15

Jun 2015

Chapter 7: Page 2 – An Important Call

Posted by / in Comic / 52 comments

New page with a new character! Meet Konstantin. You’ll learn more about him shortly :P

Let the theorizing commence!

I’ll probably be posting an edited image at some point. Amberlight informs me that google translate failed me on the Russian background text :D

Also, can you recognize the 3 cameo’d comics on this page? :D

  • Not believing it, but first! Do you mean the 3 mags in the floor by the nap-couch? Insufficient resolution, even zooming the teeny-weeny screenie. I can make.out Tienzin on one monitor, Valkyrie Leader on another, and possibly an explosion borrowed from Bob @3 Minute Max.

    Don’t think I win this quiz. :'(

  • Adriano

    Evil Russians are evil !

    I didn’t think that SkypeOfTheFuture would still have that annoying ringtone…

    • it’s complicated

      • DrCrazy102

        It’s Skype, of course it’s complicated, but do you mean more complicated than usual?

        • Hehe, I think that referred to Adriano’s first statement, not that second :P

          • DrCrazy102

            Oops! Ah well, still works

  • Иван Трусков

    Some comments on russian text.
    1) translation of “No video” is wrong. It should be “НЕТ ВИДЕО”
    2) In the first frame (fragmentary, as full text is not avaiable):
    “человек были заболел” -> “человек заболели”. In russian forms of “to be” as a general rule do not have equivalent verbs, and their meaning is translated as a form of the verb (tense, passive/active form, that sort of thing).
    “если их медицина не прибудет” -> “если их лекарства не прибудут”
    Medicine’s transliteration in russian would mean field or establishment dedicated to current people, when in this instance meaning of “drugs”/”vaccines”/whatever the case is should be conveyed

    3) Very interesting choice of cyryllic font. It looks like one in prayer-books.

    • @disqus_8XKHAw4roh:disqus already scolded me, and has provided a correct translation that Seba will be editing in sometime today :)

      Google Translate fails me again!

    • heh, a lot of ignorance from my part. when I look for Cyrillic fonts I found these and others like these, I couldnt tell if the shapes arent right for a computer.

      it would help me a lot if you can share or point me to better fonts

      • I think you should be able to just copy and paste from the text Amberlight gave us into your normal font? Or into something like Times New Roman if nothing else?

        • yep, I meant specific fonts. maybe I’m complicating things, but when I use a font to make it look like OCR ( For example) they dont have Cyrillic characters, so I’m limited to Arial and other classic fonts that are used all around the world

          • Hey @disqus_8XKHAw4roh:disqus what font do you use when you prepare the translation?

          • Amberlight

            The text that is not a character speech did not appear in the comic for so long that I literary do not remember the font I used for that:D
            I think some average font like Arial is rather fine. It’s a utility communication software used by an engineer, not some fanncy looking thing for kids.

  • Delta-v

    Soooo, is this payback for all the tactical nitpicking we got from a certain highly beloved group of readers? :)

    • Amberlight

      I’m pretty sure that was in the script even before there was something to pay back for. I think.

      • Delta-v

        A little over a year ago I warned the guys to choose their words carefully, because someday there would be readers from other countries, but I was stunned at how many and how soon they showed up. I should probably say “you” showed up, since you, personally, have done so much to help. :)

        I suppose you are right, and there is some merit for there being some Russian scientific outposts that the bombs missed since Russia is so large. I was mostly teasing, but you have to also admit the irony of making our second largest national reader group into the antagonists. ^^

        • You know, there’s only so much you can write about different groups around the world without offending some one. I’m sure that if we had a big group of Tibetan readers they’d find aspects of Tenzin very wrong.

          That said, in this particular case, the voice on the computer is not at all the voice of the writer. A good writer will write different personalities and some of them will be offensive.

          Take Tenzin’s case for example, the guy really is misogynist, right? but then you have his badass female AI that actually saved his life already twice, and Angeline who is one of the most important characters of the story without being a damsel in peril or a love interest. Can you say by chapter 7 that the story itself is misogynist?

          I find myself in a place where I’m not the creator of the story but I know a lot more than the readers, and I wont grow tired of saying: Everything is carefully planned here, pay attention to the details and if something seems odd just wait till you have more pages to see why it happened that way.

  • Honza Prchal

    “Comrade”. Not a good sign to hear that word, eh tavarischii?

    • I chose that word purposefully. The speaker knew what he was doing ;)

      • Honza Prchal

        I figured as much. That term is rather intimidating to a lot of us.

