paging @XYLENE @Klathrin @Crisssy101 @JD - enjoy! and please let me know what you think of this one :)

to everybody else - if you like this and you could "make it go viral" - I would really appreciate the assist :)

@tonyb Awwwww yesssss! Loved it :) (...despite my intense phobia of crabs...)

@tonyb Thanks for linking this, great stuff!

@tonyb It keeps getting better. Bordering on Shazaaminuous

@Klathrin @wjcstp @Yakpaolo - that you folks so much!

I'm really glad you enjoyed it, and I'll make sure to ping you to any new releases :)

@crisssy101, @XYLENE - you folks have always give me excellent notes - any opinions on this one? no rush!

@Crisssy101 - there you are! :)

would love to hear your impressions at some point - you always give me good notes

Hello : ) I was at a graduation this weekend and I have been unpacking today. I'll finish it now.

@Crisssy101 - thanks! no rush! :)

Yay!

Sorry. Started a new job last week and just got to it. I'm too much of a fanboy to offer any creative criticism. This just hits me in too many places. My 5 year old caught me reading and now he wants to start the whole thing from the beginning.

Wow, Tony, this story is really epic.

I actually had to go back and read previous sections just remind myself what was happening and where we were. Before I go on I have to know one thing. Until I saw your "real" non-monkey picture on mlkshk, I thought *you* were posing as SIR. :) I know now that isn't the case, which only left me scratching my head. See, I thought you wrote the story, posed for the needed pictures and viola! Done. So what's the method to your MOBIUS? ♥ What came first, the story or the graphics? It's niggling me and no one likes being niggled. Amiright?

Either way, I love your graphics and this particular one especially made my inner geek glow... https://picasaweb.google.com/10092249...

So that's the first thing. The second thing is, your character development is not doing so well. AIDE hardly had more than three bubbles of text which was a little sad. I was hoping to see some endearing awkwardness or accidentally-insightful observations. But we got the opposite, nothing. You have great comedic timing. Period. But I'm not picking up on that in your story at all. You don't have to go Disc World, but something to make the characters likable other than just the facts, Ma'am. I think many SF writers keep their stories dry because they aren't funny. When they try to be humorous it falls flat or comes out creepy. *shrugs* You, TonyB, do not have that problem at all. Use it.

One other thing. I can't imagine anyone NOT surviving on this planet. So many things have just been falling in place for SIR. Maybe it's time to make him suffer a little bit? Turn up the heat. Maybe your guy loses a arm. Maybe he loses Punda, whatever. At the end of the ay, the main character is neither hungry, scared, thirsty or injured. There is no deadline he has to meet. He can stay right where he is forever, in fact, I would almost bet he probably has to. SO... he doesn't even need rescuing what does he need? The answer to that, which is another reason for his decline in luz, dead animals is what he needs. Yuck. He's like Ooloowa's version of the Highlander tweaking for his next Quickening fix. "There can be only one Alpha." M'kaaay, but ... No injuries. No mental instability? No drawbacks whatsoever? SIR just gets to stop and say, "I'm done" and walk away? This guy is so freaking lucky!

His luck needs to change. TonyB, you have to be cruel to be kind. Be brave. Put a bunch of horrible things in a hat and just pick one.

------------------------
PS: It sounds like I don't like this section but I do. It serves a purpose and I understand that. You are getting us to the next place we need to be. I'm on board. It's only because I'm invested and like your story that I'm writing so much. Me, a reader, who is deeply effected... (some in frustration, true, ♥) Who wants only good things for your story. Can't wait to read the next installment.

hey @Crisssy101 - thank you again for taking the time to give awesome notes :)

I’ll take your various questions one by one.

The model for SIR is my friend Simon LaPlante - I know him because we were both involved in a musical project called Spaceship Graveyard

http://www.spaceshipgraveyard.com/artifact...

(which also features mlkshk’er blood23 but that’s another story!)

Anyway, so the workflow is, I do all the text writing for a given issue - while vividly imagining 3D scenes in my mind. Then I try to grab reference photos of my friend Simon in these weird poses - because I think I can photoshop him into a particular composition. After that it’s 2 to 3 months of straight photoshop. (note: inability to get reference photos was the major issue that caused the huge delay - however, now I have all the photos I need to finish issues 5-9)

One other note - where did it begin goes back much farther. This entire idea was a video game for about a year, as I banged my head against my meager resources in complete inability to realize my dream. One of my friends said “what you have here feels more like a book than like a game” - and that nudged me in a particular direction. From that point on, I have basically been writing this entire comic book as if it were an elaborate storyboard pitch for an immersive 3D game.

This explains a lot of things - like why he has a sword, and all of this mechanics for storing various animal’s power, leveling up and being able to get bigger mounts. At some point - all of these deep details came from the necessities of the mechanics I want to build into the video game (note: I’m only just warming up here, so just give it an issue or two)...

And actually - in general - I wish I could relieve you of the tension so poetically expressed in your notes by showing you issues 7 and 8 - which right some of these things that you so astutely see as out of balance. But - without revealing too many spoilers I will say this...

WRT the relationship between AIDE and SIR - I struggled over this a lot. I was showing some other writers drafts of issue 4, and one note I got was that SIR seemed almost preturnaturally insightful - it just didn’t feel right. I took the note and reeled it back a bit - but that started me thinking...

We don’t know much about SIR, but I have kind of build him up as a geek loner. And here he is in a buddy picture with an intelligent robot - which from previous movie examples tend to not be very communicative either. And it struck me - these two guys wouldn’t work it out by talking. They would take selfish actions - and counter actions - and the story would get worked out in between.

One other thing - remember how in issue 2 SIR wakes up from that dream and remembers “who’s running the show”? And for now - it’s been SIR all the way. Well, without saying too much - I’ll just say that I’m trying to play with the human vs intelligent computer trope in a different way than it’s been done before - and part of that long, slow burn requires some mistakes here at the beginning.

As re: your comment on luck and deadlines - the major pieces of the plot are already in place, and I cannot jostle them around too much.

After issue 8 - we can revisit the point and you can tell me if you think SIR has had enough of a butt kicking

Until then - I will simply thank you for having strong expectations.

cheers!

Looks like it's just you and me, Meteor.

Very little scarring too.

@yofal - not physical, anyway

@MackReed Ha!

HH…HOLD IT…STILL, GODDAMNIT!