“Striking Sparks” — Page Three
And so our Mysterious Cloaked Figure is unmasked, and to our surprise, it is NOT Chancellor Palpatine. Rather, it is a familiar crimson-coiffed lab assistant who apparently practices Parkour in order to maintain a better-than-expected physique under her usual lab coat. Certain other questions will be addressed as soon as anyone can get a word in edgewise, which may take a while.
UPDATE! Max-the-Artist has provided a special behinds-the-scenes video on how this comic page was constructed. Scroll down to view!
Bobservations
The Overlooked
During my Misspent Youth, my friends and I discovered that school roofs were excellent places to crash for the night. Generally we were roaming around the country by car on a minimum of finances; and since we were young and healthy, a few fences and a scramble up a support post were barely even obstacles. In the western states where snow isn’t a problem the roofs tend to be flat and even reasonably comfortable compared to the ground. As long as you got out of there by dawn, you were secure and undisturbed. Of course, this was before the days of Homeland Security and infrared cameras and general Terrorist Threats; back then, even if we were caught we’d just have been chased away, not arrested. I’m not sure I’d recommend it now.
Hope our American audience had a good Thanksgiving holiday, and a belated same to the Canadians! In the US, Thanksgiving is followed by Black Friday, a day when major merchants offer discounts to try to get the holiday shopping started. And in some sort of retaliation, there is growing promotion of Small-Business Saturday, in which shoppers are encouraged to support local independent businesses in their area.
Well, this is all very well and good, but for those of us who spend a lot of time online, I would like to take it a step further with something like “Open Source Sunday.” There are a number of free programs that I use to create websites or make them function in specific ways or protect them from the festering hordes of spammers slamming themselves senseless against the barricade of plugins. And most of the people who create these wonderful programs do it for free, merely hoping that people will be grateful enough to extend a pittance in their direction every once in a while. But for the most part, no one ever does.
So on Sunday I went through my list of active plugins and made small donations to the creators. And if you are someone who has used free software, I’d like to encourage you to at least consider throwing a bone to the creator.
Given what most of them make, they’re probably huddled on a roof somewhere.
In the rain.
–Bob out.
Artist’s Notes UPDATE: I spent a few minutes making a video to discuss the making of today’s page- check it out! -Max
I love how she is the only one upset with him being homeless. Everyone else just goes with it incluing the main character.
I’d put up with being homeless if it meant being a superhero!
Homeless man! With the power to think he can fly!
So Marissa is smart, beautiful, AND athletic? That’s hardly fair. I’m only one of the three. (I won’t let on which one.)
If we assume that Marissa could not actually see Sophie, was Sophie still guiding her somehow? How else would Marissa have found Max? Interesting developments are afoot!
And in that last panel, it looks like the mouse has become content to live as a spirit in the lab. The ghost on the machine, you might say. Does anyone know that it’s there?
I think everybody is ‘aware’ that it’s there given they tested the machine on the mouse, but they may be unable to see or hear it. Unless teleported souls work differently from ones that just died, in which only the author knows.
You know it’s weird, because they can also see Max’s soul when he has to signal them to bring him back. Max could see ghosts after being dead for enough time, but he’s not really dead and they have his soul so I guess it makes sense that they can see him?
It’s probably best to not too think about it too hard. xD
I am all three and I tell my wife daily. I figure if I keep telling her she will eventually believe it 🙂
And it turns out our hooded figure isn’t a mysterious operative, they aren’t breaking into a lab or high-security building and Sophie isn’t guiding them.
It’s somebody we know, breaking into a school roof to find our homeless protagonist who’s dead not-girlfriend watches him sleep.
…I don’t know which is worse.
Ok here is a question for the author…. how did Marissa find Max? Also it seems as if Sophie is always around Max watching over him. Or is it that Marissa was following Sopie?
Soon to be revealed!
Egerly awaiting ! 🙂