Zobbo: Swimmer in the Abyss #17 Tuesday May 29th 2007

Once again, ship designs property of Turnsky, and many thanks to the almighty Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary for the loan of the universe and the planet ^_--

Crossover Wars

Well, I've just about recovered from my crazy weekend... This page was drawn at about 2AM yesterday at the end of a day and a half of crazy sleeping, so I'm quite pleased with it (though I've yet to come up with an excuse for why the bridge is suddenly so dark in panel 1... ^_--). For reference, while both Soban and Zendp are troubled by the idea of bombarding a planet and potentially killing lots of innocents (though, admittedly, the average inhabitant of Ghanj-rho is either not innocent, or a carbosilicate amorph and therefore quite hard to kill), that's not the reason Zendp's so worried in panel 2; he's simply worrying about whether they can still get paid by the 'good guys' if they have caused innocent casualties.

And now you know ;) For what it's worth, I don't believe it's possible to become totally insensitive to killing innocents while still being in full possession of your sanity; Soban's mercenaries, being quite a sane bunch (so far... ^_--), still feel the 'humanising' emotional connection to most of their victims, even if they're not likely to let it stop them. One thing I've always liked about Schlock Mercenary (which has clearly rubbed off on me by this association) is that Howard's characters, even the long-time mercenaries like Captain Tagon, are given pause for thought any time there's a lot of killing or victimisation of innocents to be done; characters in that strip are still - even after seven years - reminding each other to think of the money. So, Soban and Zendp will be mentally telling themselves to think of the money and wearing grim faces. Tune in on Thursday for the 'vacuous action and explosions' side of the bombardment ^_--