As you probably know, I like doing cool panel transitions where I can, so I had a lot of fun going from the yak-in-pen on the previous page to the Bocce-in-stables in this flashback scene. I like that you can’t hear the conversation between Pahjan and the Kaagan-Vas leader. I more or less have that conversation figured out in my head, so I know what it’s about and will more than likely show it some day. But for now, you only know what Bocce knows.
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Kaagan-Vas wardrobe provided by Tusken Tailors. With over 90,000,000 locations to serve you, you can be sure to fulfill all your roughly-woven robe and bandolier needs. 😀
Pahjan: What do you want? We’re but simple farmers with little more than premium space cabbages!
Kaagan-Vas leader: Exactly! With these cabbages, we shall make the most potent cole slaw the galaxy has ever seen! No eatery will be able to repel culinary excellence of that magnitude!
Pahjan: Don’t be too proud of this gustatory terror you’ve planned. The ability to destroy a diner’s palate is insignificant next to the power of my rake!
Kaagan-Vas leader: I have altered the deal! Pray I don’t alter the deal any further!
Pahjan: Deal? What deal? You just came down here and glared at me before announcing who you were.
Kaagan-Vas leader: That’s it! I’m altering the deal! BRING IT DOWN!
And that’s when the giant cabbage-sucking spacecraft comes down and steals all the space cabbages.
Oh, the space horror of it all!
Of course, in _this_ galaxy far away, the photosynthesizing plasmodions cellular endosymbionts (in space cabbages as well as life everywhere) grant the mystical “Yedti” farmer philosopher-warriors The Crush as well as their trusted yak steeds. (Did you think the name was a coincidence? There are no coincidences in scifi spacetime! It’s all scripted!)
Wait for the sequel, it will c***h ya! That is, as long as the Yedti get their sunbaths in every few hours. We’re one up on Lucas, he never did figure out how to slip the soft porn in.
Damn, now I’m hungry for some space cole slaw.
Gustatory… Nice! I had to look that up.
“NOOOOOOOOOO! MY CABBAGES!”
Hey Sean, Just caught up on your great sci-fi comic, and just wanted you to know you’ve gained another regular reader. Your comic is a lot like what I’m striving to get mine to be, especially in terms of story, coloring and especially alien designs! You do GREAT in terms of designing aliens as different from human as they can be while still being able to interact with humans. Though with some of them, I’m not sure how-like how’s the boss that hired our crew at the beginning of this storyline even able to talk??? You don’t see his mouth!
Just idle curiosity. not intended as any kind of criticism. I’m loving your comic and have added it to my webcomic bookmarks.
On mouths, you don’t need them to produce sounds. In principle a reverse ear would suffice, the attached bone’s musculature would pull them to in turn pull the membrane and make a biological loudspeaker. (Or you could do without bones and let muscles pull membranes directly. But the bones would probably make the loudspeaker analogue better, with a snappy push-pull action.)
But we need orifices for eating/wasting and breathing/venting, at least we energetic oxygen users. So a good bet would be that there are some, and if you can’t see them they are stashed out of sight beneath appendages, skin flaps or even at the bottom (like many mollusks).
Or even the option that their language is a series of motions, clicks, rustles, and other external bodily noises. But the “English” being used is actually coming out of some electronic unit amidst it all.
Yeah… I once heard an elk cow rustling her stiff back hairs. (She was keeping us busy while her calf circled us on the small island where she had swim out to have her calf in piece – or so she thought. All our storm felled tree handling work team had to throw at her was the chainsaws in our hands.) She was getting her point over all right!
How do you come up with such diverse characters?
I really enjoy your work, keep it up!!
@The MacNut: Thanks! Glad you’re enjoying the comic. It’s always great when new readers discover the series, so feel free to help spread the word to any sci-fi fans you might know. As for the talking alien with no mouth, yeah, sometimes I have to forego real physiology to make something work for the story. But at least it frees me up to design some creatures without mouths!
@ ArtieTech: The diversity of characters is a bit tough at times. I do find that there are some physical characteristics I go to more often than others, so I have to deliberately keep pushing myself to do something new and different. In this case, I wasn’t sure how much these particular characters would be featured outside of this one flashback, so I didn’t spend a huge amount of time in the concepting department. Major characters get a lot more development time though.