I hesitate to say it, but we DO seem to be back on schedule.  Tentatively.  For now.  And this with me having to work overtime on Saturday, too.  Confidence is high!  One can never predict too much, of course, but I’m pretty happy to be back on the weekly updates – the story is on a pretty good clip now that we’re reaching the end of the first chapter, and I really don’t want to stop now.

So here we have Mike-One-Echo getting into the thick of it.  I bet you were wondering about those dome-shaped turrets he was carrying.  Well, they’re lasers.  And here we see them being used for the first time to shoot down incoming artillery shells.  At least that’s what that panel is supposed to depict.  And even if you don’t get that, I think it looks pretty active, and in a graphic storytelling sense, it speaks “heavy gunfire” in a general, iconic sense.  So I let it stand.  Special thanks to the poster calling him/herself “Genn,” for reminding me that Mike actually HAS advanced point-defense that would make him very hard to hit.  My original sketch was a complicated “hit-damage-followthrough-response” kind of action sequence, and I think that the way it came out not only was a lot clearer and less complicated, it also put on another dimension to Mike as the rolling fortress that he is: nearly impregnable, and something that the Federates have never seen before.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone who’s been posting here recently.  It’s very helpful to me, as well as being a nice reminder that there actually ARE people reading this.  And in spite of my artsy-fartsy protestations about art for its own sake, this is, after all, a story, and I want people to read it!  So thanks!  And thanks also for all the votes.  We’re creeping up towards the top 100 with each passing month, so every vote counts!

By the way, for any readers who happen to be cartoonists, or are in any way interested in my take on the art and craft thereof, I’m doing a small series on the Vicious Print blog concerning composition and execution of backgrounds in comic books.  Granted, 6-Commando has a decidedly simplified style to the sets and props (this was deliberate, to give it a kind of GI-Joe cartoony feel), but it’s an extremely important part of comic art that is being seriously neglected in a lot of online comics these days, as well as in print, albeit to a much lesser extent (the editors are still on their toes – for now at least!)  Anyhow, my first article in the series is up now, and though I don’t normally draw attention to my personal arts blog, this series will, I hope, be of some interest to my fellow comic artists.

Anyway, enough out of me.  Keep posting, keep voting, and have a great week!