        • So much bad US media…

          Let me just say no that while this Russian might be an antagonist, that doesn’t make him a bad guy ;)

          • Sebastian Grey

            He’d better have a damn good motive for slaughtering civilians, then.

            So if ya’ll wouldn’t mind cluing in the yank, what’s the deal with comrade and tavarischii? Bad memories from the dissolution of the soviet bloc? Russia wasn’t my area of expertise, I’m a more Iraq/Iran/Afghan kinda guy.

          • I believe that it’s a bad taste after decades of crappy portrayals of russians as bad guys in western movies. They don’t even say “comrade” in real life, and stuff like that.

            I think.

          • Sebastian Grey

            Huh. I figured it wasn’t a thing now, but I am kinda curious to know if during the dissolution of the soviet bloc hardline communists attempted to restore a dicked-up, overly idealized version of the past through violence, a la the Taliban or Khmer Rouge. That’s what I originally figured, but I guess bad Hollywood movies would have the same effect.

          • Chris Kotthoff

            Japan and Hong Kong have done the same thing, cliches/tropes are very easy to identify with and don’t require much creative effort.

          • Xylas Incarnum

            kinda sad since they basically made the killing of Nazi Germany possible/much easier due to their whole “Taking of Berlin” part in it.

          • Honza Prchal

            Not because the term is Russian, but because it is Communist. I’m a former Soviet thrall, after all. It’s why I am now an American. The Soviets produced two people who murdered more than Hitler (the #1 murderer was Mao, but …)

          • Honza Prchal

            On reading what you wrote (I was a bit tired earlier), a better response from me would have been – Oh yes, I did figure the inventor is a good guy, or, at least, a victim. That came across loud and clear. The woman berating him seems far more menacing, what with the use of medicine to threaten him into providing secret assassin-bots.

            I am reminded of Barishnyikov’s character in White Knights, though he is being threatened through his loved ones, so I guess he’s more like Gregory Hines’ character or, at worst, the wretched General in Burnt By the Sun.

          • Xylas Incarnum

            Sounds more like someone has him by the balls a bit more than he’s happy with.
            then again it also sounds like he just wanted to make damn good soldier bots to help people but then got roped into some deep shit with no life line other than following orders.

            … or that could just be my mind making shit up. Not sure.
            Seems like a Trope-Cliche-thing though.

          • DrCrazy102

            You seem to have hit the metaphorical nail very hard on its head, several times.

  • DrCrazy102

    Did you just kill the female Tenzin? We just met her and she could have made a wonderful nagging tag-team with jane, so many lost potential jokes

    • :P Don’t worry, they’ll make new friends who won’t die. At least not immediately ;)

      • DrCrazy102

        Yay! More Tenzin friends! Who are going to go boom, splat or shot, any bets people? Next potential or actual friend that dies goes by what method?

  • Chris Kotthoff

    Actually sounds like a inside job considering they know Tenzin and Lily survived, plus it looks like the good doctor has their bios on screen.

    • Amberlight

      It does line up with what we can findin Mirage story.

    • I like when readers pay attention to all the extra work we put on the pages.

  • Barabulyko

    WHY IT’S RUSSIANS?!

    • Because I needed someone awesome :) And because Minerva’s only neighbors are Russia, China, and the Middle East, and it seemed likely to me that at least some sort of base and high technology would survive in Russia. I hear they’re very prepared for nuclear winter and stuff from the Russian readers on the translation mirror :)

      But don’t worry. Antagonist is not the same thing as “bad guy”. I like Konstantin a lot :)

      • DrCrazy102

        Wait a minute! Hold the maps! Minerva is in the region of Mongolia!?!? That does explain some of the terrain on the maps previously shown and I haven’t read through the extras so I may not have realised this earlier. I’m a bad fan.

    • because the artist is bad at drawing Chinese people?

      kidding. wait and read man, you’re not dealing with your ordinary all american hero here so why would you expect to have an ordinary all cliche bad guy?

  • Neil Kapit

    Is he friend or foe? “All Signs Point To Foe”

    • DrCrazy102

      Jacqueline, boom screen, I’m sad that a female Tenzin was killed

  • He looks trustworthy. You can tell by the shady-sounding dealings and spy footage.

    • its complicated

      :P

      btw, the footage is from a deathbot.

      • DrCrazy102

        Jacqueline got boomed up by death-bot

  • Citrus Reaper

    Ignore me cracking knuckles and reaching for my spanner as soon as I realized what was on this guy’s screens.

  • RTM

    Really… you’re going to stiff a guy’s food and meds? The guy who made your deathbots? Are you idiots?