“Striking Sparks” — Page Fifty
Max appears in a signature burst of atmospheric ignition and quickly senses that Holbeck, like himself, has had military training. Specifically as a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. From what I can gather, CPOs have a good deal of fire-scenario training (since fires aboard ships are particularly dangerous) although such training probably didn’t include bulletproof glass. Nonetheless, it does explain why he was able to take command of the internal situation so readily while everyone else was in a panic.
However, at this point Holbeck is willing to concede authority to the armored stranger arriving via explosive teleportation and bearing useful equipment and a command presence. Whoever Max is, he’s likely the best chance they’ve got right now.
And more below!
Bobservations
Dances With Words
One of the little peeves I often have with writers like J.R.R Tolkien and Frank Herbert is their habit of giving many of their characters complex names; and not only that, but creating strange mythologies that cause each character to have more than one name, depending on whether they are being spoken of by Dwarves or Elves or the Bene Gesserit. Since I have a habit of only glancing at the first syllable or so of any name and letting the rest of the letters trail off into a blur of gibberish, I quickly get confused. I can’t tell you how many times I mixed up “Sauron” and “Saruman,” for instance. And those were the easy ones. I know that true aficionados of such literature consider this to be “depth” and “worldbuilding.” I just call it “deliberately being a pain in the ass.”
To be fair, I often have the same trouble with subtitled anime.
Anyway, while I’m not about to compare any of my own work to the masters, I do try to anticipate possible confusion. GyreWorld characters generally just go by their first names, with only Fardell having a couple of aliases. And in the case of this comic and upcoming pages, I quickly realized that while the proper form of address for a CPO is “Chief,” we already had a “Chief” running around in command of the LAFD. So Holbeck identifies himself as an “E-7,” acceptable between military types, and will be referred to as “Holbeck” or “Commissioner” from this point forward. After all, he’s not in the Navy now. And it will prevent the story from having “too many Chiefs,” if I may misuse a saying.
I mean, we’re already dealing with the fact that the main character and the artist have the same name. And that’s enough, I think.
Time for Max-The-Hero to get appraised of exactly what he’s expected to deal with!
— Bob out
Say what you will, the man knows how to make an enterance, and make the most of it.
Beat me to it.
Records Commissioner? I thought he was Police or Fire Commissioner. I’m a little disappointed it’s not that.
Clearly, the man decided to pass up either because he felt that he was getting too old for this sh*t.
Didn’t want to give him too much authority, especially over emergency personnel. Holbeck is supposed to be just a middle-manager who steps up in an emergency, rather than a guy people would have looked to from the beginning. Besides, a Records Commissioner may be secretly useful in later stories. I like to give myself these options.
Bob, I do the same thing with difficult names in literature. If there is only one such character in a story, or maybe two with very different names, it isn’t a problem. But when I first read “The Hobbit”, I glossed over all the blah-blah Dwarven names as they were arriving at Bilbo’s house. Later in the story it became important to follow which Dwarf was doing what, and I had to reference back to those introduction pages so many times that I finally bookmarked them.
And I have a similar pet-peeve with characters in movies who look too much the same. I think that I have a harder time than most to recognize people. (I could NEVER spot someone on the street from looking at a hair-slicked-back mug shot, as happens all the time in police movies.) More than once I’ve had difficulty following the story of a movie because the good guy and the bad guy, played by different actors, looked too similar for me to tell them apart.
Panel 1: ‘I shall grant you Three wishes!’
“Okay. I wish for all of us to get the [bleep] outta here!”
Granted! Your [bleep]s are removed from this place! Would you like to join your [bleep]s?
Actually, all sailors are trained firemen. One of the lessons learned during the Solomons Campaign 70 years ago. That training is probably what saved the USS Cole in 2000.
I absolutely agree that you should be careful with naming characters. I am reminded of reading Ender’s Game (incredibly good book) and being reminded of how some sci-fi and fantasy stories use these weird made-up names, some of which are hard to remember. Ender’s Game uses names like “Ender” or “Peter” or “Bean”. So, even characters that have unusual names (or nicknames) still get something easy to remember. “Ender” isn’t usually a name, but it’s still an English word. The newspaper comic Beetle Bailey likes to use nouns for names as well.
Another fun approach to this that I really liked, in the webcomic Dreamkeepers, was to occasionally make names by combining other familiar names, like “Triffany” and “Stacephanie”. It also helped that Triffany talks a lot keeps telling people who she is; she’s a hilarious character.
Great comic and storyline. One comment; A Chief Petty Officer (E7) active duty or retired would never refer to him/herself as an E7. It would always be “Chief” or “Chief Petty Officer” when asked what rank they held.
Welcome, Senior Chief! And you’re probably right as a general thing (judging from your handle, you would know) but just last month I met a man who was explaining that he had gone into business after getting out of the Navy. I said: “Oh, you were in the Navy?” And he said: “Yes, I was an E-7.” Which I happened to know (since I was writing this at the time) was a Chief Petty Officer, so I was able to respond appropriately. But he did start with E-7. So it may not happen often, but it does happen. Besides which, if you read the blog below, I was trying to avoid confusion with the already-established-in-comic Chief of the LAFD.
It seems like non-military people would be too apt to get confused if they heard the word “chief”. “Oh, a chief? What rank officer were you?”
This is true. In fact, that’s one of the things I was trying to dance around. In many cases, military ranks are confusing to non-military types; especially since they also vary with nationality. Our hero Max Reaper, for instance, was a Staff Sergeant, but I hardly ever mention that since to a civilian “Staff Sergeant” sounds like some sort of Human Resources manager, not a guy who leads fire teams in combat missions. And “Chief Petty Officer” sounds to an outsider like maybe an accountant who handles small but necessary expenditures, not a senior NCO.
Oh, okay, I only just now spotted the two guys pointing at Holbeck in response to the “who’s in charge” question. At first I thought there was a missing speech bubble or something, but it turns out that I am actually teh dumm.
First word out of Max’s mouth should’ve been “Sitrep!”. then, if there were no takers, start with the long introductions.
He couldn’t count on there being a military person handy when he bounced in.
By the way, what great comment system do you use?
It’s the one that comes with WordPress/Comic Easel. It’s fairly simplistic but for the most part reliable.
“However, at this point Holbeck is willing to concede authority to the armored stranger arriving via explosive teleportation and bearing useful equipment and a command presence”
A mark of a good NCO – adapts quickly in any situation. (I know that a CPO isn’t actually an NCO (at least not in the Canadian Navy) I tend to use that term to any senior non-commissioned personal in the forces)
As an aside, everyone in the RCN has fire-fighter training as well. I read an article that due to the realism of the later training, they tend to react better than the average person in any crisis situation.
Having been navy I can say we do get a lot of fire fighting training. If your ship catches fire, you can’t exactly call the fire department and stand around outside until they arrive.