That’s it. That’s it? That’s it. Well… there’s still an “epilogue” strip, and then the prologue strip. And then the 3-months more additional story. But this is the last strip in the main body of this story. That’s essentially the whole kit and kaboodle.
We had a very nice weekend. Last week I worked 12 hour days all week to get the book ready (hopefully off Monday), so I needed some rest. We caught a matinee of “The World’s End” which made me laugh a lot. I love Pegg and Wright, all the way back to their lovely so-wrong sitcom “Spaced” (with Jessica Hynes) back in 99-2000. Also, I have a real difficulty watching gore, and this movie cleverly got around that. Blue ink!
Sunday my girlfriend and I hiked up Mt. Hadley, and up the fire tower on top. PERFECT day for it, blue sky, long day, high 65. What luck.
And again: Many of you have already told me that you missed the Kickstarter, and others that they wanted different combinations of goods, and you want to still get it. Well, I’ve opened up a stripped-down temporary store PURELY for pre-sales between now and when the book is shipped. For books #1 & #2 I have only added them as “doodled” versions. Glasses and certificates will be pulled sometime in mid-September when I put in the order to the printer (I won’t be printing extras). If you wish the straight-up books, please visit my TopatoCo page. Visit the “Book #3 store HERE.
And congratulations to you Christopher – few webcomics get to an end, very few. Many peter out and become sad parodies of themselves in their better days, and several just stall and never get seen further. You started, you worked incredibly steadily, maintained a good relationship with your readerbase (mostly crowd-sourcing your non-standard spelling enhancements & the occasional Eeb continuity issues), and you got to the end. Superb work. For the creative field, being disciplined like this is very impressive.
I hope that some reviews see the end, and decide to do a review of the entire work, not as a slice-of-life-of-a-webcomic review. Should be fairly easy for Robert Howard of Tangents (in any case, I might offer a review to him from that perspective).
Again, well done and I do hope you have a slight glow of satisfaction for reaching what surely must be a very satisfying conclusion for you.
“ShanghAied.”
And spelling issues aside (I was raised in the wild by typesetters, I can’t help it), this has been fantastic and thank you for sharing it with us. 🙂
(Also, pErsuaded. I’ll stop now.)
WHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
OK, better now… a bit…
What Thomas said.
Plus, thanks for the hint to Alastair Reynolds who became one of my favourite authors.
Congratulations, Chris. It’s been a long road, and I’ve enjoyed every step.
I hope the other spacefaring characters are considerate enough to visit Mr. Zorilla and reminisce about Martina. Out of genuine empathy and not obligation and not departing with obvious insincerity and insensitivity.
I want Dimitri to show up and take Mr. Zorilla out on a drunken memorial tour of the galaxy for some real closure, not a half-hearted narration and weak goodbye. Avoiding the places that hate Martina, of course.
… and my biggest unanswered SpaceTrawler question is – how *does* Nogg get his pants on and tie the laces to his shoes ..
So, the ultimate lesson we can glean from all this, is that the universe is mostly a f**cked-up, dangerous place, filled mostly with apathetic and/or self-centered jerks who will inhibit and prey upon the few decent folks who want to make things better. And even if those decent folks somehow endure terrible ordeals and overwhelming odds and actually SUCCEED in making positive change, they might be slandered, maimed, or killed in the process, and the aforementioned jerks will still probably never give them the thanks or recognition they deserve, and will most likely forget any moral lessons, and go on with their self-centered existences, while the universe as a whole will still remain a rather f**cked up and dangerous place overall…
Yup. Seems pretty true to life. Suspension of disbelief upheld! Top-notch writing and characterization there. Well done, Sir. 🙂
A muted, sad end but a fitting one. It’s been a great journey – thanks for a wonderful story Christopher. Looking forward to the epilogue and the additional strip 🙂
What?! More ST coming?! My face: :O -> 🙂 -> 😀
Thanks, Chris, that announcement made my day 😛
Though it’s not the last strip (and thank goodness for that), it’s still the end. And what a trip it has been. A fantastic voyage with an amazing batch of characters through what is perhaps the strangest, funniest, and most generally deranged universe this side of Douglas Adams. I can hardly believe I’ve been reading this for years now. It’s definitely got a spot on my All-Time list when it comes to web strips. Kudos dude, you do great work. Please never stop.
