Strip 781 -- First Seen: 2011-09-01
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

Not-Safe dot Kickstarter

The big news this week is that Scott is preparing to launch a Kickstarter for his other comic, the very much NSFW Not-Safe.Space.

This over-sized (8.5 x 11-inch), 48 page book contains Chapter 1 of this naughty sci-fi spin-off, featuring Eithne Lamdagan, who happens to be Alyss Roaz' 7th-great granddaughter, in case you didn't know.

The story picks up roughly 2 years after QUANTUM VIBE: Assimulation left off, as Eithne and her K'Tagon boyfriend Ralff, wander through the Galaxy of the Gamer Godz, playing as the CUSH Queen, working to re-balance a real-life RPG that her travelling companion Hugo Galvez left in a bit of a mess.

Only instead of Eithne's CUSH turning people into techno-zombies, as the Godz originally intended, Eithne wants to make them techno-Succubi/Incubi, spreading what she calls an "Erogene" factor rendering them too busy making love, to make war. And of course, Eithne gets wrapped up in her work.

The campaign will start on May 14, and the link for the pre-launch page is here.

What Comes Next

The war is over, but This Means War has a ways to go. Novo Paolo/Bubbleopolis is still in a nebula/stellar nursery, no one knows what happened to the planet Sharen (center of the Intergalactic Council), and the status of the now-surrendered Invaders is yet to be resolved. What will they do when they learn their homeworld is basically destroyed? Will Alyss and Li be re-united? How about Diana (the real one) and Otto?

These questions will be resolved in the next few weeks, before This Means War part 3 wraps in late May.

After that, I plan to go BACK in time about 400 years, to when Alyss and Li left their home in the Sol System to colonize a new world on the far side of the galaxy. As one might expect, hijinks ensue. New subtitle yet to be determined, start date sometime in around the start of July. Stay tuned!

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
External view, the burner in orbit (about 5,000 kilometers) over Mercury. The planet is large enough in this frame we only see about 2/3 of its face, and it occupies about 2/3 of the frame. Despite being so close to the Sun, the planet's surface is fairly dark, with craters a bit shallower than the Moon's and a lot of white streaks emanating from a few of the larger craters. The interiors of the craters are often much lighter than the surface in general. We are over the 60th parallel, where there is one particularly large and streaky crater. A shuttle is descending from the burner to the surface (towards the northen pole).
Some reference photos:
http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/mercury_06_08/m22_PIA11245.jpg

North Pole, http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/WebImg/HarmonRadarFig1.jpg

Caption: To save reaction mass, a shuttle ferries passengers to the north polar spaceport from the burner, which remains in orbit.

Panel 2
Large panel. From an altitude of about four klicks, we see the Al Shams Madeena crater. It's 40 klicks in diameter, covered with an airskin that rises 4 klicks above the surface. Most of the crater floor is covered by a lake. We can barely make out various structures festooned around the inner crater rim above the water line (possibly by their lights glinting in the shadows). In the center of the lake is an island about 400 meters across, from which rises a slender tower, a copy of the Burj Khalifa.
Reference: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
The tower rises a bit more than a kilometer above the island. The rest of the island is covered with garden-like vegitation.
We can see a tiny tube running from the bottom-foreground of the panel into the side of the crater wall.
If room permits, show a few other domed, smaller craters in the near background.
Remember we're at the pole, so shadows are very long.
Caption: From the spaceport it was a quick tube-train ride to Al Shams Madeena, the largest domed crater of Heliopolis, the sybaritic settlement at Mercury's north pole.
Caption: Inside the 40-kilometer diameter crater is a lake, and inside the lake, a small, circular island. On the island rises Burj Otaared, an intentional copy of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, more than a kilometer tall.
Caption: It is said that its 200 habitable floors contained the most expensive and lavish offices, condos, and apartments on Mercury.