Strip 208 -- First Seen: 2009-07-01
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
Large panel. We see the exterior of the elevator car after it has emerged from the underside of the moon. It is attached to a black ribbon a half centemeter thick and one meter wide, which extends from the moon all the way (about 40 km) down to the surface of the main asteroid (The Little Prince). We're looking at the elevator from a high angle so we see it against a panoramic vista of TLP's surface, which consists of low, rolling hills, colored various mixes of green and brown (it's grasses and short vegetation but we can't resolve that from this altitude). A few fluffy-white clouds are visible at around the 3-5 km level. Here and there are a few very small lakes. We don't see the bottom terminus of the nanotube ribbon in this shot.
Along the side of the car that attaches to the ribbon, there is a mechanism which changes the car's angle relative to the ribbon, which is necessary because as the car descends it is decelerating against its angular momentum, so the bottom points lines up with the orbital vector just below the station, and gradually swings down to point straight at the ground when nearly at bottom.
The elevator itself is box-like but has rounded walls bowed outward. The ceiling and walls are transparent, with the ribbon and the crawling mechanism running along the left side of the car (the side away from us). So we can see Drenkowski and the brothers in the car. There are waist-high hand-rails in the car, and the brothers are clutching them.
TLP is a near-perfect sphere, like Ceres, but much smaller. Ground detail should be about as you would see on Earth from about 35,000 feet (airline cruising altitude) but the curvature of the “ground” should be very strongly pronounced, more as the Earth might look like from about 10,000 miles up.

No dialog.

Panel 2
Looking through the glass wall inside the car, we can see the brothers grasping the hand-rail in the foreground, looking over their shoulders with some embarrassment at Drenkowski standing behind (between) them. He has one hand on his hand-rail and is looking bemused.
Drenkowski: Nothing to be ashamed of.

Drenkowski: Everybody has a strong reaction their first time.

Panel 3
Exterior view of the car again, we still see the car from above as it continues its decent.

Drenkowski (from inside car): I hate to admit it, but I threw up.