The barely restrained sadness is plain on Mr. Zorilla’s face.
He’s going to be soooooo bored on Earth now that his wife and daughter are dead.
Nogg needs to hire Zorilla and get him out in the galaxy! Zorilla needs to completely get his “Arthur Dent” on!
You know, for some reason I really thought her Father was going to explore space. He is retired, he is alone and he has nothing better to do, I can’t think of a better retirement then actually exploring space. I would have asked to go along.
Yes, the typos that Evil Midnight Lurker found. Agreed.
Also, in panel 6, I might add a comma between “story” and “Nogg”.
As an aside, I’m a bit sad that throughout the whole strip the word “SHANGHAIINGS” has never appeared. It’s the longest word in the English language where each letter appears exactly 2 or 0 times.
Okay, maybe I’m not sad at all. But boy there were a few close calls. 😉
I feel oddly empty, but I’m not sure what I was expecting.
hello Christopher.
I’ve been a lurker for quite some time but since this is “The End”-marked-page, I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed this story. Of cours, I’ll stick around for the epilogue and those three-month worth of new pages.
Congratulations on the end of this, um, saga. (: Also, I really really liked Dimitri: best character EVER 😀
This comic is so good. Thank you for working through it (and with more to come :D).
hi chris
dude, i just have to say that i’ve been reading Spacetrawler since the very beginning and it has been by far one of the most rewarding webcomic experiences of my entire life… so THANK YOU, sir, and may prosperity, happiness and good fortune saturate the rest of your days.
cheers
i forget where i came across this comic (i think another linked me here for some reason or other at around about the time that king started business in the outside universe) and i was quickly hooked after looking at a few strips in the archive. this has been one of the most memorable and funny webcomics i’ve read over the years, so congratulations, chris! i’ll look forward to following your other creative ventures after this! 🙂
Great job, Chris. It was a heck of a ride!
Wow, after years of following Spacetrawler it will be really weird to … not. At least after the epilogue, prologue and additional 3 months. Thank you for that. It would be too painful for it to just end, even though we all knew this day was coming. Wow.
Chris,
As with many others here, I have been a regular reader for the past several years. I just wanted to say thank you for your commitment to telling such a creative, engrossing, and heartwarming (if not also wrenching) story. You have created a unforgettable palate of characters and taken them, and us, on a journey that begs redefinition of what a webcomic can and should be. Thank you for sharing this world with us and best of luck on whatever creative endeavor you pursue next. I, for one, will be waiting eagerly.
rabidK
Thank you Chris. Seeing your updates each Monday and Wednesday have been the highlights in my week. I’m excited that we have more to see still, but I’m saddened that it has to end sometime. I do look forward to seeing anything you may be doing in the future. I hope you let us know what and when you decide to venture forth on your newest adventure.
Chris, one of the highlights of my week was always reading this fantastic story. I married my “sweetie” and made it through hurricane Sandy and Spacetrawler was always there =) I can’t wait to recieve the final book from kickstarter so I can read all of Spacetrawler again from beginning to end!
Sad to see the story end but it’s nice that it’s complete. Really enjoyed being a small part of it. Thanks for everything!
Love the story, perhaps the ending is too anticlimatic… but it’s a very interesting story, thanks for not having changed it. I got to your website on the middle of book 2, and had to read the story in the website from front to back. And now I ordered the three books (plus awesome glass!) in the Kickstarter… thanks!
ps. Before it goes in print, could you change “pursuaded” into “persuaded”, and “shanghied” into “shanghaied” (panel 4) 😉 I think you’ve written “shanghaied” everywhere else…
Just wantedto say, it was a great ride, perfect size with all the bells and whistles. I look forward to the addons and your next projects. 3 thumbs and 4 tentacles up!
I love the ending! For every adventurer, there are people left behind who miss them. Very poignant and humane. Thanks.
Congratulations!
Thank you for the story! Ditto much of what has been said above — Dmitri rocks, Mr. Zorilla and Dmitri doing a whirlwind tour would be cool to think about, Spacetrawler has been a great ride, …
On a completely different note, Mt. Hadley where? Fire towers are fun.
“Well, I’m back.”
“All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu…This is the truth! This is my belief! At least for now…”
Say, say what!!??? So a bit more adventure in this universe, ecxellent.
Edits, edited!
