Well, sometimes I can do it all.  And with just a little extra time, I got this week’s page in.  I hope you find that it was worth the extra 24 hours it took to get it touched up.

This page is an interesting one because it’s where Major Bronniford starts to become more of an active player in all this.  She is an officer, after all, and though lacking in command experience she is a well-trained soldier, vide her being able to pick the lock on her handcuffs, as she is doing here.  If there’s a limitation to this story, I’d say that it’s that I have introduced the whole of the main cast in different places, making it a rather disparate group to follow.  Major Bronniford is under enemy imprisonment, Major Rucker is out in the field with his tanks, Colonel Haulley is stuck in the command bunker, and Mike-One-Echo is roaming free across the countryside.  In the end, war is like that, so I’m told (I’m not a soldier so I don’t know from experience): a lot of things happening in different places, with various people trying to figure it all out.  And while that does add to the impact of the military verismilitude (such as it is, with battle armor and robot tanks) I question its effectiveness from a storytelling perspective.  Maybe I got carried away.  But still and all, I think it’s been an interesting story so far.

The color on this page really came out vividly, as I’d wanted it to, as did the overall design.  There’s a brief “narrative intersection” here, where the two different storylines momentarily seem to touch, slightly.  And Mike is really pretty tough to destroy, isn’t he?  I guess he’d have to be, if the United Nations were going to invest all that time and effort in building a gigantic tank with a robot brain to replace a whole armored company.  I had great fun drawing him all torn up the way he is, to be perfectly honest.  Imagining the workings of his inner structure, under the outer layer of armor, was very interesting.  Plus, it actually makes him looks more threatening, kind of the way a skeleton is more frightening than a fully-fleshed person.  And this is not really even as far down as his parts go – this is just his inner hull!

Anyhow, I’m happy with the page, and now I plow ahead, feeling all proud of myself for managing to keep things on track in spite of a holiday.  So here we are!

By the way, I was really pleased to see the surge in interest in the site lately – I do hope all the new people stopping by the site are finding this entertaining, and I hope you’ll be back!  According to my site analyses, over 70% of my visitors these days are repeat readers!  So it definitely bodes well for the future of 6-Commando, and it does me a lot of good to know you’re all reading it.  Thanks, guys!  And thanks, also, to everyone who’s been posting as well!  The comments are all very useful to me, and I appreciate it immensely.

So until next week, keep on rollin’ people!

Original Post: SNEH!  I like to think I can do it all.  But I can’t.  I came so close though.  So very close.

But this week’s page is just not done yet, and priorities being what they are, I couldn’t simply NOT go to see my poor ol’ Ma on Mother’s Day.  So this week’s page is going to have to wait for 24 hours, I’m afraid.  I only now am crawling back into my hovel, you see, after some night driving in pretty hairy conditions, so finishing the last bits of this page will have to wait until tomorrow after work.

Forgiveness, please!

Until then, regale yourselves with a new feature at Vicious Print which I have started for your edification: The Achiever’s Index!  There I will be looking at and reviewing webcomics that I read, and highlighting those that I think are most worth the look.  Arrogant?  Probably.  Self-important?  You bet.  Entertaining?  I hope so!  So check it out, and check back here tomorrow evening for the REAL page 24!

Be well, folks, and happy Mother’s Day!