So what, pray tell, was the resistance doing on a planet that had all sentient life removed from it? Were they trying to find people who had escaped?
ShadeTail
Maybe. Or maybe scouting a location for a secret base. Or maybe just for shits and giggles. Does it really matter?
What I wonder is, how exactly did Gunner figure out where Daedalus was hidden?
Canin Christell
This entire epilogue’s purpose is for satisfying the readers’ collective curiosity, telling us the how and why. I was curious as to if there was a connection, ShadeTail. =)
ShadeTail
Fair point.
I think we aren’t quite at the epilogue yet, though. There’s still the big question about what Gunner is going to do now. He’s still alive and in charge of the GEF, after all.
They crash-landed. It was hinted I think a little during the stuff when Reona and Co. were on base and talked with Taddoran and Kiryu, but there’s a rough script to do a prequel that will never ever happen that goes into full detail about it.
Trying to figure out what to do…well obviously what you needed to do what get someone to erase your memory.
Wait.
What?
How does that work out for anyone except Zap.
My thing against Efrem is if you know your friend has a crush on someone, you mark that someone as off limits and back off if it comes to it. It’s just what friends do for each other. There’s a bazillion romcom movies out there with similar issues. Girl 1 crushes on Boy, Girl 1’s friend Girl 2 knows Girl 1 crushes on Boy. Boy may even make a move on Girl 2 but Girl 2 rebuffs and tries to direct his attention to Girl 1. These things usually work out somehow to romcom happy fuzzies. OK, maybe not a bazillion. But still, it’s like Efrem never saw a romcom!
But Efrem knew. HE KNEW. You say it right there in panel 6. Zap was looking for her. What I’m curious to know is did Reona actually like him all by her own self, or did Efrem influence her emotions? From my current perspective what he should have done was stay friends (only friends) with Reona and tell her he’s got this friend she should meet. I dunno. I don’t hate Efrem, I don’t think I ever have hated him. I think this flashback stuff is filling in a lot of details to understand all 3 of these guys better so that helps, but I still don’t like him hooking up with Reona when he knew his friend had been searching the universe for her. So sorry, Efrem, you’ll never be my favorite. That honor goes to Kasey anyway. ;P
safyrejet
Another one of those serendipity things.
Berserk Knight
Why would you write down the “SECRET” location where you hid something?!
Also, on a similar note : NEVER keep diaries / logs unless you absolutely intend it to be seen by anyone and everyone.
chrisbrady
What Efrem did was creepy and dishonest. Not something something a friend would do. Whether or not Zap is OK with it, doesn’t matter. What matters is that Efrem went after Zap’s girl, knowing Zap was interested in her.
Marduk
Good guy Efrem
Also, I wonder if Gunner really trusted Zap that much? That means he really did believe him when he said the ships were confiscated…
kerrie_30
I think he was suspicious but tried to believe him, or maybe he’s instinct was saying it was off but wanted to believe Zap.
kerrie_30
still Efrem knew she was Zap’s dream girl, it still rather unfriendly of him becoming her boyfriend regardless.
As Pascalle said, this is hinting to a prequel script I wrote a long time ago that unfortunately at this time is probably never going to get made. It was supposed to be straight to print at the time. Maybe I could do a novelization version or draw it myself if I weren’t such a shitty artist in comparison. Basically it told the story of how excelsior and robot were found and I must say it was pretty great. I’m a bit bias though.
AbzoluteZero
dat NTR tho :p
Kalil
I like how everyone here is assuming that humanoid aliens (or, at least, very distantly, cultural and temporally, evolved humans – I’m a little unclear on how ‘human’ Zap and co actually are) have the same cultural attitude towards sexual and relationship exclusivity that modern western humans do. >.<
Psithief
In the cast page it specifically says “Human/Psychic” so yes they’re human.
Presumably they banded together like a cult and settled on that planet after humanity left Earth for the first time.
Kindra Coates
Yeah, Efrem’s still on my squick list for that.
safyrejet
Well regardless of what cultural attitude any storybook species may or may not have, we naturally project our own set or moral right or wrong into how we interpret the story characters actions. What else are we supposed to do?
He was definitely suspicious, hence rooting through Zap’s stuff. But I agree, I think he wanted to believe Zap.
Mike
In Efrem’s defense, it’s not like it’s easy to just turn your emotions off. If he honestly fell for her, that would take some mighty will-power to “back off.”
And hers too, yes. But we weren’t upset with her to start with :D
safyrejet
That’s one thing I’ve been curious about. Did Reona love Efrem of her own free will or did he use his empathy thing to manipulate people around him? I recall some point where Reona questioned how everyone just seemed to like Efrem and she didn’t know why. I dunno, maybe I’m remembering something wrong. I don’t have time to archive hunt.
ShadeTail
I absolutely agree with you. It’s not like we have another frame of reference.
At the same time, though, I notice that almost everyone here is ignoring Reona’s part of this. She sure seemed to have a thing for Efrem before he vanished. Well, her emotions count too, and she had never even met Zap.
