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Out of Orbit

xailenrath

on Feb. 21, 2019

For those of you just joining us:

About 21 years or so ago, I made myself a comic strip starring 2 clueless aliens stranded on Earth.
It was called Out of Orbit.
For all intents and purposes, it still is called that.

Over the years I have taken the protagonists,
Balvinannek-Kalviknarozka and Balvinannek-Emilthraxis
(Known affectionately on Earth as "Roz and Thraxie Balvin")
through many a premise, many a home planet, and many a physical form.

I stalled the project some time ago, as other ideas came and went, but, I never truly dropped it. (Quelle Supris'!)

Looking back over my various designs for Roz and Thraxie, around 2011 or 2012, I'd decided to rework them once again and maybe tweak the original premise s'more.
After all, what could I possibly do with aliens in human form on earth that hasn't already been done with, say, Mork & Mindy, Alf, 3rd Rock, Invader Zim and every alien superhero from Superman to Silver Surfer?
I dunno, but, I figured it was worth a try. After all, I love these guys. they've been swimming around my imagination for over 2 decades.

The original synopsis for the comic was as follows:

Taking a vacation to an intergalactic gameworld, Balvinannek-Emilthraxis and Balvinannek-Kalviknarozka of the planet Xarva were lost when their tour shuttle got sideswiped by a small meteorite. They got into a lifepod, but were accidentally lost in a wormhole which stranded them on earth.

Young would-be astronomer Valerie Baker witnessed them crash and took the aliens home. Being metamorphs, the Xarvan castaways made themselves look like humans and are now living with Val, waiting for someone from their homeworld to pick up their distress signal and rescue them.
This, will take anywhere from 2 to 6 years.

In the meantime, "Roz and Thraxie" encounter Earth, it's people and customs to pass the time. Disguised as high-school boys (So Val can keep an eye on them and HOPEFULLY keep them out of trouble), they attend school in an effort to learn the social customs of Earthlings and become less likely to be found out.

Val's best friends, Maggie and Adam, and her aunt, Dr. Olive Baker, also help keep an eye on the aliens, though Maggie seems to have more fun getting them INTo trouble than out of. Adam tries to teach them to be 'cool'. Something he, himself, isn't even particularly skilled in.
Aunt Olive is an astronomer and research scientist, torn between turning the visitors over to the government, thus, learning some of the secrets of the universe, making her career and becoming rich and famous, and keeping her favorite niece safe and happy.


Some of the in-between strips and designs of Out of Orbit seem to have been lost to history and computer crashes, but, I was the type who was all-too happy to jump on whatever the shiny new internet "thing" was, and my old comics are scattered about the interwebs under old usernames from Angelfire to Blogspot to SheezyArt.
Surely some of the Out of orbit stuff is there. I've rescued most of it from my jumpdrives and deep-diing through my salvageable files.

Some of the various strips of Original Out of Orbit are what you see being used for background wallpaper in this pic.
If I get around to it, I may just redraw them all.
(yeah, right.)

If you look at the background stuff, you'll see that I changed the boys from brown and blonde, to maroon and white, and gave them dreds and a fauxhawk, respectively to make them look a bit more 'alien, yet still human'.
Later, I darkened their skin, and traded the fauxhawk for an actual mohawk, which led to the current look for the alien duo.