One thing I like about the comments y’all give is that it can give me some objectivity which I don’t get on my own working alone in my office. For instance, @zb asked how Hein got on the ship, and so I added the first line in today’s strip. And a few strips back, @War_Pig asked about the stars not moving despite King-and-gang going greased dark light speed, and in Monday’s strip I tried to establish/remind that they were on a space station by starting with a outside shot of the Keep. Thank you all!
Hey, InterventionCon schedule is up (September 21-23 in Rockville, MD)! Here are the three panels I’ll be on.
Friday 5pm: “Designing Your First Book”
Panelists: Chris Flick, Barb Fischer, Christoper Baldwin, Chris Impink
Friday 7pm: “How to Survive as a Writer in the Business of Webcomics, Comics and Other Visual Media”
Panelists: Tony DiGerolamo, H. Caldwell Tanner, Christopher Baldwin
Saturday 3pm: “Back in my day: The webcomic veterans panel”
Panelists: Christopher Baldwin, Shaenon Garrity, Jennie Breeden, Danielle Corsetto
These beasts seem vunerable to small arms fire and ignorant of their surroundings. Would it not be feasable to draw them into some sort of trap?
If a single bullet is enough to kill one, they really aren’t much worse than any other predator are they? I mean they’re focused and can hold on to a spaceship, but thats not really that huge of an advantage if you have weapons and know they are coming. Unless its not really dead, I guess just showing it get shot doesn’t really confirm a kill.
They have coyote tails. This may make Emily homesick and result with her either taming them or eating them.
Spacetrawler! Travel the galaxy, meet new and interesting species – then kill and eat them.
Ah Emily. A true child of Coyote.
Snow Cat: looks like the ejection panel on the roof is closed, so if people thought to close the door behind them then the dithERkers are in fact trapped in the ship.
Shouldn’t an ejection seat have a parachute or something? Just asking…
@Prior Semblance
Well, we don’t know that it’s DEAD, just that it stopped WARLing.
Okay, I checked the Ditherker tag before posting this, but I forget why the ER in Ditherker is bolded. Is correct pronunciation that important in a visual medium?
@HerANdar, purely pronunciation. Dither has the stress on “dith,” and Ditherker it’s on the middle “er.”
@Captain Jack: Actually a better question would be why does a Spaceship have an ejector seat? It’s clearly not common practise to wear a space suit when flying the ship, and it kinda ruins the ‘quick escape’ aspect of it if you have to suit up first…
@Herandar, because that’s where you end up if you survive an encounter with one.
@Mic: The Space Shuttle had ejection seats for its earliest test flights, when there were only two pilots in the front cockpit. This was impractical for the “downstairs” middeck seats later, so the front ejection seats were removed. The seats were only useful anyway for very limited parts of the flight in the atmosphere, at low speeds. The Gemini capsule also had ejection seats.
A spaceship can have a setup where the entire pressurized cockpit can be ejected. The F-111 aircraft did this in real life, but this was impractical for the Space Shuttle. Space capsules, like Mercury, Apollo, and more recent designs like the SpaceX “Dragon,” all have systems to pull the entire capsule free.
On “Star Trek,” it was established in the first series that the entire saucer section could be separated from the engineering section in an emergency, but this was never shown for model and budget reasons. On “The Next Generation,” in a new age of special effects, the writers lost no time in showing the separation process on screen.
In the case of this comic, the ship has an ejection seat because…well, because it’s cool. Works for me, but I agree a parachute would be nice. Along with a cover over the eject button.
@Mic the ship also has dithERker proof metal in the hull. Clearly these engineers thought of everything.
It looks as if that ejection seat is made by Leggo.
I’m impressed that she managed to shoot it with her right arm, given that her right shoulder was in the process of being mauled.
Call it more of an ejection pod, self contained would make near perfect sense. But an ejection seat like was depicted only exist to help the story along.
Chris, in panel 3 Emily is on one side of Pierrot, and then in panel 4 she kisses him from the opposite side. It looks weird.
@Awesome, sometimes things don’t always read 100% perfect. The action is that Pierrot just went between the seats to go to the backdoor, and Emily is moving over from the “passenger seat” to the “driver’s seat.” 🙂
Second to last. Priceless. Made my day.
Chris, thanks for the explanation, but that brings up another point… pilots generally fly from the right-hand side of the plane, contrary to what you see in movies. I personally flew from the left-hand side, but that’s not usually the case.
Disregard my last comic. This is sci-fi, not real life. LOL
*comment
@Awesome (or is that “Captain” Awesome?), they’re in a Mihrrgoot-designed spacecraft. Maybe the Mihrrgoots are all secretly British and force everyone else to drive on the wrong side of the space lanes.
@Awesome: what type of craft do you pilot? It is only helicopters that are flown chiefly from the right seat; every fixed wing aircraft — including the space shuttle — has the pilot on the left and the copilot on the right seat.
It seems DithERkers fall into the same category as Bollycks. Invincible to lasers but vulnerable to bullets. Explains the reputation they have.
@Captain Jack: If it’s anything like an aircraft’s ejection seat, then the parachute is strapped to you, not the seat. Also, ejecting from a seat without wearing a proper harness just means you’re about to be a very ragdolly ballistic projectile, because you’re not going to stay on the seat for long.
But what the hell? It’s a web comic.
A second on left seat is the pilot’s seat, at least on Earth and through most of aviation history, regardless of nationality, at least for fixed wing types. Dunno anything about helios.
I flew fixed-wing. I am going into helicopters. All of my instructors (all commercial pilots – not just CFL holders) told me that left-side is normal. Oh well.
Right-side*
Dangnabbit I can’t type and think at the same time.
@Awesome: Too much time on the internet?
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Chris, what do you have against a woman’s right shoulder? You’ve taken them, three for three!