Thursday and Friday saw my drawing time go into a redraw of a previous strip.  There’s no lettering in the original strip, and I’m really thinking that adding captions would be counter-productive. I’ll research a little about captions, especially in the context of sci-fi comics, but right now, the impulse is to leave the strip captionless. The Science Fiction comics of the 50s, especially the really great EC comics made heavy use of captions, but they were building upon the prose science fiction of pulp novels. So far, I’ve not used captions in this story, aside from the “elsewhere” blurbs, and I really feel like captions in this setting would be useless and be telling things that I can show.

Also, I’m aware that some may be using larger monitor settings to view the Internet, so if you’re having trouble reading the lettering, here’s a tip, if you’re using Windows XP. While pressing “Ctrl”, slowly roll the scroll wheel on your mouse away from you. This’ll enlarge the page and rolling it back will return it to the larger resolution.

In last week’s strip I casually mentioned that I would eventually be re-drawing Flight of the Virginia Dare. I’ve planned to re-draw it for some time, if for no reason than I just don’t like a majority of the artwork that I did 8-9 years ago. I also don’t like the way the romance between Jenny and Officer Duett just kind of happens. In the revision, we’ll get a tour of the Virginia Dare and a real sense of why a conventional bomb in the ballroom will damage the ship past the point where it would be space worthy, since it’s a BIG ship.

There’s also a bit of science that needs to be cleared up. The effort with Jet-Pack Jenny, despite the absurd name she goes by, is that the science fiction is supposed to be scientifically accurate. It’s just something that really irks me when science fiction gets science wrong. Of course, it’s one thing if the science fiction is from an era and the science that’s wrong simply wasn’t known, yet. Getting the atmosphere of Venus as habitable is fine if you’re writing a story in 1952. but it’s bad science if you’re writing it in 2002. Ignorance doesn’t count, either. That’s why I’m redrawing the story.

No new strip this Monday. It’s been a busy week, and the weekend is even busier. It’s not that I’ve been letting myself get distracted, I’ve just gotten too many balls up in the air creatively. You wanna know something, though? I’m happy with having the past two months having new content every week. However, I am going to make you a deal. I will post a redrawing of an older strip, and in exchange, you forgive me. Deal?

I said do we have a deal?

Okay, for Easter Monday, I’ll post a new strip AND a redrawn one, as well. Now be happy, that’s all you’re getting.