The return of the Tedeskians!!
For those not familiar, these guys were some of the very first aliens to ever appear in a RUNNERS story, waaaay back in the Expo 2000 Anthology. It was an anthology put out for the Small Press Expo show in Bethesda, MD, a fantastic show I did several times in the early years. I actually remember at the time that my story got a bit of flak on some message boards for being in the collection because it did not look like all the other indie comics in the book. You can’t please them all, I guess.
Anyway, I always loved these guys. My original concept in that short story was that they were these nervous little chihuahua aliens who would probably be terrible under pressure doing fringe work. The group in this story isn’t nearly as incompetent as that initial group though, since I did want them to be a challenge for Ril.
In typing this up, I was going to put a link to that original SPX story, but I now realize I don’t think I ever uploaded that particular story here on RunnersUniverse. Oops! Maybe I’ll post that over on Patreon as a freebie.
The short story was reprinted in the RUNNERS Volume 1 graphic novel though. So if you have the physical book or digital PDF version, you should have access to that story. If not, maybe now would be a good time to pick it up from my store?? 🙂
Oops, I was way off. Although if you compare the shape of chibi Rokka’s head on this website with theirs…
Still a nice surprise and it makes sense to only show the silhouettes on the cover.
I will admit I might have fudged some of the silhouettes to not be exactly accurate to Tedeskian proportions in regards to head/body size, etc. So I think some of the silhouettes are a little more Roka-y. I think they’re so goofy looking, that even in silhouette, if I stuck to exact proportions, they wouldn’t look terribly intimidating!
not knowing the first story you mentioned… I thought they were kids at first impression… like they stole their mom’s ship and were playing a game of Cops & Poppers.
That thought had not occurred to me! But I can see it now. Funny!