Author notes

092 - What Makes Ozzy Happy

El Cid

on July 25, 2016

Sorry, no animation today. The animated adventures of our daring secret agents in outer space will continue soon, but I've been super busy and it's looking like a busy week ahead. On top of that, I need to build a space station for the next installment of the series, so that's going to take some doing. Hopefully the next animations should be ready in time for Friday's update.



It's easy to fall behind during Lightning Week! because of the lightning fast updates. So hopefully no one's fallen too far behind. The interplay between Jetta, Ozzy, and Rana is a bit of a tangled web so, just to make sure everyone's on the same page, here's a quick breakdown of where we are with them:



The dialogue on this page was completely rewritten several times due to script changes. At the time I made this page, the conflict between Ozzy and Rana was going to be a major subplot in the story. Since then, in an effort to drastically reduce the page count and simplify the story, I've written that and most of the other subplots out of the script, so I was left with unnecessary pages that I needed to fill with some kind of relevant dialogue. Because of how things work out in the current version of the script, some of the upcoming pages will seem somewhat superfluous because they were originally meant to set up a conflict which was subsequently kiboshed.



It's hard to gauge the audience based on the trickle of feedback I get on this comic, but there have been a few comments that the story so far has seemed a bit muddled and directionless. First of all, that's a completely valid criticism, and one I've made myself. If the comic is coming up on 100 pages and your readers can't give a succinct summary of what it's about, then there's something wrong. A big part of the problem is just poor editorial control on my part. First and foremost, the events of this chapter should have been presented before the events at the end of Chapter 1. That probably would have fixed everything. But there definitely have been pages and plot elements introduced which the story probably could have done without (the mooner bad guys at the end of Chapter 1 being the most egregious example - retcons are in the works). However, it's also worth keeping in mind that this is a long form story comic, and events and characters are going to be introduced whose significance don't become fully appreciated until later on. So, to help allay any worries that everything you've read up to this point has been nothing but falderal, I'm going to post a few hints and spoilers to shine light on the murk. If you're good with the comic so far and don't think you need to see any spoilers, then you may just want to skip this section.

SPOILER #1: Chapter 1 Wasn't Pointless
Agent Six is intended to play a role later on in the comic. He wasn't just briefly dropped in for eye candy and shock value. Likewise, Manu's encounter with Abby and Delilah is not a pointless plot tangent. It certainly was milked for a gratuitous sex scene, and their trip to the Vol was meant to be a more elaborate scene than what it will end up being, but ultimately – without giving too much away – Abby and Delilah are not irrelevant characters in the final sum of things.

SPOILER #2: Nina's Rabbit Hole Goes Even Deeper
The fight scene with Nina, though thrilling, may in retrospect have seemed like a gratuitous excuse for an action sequence. Not so. There's one last major aftershock from that event, which comes at the very end of this chapter. There's enough there that you could have seen it coming. Something was a little too convenient there…

SPOILER #3: Jetta's Poker Face
It's probably obvious to some of you, but Jetta didn't come into this room to take a job from Ozzy. What's less obvious now (but will be clear by the end of the scene) is that she set things in motion on page 85.

SPOILER #4: We're Not Going to Salacia
Not a huge spoiler, because I already said as much in the comments on a previous page, but this story ends exactly where it begins. It's not the story of what happens after Jettta and her crew set off to find Rahu; it's the story of how she ended up on that mission. It's intended to be a four chapter story, and we're coming up on the end of Chapter 2. It's not an 800 page epic; it should be like a 200-250 page comic. It's half a Death P#rn.

I should probably explain that: When I first started writing this (after several other aborted projects), I was going to write the comic that most of you probably think this is. However, as I worked on that, I realized that there was a backstory to how it all started, and the more I thought about, I began to realize that was a story worth telling as well. That is what this comic is. A story about the beginning of a story. I made that decision for a number of reasons, maybe the most important being that the other story – the story of Rahu and Salacia – actually would be an epic mega comic, but I wanted to do something shorter and really wasn't even sure if I could pull off a sci fi comic. Though it won't take us all the way to the end of their journey, this should still work as a self-contained story in its own right. Whenever I do finish this, I may or may not some time in the future decide to pick it back up and continue the tale.