And here we get to see Brinn’s special ability, bioluminescence, but at a much higher intensity. Throughout the story, she has had a constant low glow, which I thought would just be a cool look for a character. And again, it is an attribute found in nature. But I thought it would be fun to push it to an extreme and have her be able to do very short concentrated bursts of blinding light. But to make sure that isn’t too strong of an ability, I wanted to establish that it saps her energy immensely to do so.
I like the concept of having aliens with the equivalent of superpowers, which I think sets my RUNNERS universe apart from a lot of other sci-fi. I’m pretty sure I mentioned before that Sky, Bocce, and Jayd also originated as superhero character designs. Sky had the split personality and associated powers. Bocce had the shape-shifting arm and codename of (wait for it)…Armory. Ugh. And Jayd had the Green Lantern-ish ability to conjure weapons and armor. I eventually folded them into the RUNNERS universe though, making their super powers, like those of the rogues, more sci-fi or nature-based.
Over on my Patreon, I have a FREE PUBLIC post that covers all of Hiura’s crew with turnarounds and commentary on their designs. You can check it out HERE.
Enjoying the sequence. The team works well together.
Arm-ory does feel like a bad pun for Bocce, but it would be a good fit for Jayd.
Finally… a reason to wear skimpy clothing in battle?
Ha ha. Yes. I figured it works for a couple of these characters. Probably won’t find a way to get them into the traditional chainmail bikinis though!
Just one thing bugs me about this. You once commented on how you didn’t like showing that a character was female by giving her such features as breasts, lipstick, or long eyelashes. But you’ve given a fish lady breasts. I don’t know if I’m just being too autistic.
Good memory about my previous comment! I’m not sure if your issue is about the use of female physical attributes in general on aliens (which is totally valid), or if it’s specifically about an aquatic creature having breasts (also totally valid!).
For the latter, I will admit I sometimes don’t completely think through the realistic anatomical attributes of my aliens and whether they make sense with what the evolutionary development would have actually been. Much of my design ultimately skews toward “looks cool” rather than “scientifically believable.” Also I like to hide behind the sci-fi thing that she’s not necessarily a “fish lady,” she’s a fish-LIKE alien that could have very different biology than an earth fish! 🙂
As for the use of the breasts, lipstick, and eyelashes in general for female alien characters, that has actually been a very tough one to reconcile personally. I want a good number of female characters in the series, but I quickly discovered that without some sort of visual shortcut trope to convey that an alien is female (the aforementioned attributes), readers would never know without someone actually pointing it out in a weird clunky way. With animation, a female voice could at least do that work, but in a comic, I had to rely on visuals alone.
So against my earlier stance, I did end up going with tropey female attributes to visually convey that the characters are female. But I very deliberately gave everyone fairly modest proportions. Happy to not contribute to the annoying and pandering use of double-D’s on every female character!