maybe the regenerator would have to use an eeb in the making (or whatever other secret the spacetrawlers’ construction involves).
ALSO: It hasn’t been stated that they don’t have regeneration technology. (Didn’t someone offer to just give Yuri her limbs back?) Yuri just loves being part machine.
Mop-bot. Well, iRobot has the Scooba for cleaning floors that’re hard and waterproof. They also have the Verro pool cleaner.
Eebs! Take a Scooba and a Verro and…
Reminds me of that school kid in “Red Dawn” that becomes a stone cold killer. Likes the shot gun.