I guess she knows how Snake Plissken felt.

Previously on Marooned…

While attempting to send a message to Earth, John fell ill. He returned to the Martian sanctuary Vita to administer antibiotics, which made him worse. Ugo has now brought him to the Volotrum (also called The Dark Ones), his only remaining chance to be healed, where he has been speaking to “She-Who-Hears” about his predicament.

Meanwhile, Asimov and Ril got trapped in a sandstorm and had taken sanctuary inside Captain John’s ship. They have returned safely and are now awaiting the return of John.

New Readers

The current storyline starts right here, or you can read from the beginning of the strip. Be sure to check out the about page, which explains the story and the main characters.

Rounding up Classics week is one of my early favorite strips. At least in my mind, this is one of the special few where everything just seemed to come together and work. The writing is good and interesting and it ends with a funny joke (a joke that is not too obvious up front). The staging is atypical and interesting. I like the perspective of Asimov’s screen, something of which I’d like to do more. And the “special effects” came out good, too.

The truth is, I’ve always had plans to do interesting things with Asimov’s screen. I’ve struggled with doing that so far. I mean, he’s got basically what amounts to a advanced HD monitor on his face, and nearly all I ever show there is his “mouth” line. It’s something I think about, but have not yet solved. The one thing I don’t want to do is get too close to what Evan Dahm did in Rice Boy with his character The One Electronic, where he often showed video stills in his “eye.” Something I am still thinking about.

I was actually pretty happy with the original coloring on this one for the most part, although how I got there was a bit of a mess in the Photoshop file. I decided to scrap most of it and give it another shot though for fun, and I like the way this came out.

You might notice I added tails to the Geborga speech bubbles. Originally I had felt they would communicate telepathically, but I later grew to dislike that idea. However, I do like the colored speech bubbles still, as I think it gives a sense that they are still something different.

We haven’t actually seen the Geborga in quite some time, even though they have been talked about. The next time we see them, they will most likely be modified from their current design. It won’t be anything drastic, but I think there are some issues with how they are now. In particular, I find it odd that the greatest Martian scientists have no arms. Do they do everything with their feet? I don’t know. It’s something I need to figure out. Like many things early on, their design was a bit rushed.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s look back at some Marooned history. We’ll be back to the nitty gritty with John, Asimov and the whole gang on Monday. See you then!

Welcome to Marooned Classics Week! As I mentioned I’m on vacation this week, but I’ve picked five strips from earlier Marooned days and spruced them up for a walk down memory lane this week. I only wish Marooned could be 5 days a week every week!

My choices weren’t because these were necessarily the best, but because I found something interesting to share about them. So here we go…

Marooned Classics: #10

This strip is interesting for a couple reasons. You may remember that right after John met Ugo, he was brought to this dome where Ugo claimed he lived with his brother Olaf. At the time, I had planned on using the dome as a kind of base of operations for the strip, where John could relax and banter about with Asimov and the two martians.

In fact, the 2 martians were going to be a sort of “odd couple” with Olaf being the nutty one. By the time I got to this strip, however, I was already changing my mind about that. I didn’t want to be locked to the dome, and I didn’t want the goofiness of the two Martian brothers.

Then we have one of the few sightings here of Olaf, Ugo’s supposed brother. In the original, they are slightly different colors, although now it makes sense to me that they are the same. He has this weird way of speaking, which in hindsight I don’t like so much.

On this strip I of course recolored, and added the light and shadows which gives more depth. In addition to Olaf being the same green as Ugo, the punchline has been changed. I had not yet really found my feet on writing for the strip, and the original punchline (which I cannot remember at the moment) was pretty bad, and I couldn’t leave it when I did the “strip refresh” last year. (For those who don’t know, I basically redrew and recolored the first couple months of Marooned in the middle of last year).

I needed some kind of joke that I could replace the third panel, and the only thing I could think of without totally making the strip make no sense at all was to have the whole “beauty in the eye of the beholder” switcharoo. Here the aliens think John (who is alien to them) is ugly and grotesque. And of course, Asimov might agree with them.

I still consider this strip “canon” though. The dome still does exist (Ugo recently mentioned it in regard to his solar lamp being charged there), and maybe Olaf still hangs out there. Remember it is also the access point to the Martian haven.