Added 3 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 9, Page 87
• A* Episode 9, Page 88
• A* Episode 9, Page 89

Big doings afoot in that dark system, that's for sure. Also, if you haven't checked it yet, this past weekend's new Princess and the Giant page awaits you:



Notice I've been doing a lot of little shading lines lately! I guess they're just kind of fun. Hopefully I don't start overdoing 'em. :P

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 9, Page 90
• A* Episode 9, Page 91

This here's an interesting page to think about when the "safe distance" question comes up in relation to nuclear blasts. Such things *have* been tragically miscalculated in the past. Despite--or probably because of that--they are pretty darn interesting; for instance, if you zoom in on the center of the Baker detonation at Bikini Atoll, on the ships right around that central spray column at the base of the mushroom cloud's stem--which was 2000 feet wide--you can see exactly how the fireball reached based on how much black smoke is billowing out of the ships that were floated out into the test range.

Just to indulge my grim fascination with that particular series of nuclear bomb tests known as Operation Crossroads, here are some more photos from it:
- Test goats calmly eating aboard a test ship before it gets nuked
- Jolly unprotected US Navy sailors trying to scrub the radiation out of the deck of a German cruiser used in the test--with mops (they found this does not work; some of the least damaged/irradiated ships were sailed back to the US with their full crews aboard--this ended up increasing their eventual mortality rate by 5.7%)
- Live fish from the lagoon, so radioactive it can create its own x-ray exposures on film
- The huge water-laden shock wave at the start of the Baker explosion, which was underwater, dwarfing the warships next to it
- The light aircraft carrier USS Independence sustained massive damage but didn't sink (some ships did sink and are still there, at the bottom of the atoll; when they found they could not decontaminate the ships that survived, they sank some of them, including the Independence, near the Farallon Islands, 27 miles off of San Francisco)
- And then as the admiral you celebrate with your wife and a mushroom cloud cake

Also I hadn't realized that the bikini, invented by the French in that same year, 1946, was named after the atoll (well that part I knew), not because it or its inventor came from there, but because they thought it would have an atomic-bomb-like impact on the public consciousness; other reasons have been said to be that it was a bathing suit of atom-like size, or that atomic warfare would reduce everyone to primitive costume (ugh).

WOW, just wow man, that is all amazingly interesting research.

Now I want a nuke shelter.

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 9, Page 92
• A* Episode 9, Page 93

Still slow--but only two more pages in this episode, so I really oughta finish tomorrow!

Spent some time these past two days diagnosing and eventually reviving my parents' PC; it seems that it had a memory stick die, which also corrupted Windows--probably the registry--so it couldn't boot for not just one but two reasons! Neat. And then after I reinstalled Windows (if it was just the registry that was bad, maybe I could have restored that somehow short of reinstalling, even though Windows' repair process failed to...but eh), it couldn't connect to the Internet, because its not-plug-and-play USB DSL modem needed a driver file, located on the Internet. I guess this is standard PC tech repair, but I don't have to think about it for most of my life, so this was all very exciting, let me tell you!

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 9, Page 94
• A* Episode 9, Page 95

And that concludes episode 9! We had some space battle action in this one, but I'm looking forward to drawing episode 10, because we'll finally have people getting a chance to get out of their ships and stretch their legs a bit. They'll have to do more than just stretching, though, because 10 will be the final episode in Vero's story. Episode 11 will start in on someone else's story, but it will also be a direct continuation of this one in many ways, with some familiar faces playing big roles.

But back to episode 10! I'll be offline writing the script tomorrow, but stick around because I may have some fun dialogue to leak to you or something. If I get that done this week, then Monday and Tuesday of next week will be dedicated to rendering the episode in quick doodlish storyboard form--and I'll probably let slip a few of those to keep you entertained--and Wednesday, if things stay on schedule, episode 10 comics will start!

Will Vero learn the secret of the black system facility? Will Selenis find whatever she's after? Will they survive Mar's "scorched earth" nuclear attack? We'll be finding out in the climactic episode 10! (Can you tell I'm excited? 'Cause I'm kind of excited. :))