And another “intermissionary” strip between chapters, with the added bonus of giving me an opportunity to show that, yes indeed, my characters do experience character development. Just look at Captain Hawker Valiant, who has clearly learned a valuable lesson from that little affair on Uranus.
The lesson is titled “Not my job. Don’t care.” The key to happiness! Or at least the key to not having to appear in the next chapter, which pretty much amounts to the same thing, in Capt. Hawker’s case. Most people have to learn that lesson the hard way, although some, like Sgt. Schulz, seem blessed with the knowledge from birth.
I did play with the thought of running with the whole “Marsdolf” thing for a moment or two, but ultimately I went “nope”, just like Capt. Valiant. Using Stalin is already pushing it, this would really have been a bridge too far.
New ,definitely Marsdolf-less chapter on Monday!
Aaaand that’s the fourth chapter down! Yeah, swapping out Sephy for Gregory definitely paid off in the long run – Gregory has even less vocabulary and yet he works very well with regards to the team dynamic. It was honestly a bit surprising how short this was, even though I think it’s about the length of Chapter 1 – Chapters 2 and 3 just left an impression on me, I suppose!
Captain Valiant the totally-not-alien-spy was the best subversion payoff. With regards to character redesigns I am still not at all used to brow-less Professor Doctor, but Mopey actually looked pretty cute in this chapter. (Don’t tell her I said that or she’ll hammer me.)
So now that we’ve done Mummies, Zombies, Undersea, and Space, looks like the next chapter will be Foreign Adversaries? Off I go to read it! (Soon.)
Yeah, chapter four was definitely the most tightly scripted chapter up to now – I set myself limits for the length of each act, and by and large managed to remain within them. I tried the same for chapters five and six, but it didn’t work that well in either case – I couldn’t resolve the plots within the limits I had set myself, and had to allow me more leeway. So those chapters are longer than chapter 4, but nowhere near chapter 2.
And I continued messing with the character designs with every new chapter…Mopey’s re-design for chapter 5 seemed to have split opinions a bit, back then, so it’ll be interesting to hear your take on it.
Chapter 5 does have an ethnic element to it, but it’s actually not really the main focus – and I had to change something there as I went along, but you’ll see that when you get to that part.