Another update – I’m afraid I fell ever so slightly short this week, so the next page will be delayed by 24 hours.  It’s almost done, just not quite.  And I learned my lesson about posting half-assed pages lately, so I’m going to hold off and make sure it’s right.  So sorry for the delay – tune in again tomorrow!

An update to share with you!  There’s a new voting incentive over at topwebcomics.com!  An earlier broken link has been fixed, so now you can see a sketch of some of the background and extra material I’m working on for the first 6-Commando book.  So pop on over and cast a quick vote to see it, and pass the word on to any other 6-Commando fans you know!

I don’t have a lot to say about this page, but that it seems to have worked out more or less correctly the first time through.  A lot of that had to do with the fact that most of the heavy lifting with the colors for this scene were already done on the last page, and since this one is mostly close-up, it was a bit easier in the backgrounding department.  I will say, however, that the varied hand movements and gestures were pretty interesting to try to work out.  I used a lot of reference photos to study the various positions and such – and as a matter of fact, I ended up basing Major Rucker’s hands largely on those of President Obama.  Funny, huh?  Also, I have completely adjusted to hand-lettering the comic now, and I am finding that it is far more satisfactory than any font I had previously been using.  I think it’s legible at its current size (I set it to display at 3/32″ when posted on the site) – if it ever happens not to be, let me know, though.

It’s kind of a shame that Captain Dacosta has to be basically just a minor character, as she really does get to be a voice of reason that sometimes is lacking in science fiction.  I like that someone is doing a “reality check” in the midst of all this.  I’m not sure what will become of her in the long run.  But I don’t want to give away too much, so I’ll just say that she does have a background story, albeit a brief one: she’s from the Azores, a Portuguese exile who fled the country with her family in the late 1970’s when the Communists staged a coup.  Portugal is one of the European countries (the others being Britain, France, Spain the Netherlands and Germany) with a sizable exile community in North and Central America, though most of the Portuguese loyalists ended up in Brazil, much as most of the Dutch loyalists moved to South Africa and the Caribbean.  Oh, and by the way, for those who don’t know, “Plan R” is a little homage to Kubrick’s brilliant film Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which has been one of my favorite films for, well… it seems like forever, but if I recall correctly it was my friends Matt and Justin who showed it to me in college.

So anyhow, there you go.

A couple of interesting side notes, though.  First, I’ve been doing some preliminary editorial work on Chapter 1, and it’s going okay, but not at all quickly.  Ultimately I do want to print this, though it will probably be through Print-On-Demand, rather than the more grand versions of such more-successful comics as reMind, Moon Town, et al.  At present the plan is four three-chapter volumes, covering the four “acts” of the storyline, which would put them as 96-to-120-page sets, which I would probably try to make available in both hardcover and perfect-bound through Kablaam or ComiXpress (I’ve been steered towards the former by Knowledgeable Persons).

At the same time, there is additional material I’m working up and have long since been promising, such as maps, histories, graphical timelines and the like, as well as stuff for my fellow “players of games,” so to speak.  I also sketched the beginnings of what may well become a separate publication, if interest and time allow, being a full “6-Commando Field Manual.”  That’s on the farther horizon though.

All that is just by way of saying that, though I am continually promising these things and seemingly not delivering, I’m not forgetting – it’s just taking longer than I’d anticipated.  But 6-Commando is moving ahead apace, and even though it’s likely to remain “in the works” for the foreseeable future, this will see the light of day, even if only in a very limited way.

So there we are!  Another one down, folks.  Be well, keep voting, and I’ll see you next week!