Eiríkr Útlendi, in Hadley, NY, on the south end of the Adirondacks
@Eje, ha! 😉
And the rest, it feels really good to hear all this. You all are the best. <3
I feel for Mr. Zorilla. Learning that there’s a whole universe of life outside your planet, and also knowing you will never get to see it, would be one of the loneliest feelings possible.
I think Vol. 3 will be eligible for a Hugo next year, just sayin’…
Chris, Spacetrawler has been awesome, and I’m glad I could help fund the extra few months of strips from your kickstarter(s). It’s been a pleasure to follow your work all these years through Bruno and Little Dee and this. I will always be fond of Bruno as the first webcomic I truly adored back in the 90s, but Spacetrawler has been awesome in so many ways. Thank you.
Congratulations! And thank you so much for the laughs, the tears, and the many wonderful and loveable characters – it’s sad having to say goodbye to them after so long. Even poor Mr Zorilla – if I could bake him a cake I would.
@Joal wrote: “I feel oddly empty, but I’m not sure what I was expecting.”
Well, DUUH! Now is the time the camera slowly pans back over the landscape while the credits roll; the words “The End” slowly appear; the camera moves in for a close shot of the grave, when BAM! A fist breaks through the soil, and the words “The End” swirl to form a question mark!
Of course that leaves the question of which character would claw his/her way out of the grave. Which character would the readers love to see make an appearance in “Spacetrawler 2: In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream (‘Cause it’s a fucking VACUUM, idiot!)” I mean, it can’t be Martina, can it?
Naaa. I’ll bet it’s Growp. “Spacetrawler 2: The Puceberry Diaries”
Hi Chris,
Such a sad ending for Mr Zorilla.
You missed the a when Nogg says “Shanghaied” in Panel 4 when you did the edit, by the way. 🙂
Wow… I may be the luckiest Spacetrawler reader there is.
After putting it off for over a year, four days ago, I finally clicked on the Spacetrawler banner that regularly appeared on a couple of other webcomics I read. It sucked me in immediately, and for the last four days I used every free moment to barnstorm through the archives to catch up on the story, loving every bit of it as I went along.
The night before last I finally got to “Martina’s Funeral”, and waited eagerly for today to see what came next… and it was the end of this particular story.
I wish I had gotten to it way back when, and enjoyed and participated in the discussion here.
WAY late getting here, but I’m SO glad I finally made the journey.
*Stands and applauds*
Bravo Mr. Baldwin! I look forward to the next three months.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=43.376446,-73.970417&num=1&t=h&z=18
I think that’s the fire tower. 🙂
@Hg, Ha! I only fixed the first one. Okay, fixed. 🙂
@Eiríkr_Útlendi, that’s the one. 🙂
A big, big Thank You for sharing this great story with us! Great storytelling, good pacing, very distinguishable grafic style, lots of humor… could keep going on endlessly. What I like mostly, though: from the very beginning you told this story with the end in mind. That’s excellent composing.
And not to forget: you share it with us for free. People like me, with interest in culture, but an income within poverty limits, apreciate that very much. Thus I am really grateful also to all those who decided to donate something. You paid the artist for us paupers, too! What comes around, goes around. In a world of greed you will find yourself rewarded somehow for that.
I like to think Dimitri, who seems to keep up with events more than almost anyone else in this strip, will pop in on Mr. Zorilla now and then. That couldn’t have been mentioned in Dimitri’s “epilog” before because it would have “stepped” on the impact of this strip.
Heck, the interaction between Dimitri’s personality and Mr. Zorilla’s would make a pretty decent spinoff all by itself.
P.S. I’m with “M.A.” on the Hugo thing.
Thank you so, so much, Mr. Baldwin. Incredible pacing, great humor, a panoply of diverse alien cultures, and an all-too-human central cast of characters. I’ll miss every one of them once you’re truly done, and I’ll surely pay this old comic a visit from time to time.
I really, really want to hug Mr. Zorilla right now.
Well done, Mr. Baldwin. Well done indeed. I just spent the past few days reading this strip and loved it. Thank you.
I already read this webcomic three times and still laughing the same way….Very well done Christopher you really rocks! I love Spacetrawler and for me it’s só good as Star Wars and Trek or even better !
Congratulations!!
PS: One more thing:
Martina! Why You!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?