For that matter, neither had Zap ever actually met her. That alone makes this quite a bit different from someone going after his pal’s crush behind his pal’s back.
Author’s opinions on their own created, fictional characters are invalid.
Speedy Marsh
:'(
We need prequel
*puppy dog eyes*
Speedy Marsh
Just cut and paste from Pascalle’s work. She won’t mind. Honest. I had our psychic friends scan her mind, and they said she was cool with it. (Of course, they don’t have the best track record when it comes to honesty. They might just want the intel on the resistance.)
You could do rough pencil sketches.
Heck, we’d even take stick figures. It’s worked for XKCD for years.
You should draw the first page of the prequel in stick figures, and see what everyone thinks.
Chris is welcome to do whatever he wants with the prequel, if he wants to!
Psithief
Hilariously almost-human, eh?
Maybe we evolved from their retards. :D
Speedy Marsh
I doubt Efrem would use his gift to manipulate someone like that. For one thing, being an empath, he would feel the pain that would be caused by making someone act against their free will.
I think one thing that makes him so likeable, is the fact that he can read the “vibes” that people put off better than a normal person. Without even trying, he would probably know a person’s mood, whether they felt like talking, or want to be left alone, etc. All the stuff that men are expected to just know, but are clueless to. That would probably go a long way toward making Reona (or anyone) like him.
As long as he promises to draw the pants. I can’t stop wondering why Zap and Efrem had those startled/worried (maybe even guilty) looks on their faces, in the drawing that Chris added erect, uncovered lower halves to.
I mean, is there another side to their relationship that we didn’t know about? Is that why Zap didn’t mind Efrem getting intimate with Reona? Was Zap dreaming about Reona and Efrem, at the same time?
Above all, what would Reona’s reaction be?
Those lower halves were not erect!
I just wondered why they were circumcised.
AND OH MY GOD WHY DID I NEVER THINK OF A THREESOME AAH BEST BEST AHA.
Psithief
All the aliens are humanoid and can speak a single language. Looking exactly Caucasian without actually being human isn’t that surprising.
I may have just been looking for a joke. :p
Speedy Marsh
“Excelsior, turn off the grav plating in the captain’s quarters.”
Speedy Marsh
Well, at one point Star Trek explained it by adding an ancient alien race that seeded the entire galaxy with life, leading to the evolution of all humanoid lifeforms.
safyrejet
True, I think as we know more about what happened and why, this back story part, we’ll be able to sort out all the characters (and how much we do or do not like them) better. The problem with Efrem is for so much of the story his motivations and purposes were so hidden and double crossing manipulative and tricky. It’s almost like we’re unlearning most of what we knew about him so it’s harder to say we like what he did immediately.
I’m not ignoring Reona, but I also didn’t have much reference to say why she was with Efrem. With the idea given that she liked him on her own, I think that’s better in my mind. It seemed in many ways like Efrem might have manipulated that situation too, he manipulated everything else. So I mostly worked off the idea that Reona was manipulated into that relationship for some reason. And he did spend most of the story hurting Reona so there’s that against him.
Regardless of whether he actually loved her at some point (and it does seem he did/does) his actions did cause her real pain during that whole period where she believed him dead, wondered why he’d fake his death and abandon her, and then wondering why he’d “betray” GEF and turn her over to someone like Naveed. Whatever noble end goal that’s come about, he still did her wrong. And now she’s finding out that he knew all along that his friend was searching for her. I mean speaking as a girl hoping for true love and all that, if I found out some guy I was with got with me even though he somehow knew that his other friend was my universal destiny or whatever, I’d be pretty mad.
There’s this other issue to me, yeah Efrem didn’t exactly go behind Zap’s back and steal his girl because Reona didn’t know Zap and Zap actually didn’t know Reona either. But that’s how normal people work and normal people don’t have psychic dreams about their dream girls. Zap did and he knew his soul was searching for hers. Efrem knew that too, obviously because he was able to go back and tell Zap “I’ve found her”. What I think Efrem should have done, to be the most absolute not squicky friend, would have been to tell Reona she has to come meet this friend of his. And resist any personal relationship with her until she’s had a chance to meet them both and decide for herself. This psychic stuff adds to what a good friend should and shouldn’t do I think.
But as we’ve pointed out, this is speculative projection of our personal set of morals and what not on fictional characters with non-existent powers. Not exactly clear cut normal stuff going down here.
Speedy Marsh
I haven’t seen the look that Zap has on his face in the last panel, since my kids were young enough to have poopy diapers. I think I can smell Zap’s shorts from here. (And that’s in a flashback, too!)
See you at Wizard World! - 2014-11-05 Chris and I will be at Wizard World Tulsa this weekend (Novemeber 7-9!) at the Cox Business Center in Downtown Tulsa. Come see us if [...]
Volume 3! - 2014-07-22 Hey! If you’ve been waiting to get Volume 3, wait no more!
Vol 3 from Brainstorm Limited on Square Market
Original Art Sale! - 2014-07-06 HEY! I want to sell a bunch of the original pages from the comic because there are a lot of them and I don’t want [...]
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