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Supermassive Black Hole A*, the hard sci-fi animated webcomic
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Comics Monday through Friday, usually multiple times per day.
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Support A*
and get in the next episode's credits!
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Super typing drama time! If you look carefully, you can figure out what keys he's pressing and it spells a secret message!* (*Actually it doesn't!)
As I'm trickling the end of the episode out to you so slowly, behind the scenes I've finished up all the art, and am starting in on the animation. I'll be wrapping up the credits sequence eventually, so I'm declaring end-of-the-day Wednesday (February 10th) as the deadline for contributing to this episode and thus getting in its credits; you can do that via the gold button on the support A* page. This will be the last animated movie version of an episode for the foreseeable future--next episode we move to a non-animated, larger-comic format--so if you've wanted be in an A* credits sequence, now's the time. And after this episode I won't have to pester you with messages like this anymore, whee!
In the ancientest Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a humanoid monster with a horrific face--goggle eyes, protruding tongue, fangs, and snakes for hair--whose visage was used to ward off evil. Later when the Greeks got into inventing sexy stories to explain everything, it turned out there were three Gorgons, beautiful daughters of a sea god and a sea monster. The lovely golden hair of one of the daughters, Medusa, attracted Poseidon while they were in a temple of Athena, and when the two started getting it on, Athena showed up, kinda mad, and cursed Medusa by turning her lovely hair into snakes. Later, when Perseus chopped of Medusa's head, her child by Poseidon leapt out of her neck: Pegasus! (I am not making this up.) Other stories say that Medusa's sisters, Stheno and Euryale, also had snakes for hair because they were standing nearby when Athena laid the curse on Medusa. Bummer! But for some reason they were immortal, while Medusa was not. Oh and the gaze of the three--or even just a single snake hair, in some stories--could turn people into stone.
Also! On the forum I posted groovy photos of black holes, or at least the areas around them. For instance, here's Cygnus X-1 in X-rays:
Cygnus X-1 is thought to be a binary system consisting of a blue supergiant and a black hole; the explanation for its intense X-ray emissions is that they're given off by gas and other solar wind stuff from the supergiant, which, spiraling into the black hole, goes faster and faster and heats up to millions of degrees due to friction, at which temperature it emits X-rays. Cygnus X-1 is one of the most studied black hole candidates, and the one that Stephen Hawking lost a bet over, and had to buy another scientist a subscription to Penthouse. Not making that up, either! You can hear Hawking talking about it here.
I've noticed that comics in which the characters have secret crushes on each other are popular! So let's say that Selenis had a secret crush on Vero and now the manly way he stood up to her has fanned the flames of her ardor into a searing conflagration! When will she tell him her true feelings?!?
And I actually had something semi-serious to say, which is that... Wait... Oh yeah, that since episode 7 will be the last animated episode for the foreseeable future, and I'm probably going to be wrapping up the credits next week, now would be a good time to toss me five beans (I mean $5) and get your name (and website, if you want!) in the credits as a full-fledged A* supporter! It's rad and stuff (at least I think so >_>) and this may be the last chance ever! And you can do it super-easily through the gold button on the support page.
Anyway I'll be announcing the actual contribution deadline for the episode probably early next week once I've got the art done and have a better idea of when I'll be finishing up the animation.
The daily dole of one measly comic per day while I build a buffer to get me through animation week! The torture! Last time we'll have to go through this, phew. At least this one is a pretty decent drawing; one of my better of Vero, I think. So I put a large version in the gallery, warts (actually those are supposed to be blood droplets!) and all; clickum to get to the big one:
Let's see I was also going to mention something actual... Oh! Two things in fact: - IE 8 was putting useless scroll bars on about every other post in the A* forum. Man, how long had that been happening? I check the site with IE 8 but I guess not all that thoroughly (usually I'm on Firefox!). >_> Anyway it's fixed now as far as I can tell. If you ever have any weirdness like that in your browser on this site, let me know! - On the front pages of my comic sites, you can now click the latest comic on display to be taken to the permanent address for that particular comic image.
I'm gonna make more than just two A* comics today (honest!) but the end of episode 7 is coming up fast--I've got about 10 storyboards left to cover, which means maybe 10-12 more comics, probably--so I've gotta build up a buffer to cover the week+ that it'll take me to voice and animate the movie version. I haaaaate holding stuff back and giving it out slowly, but this is probably the last time it's gonna happen, since I won't be bothering with movie versions after this episode.
By the way you may notice that the comic browsing links have moved around a bit; hopefully this condensed scheme--they're all in the bar above the comic now, instead of being split with comic navigation above and episode navigation below--will be a little easier to use for most people, and more familiar to new readers from what's sort of standard among other webcomics. Conformity, it's finally getting me! Aaaa! But anyway the new look's a bit tidier, so that's nice.
