As Greg says in this post, we’re going to go on a short hiatus here while we plan for the next chapter of Lady Sabre, and make some decisions about collecting the strip in print form.
However, we’re going to still be posting quite a bit here. This post will serve as a round-up of what we’re doing in the meantime.
WE NEED YOUR INPUT!:
Name those gunmen! VOTING NOW OPEN!
Give your input on how we should publish a trade!
OPEN QUESTION & ANSWER SESSIONS (post your own questions in the comments sections!):
Greg on ideas
Rick on ideas
Rick on scheduling
Eric on web design
THINGS TO PEEK AT:
The Steampunk Future of Comics (documentary interview with Rick!)
Who’s guarding the Pegasus?!
I nominate myself, if there’s no one else.
Approved!
YES! I won’t let you down!
Aethereal fish?
Will we see more examples of the land being changed by storms? Cause that was terrifying.
Hey, Jeremy – sorry for the delay on this.
To answer: inevitably.
Roughly how long do these take? And what program are you using to digitally paint the comic?
Thank you for all the hard and impeccable work!
Jaynious, I use Manga Studio EX 4 to do both the coloring and the lettering on the strip. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles as Photoshop, but so far, it’s done everything I’ve needed, and it’s a lot cheaper.
I’ve seen small countries on the market that cost less than Photoshop.
Greg, how important is detailing the world you and Rick are creating, in comparison to telling this specific story set in that world? And have you decided, at this point, whether you’re going to end the story at a certain point, like Freakangels did, or make it ongoing for as long as you can?
Detailing the world is tricky, frankly. I can easily get distracted with the minutiae and detail of world-building, so I tend to have to cut myself off at a certain, abstract point that I define as “enough for now.” “Enough for now” is roughly equivalent to “I can write forward from this,” though, inevitably, I’ll encounter something in the writing that I haven’t considered or thought-through enough. That’ll lead to, essentially, a pause in the actual writing of a script to fill in any gaps I may need to move forward. Often, I’ll end up referring those gaps to Rick and Eric for further discussion or elaboration. But I have to limit myself, because ultimately, it would be all-consuming.
As for an end point, I’ve always imagined the series as a set of novels, sort of The Books of Sabre, which then break into parts which, in turn, are made up of separate chapters. So this would be Book I, end of Part I, between Chapters 5 and 6, at the moment. As a result, I can see a long series of “books,” but each book in turn having a terminus. This “book” is about 1/4 or 1/3 of the way in. So, yes, it can keep going, provided Rick, Eric, and I can afford to continue (afford being a catch-all for financial, professional, personal, and time constraints and concerns).
The comic definitely has a level of “Wild West” in it as well as that sense of pre-WW1 Europe where law was a very flexible and relative thing depending on your social and economic status.
Is the level of authority that law enforcement has in the world of the Aether comic something you’ll touch on? Especially as we get a “pirate” working with a “lawman?” I wonder just how legitimate a position Lady Sabre would have as a citizen during “shore leave.” Is it relative to the landmass?
There is no single authority amidst the Sphere, so law is regional and national. Drake is a Tanitin Regional Marshal, so his authority while in Tanitin is pretty strong; outside the Land, far less so. His traveling with Sabre is therefore, as you suspect, problematic. That said, he has not seen, nor is aware, of her breaking any Tanitin law. While “at Aether,” his authority is irrelevant, at least to Her Ladyship the Captain. But… yes, it will likely lead to friction in the upcoming chapters.
Sabre holds herself bound to the laws of Allyria, and to the Rose; thus what she does and what she is willing to do she views in that context. Sailing under a Letter of Marque and Reprisal obviously has given her a… dispensation to perform what are illegal acts (ie, piracy) with immunity from prosecution from Allyrian authorities. The Fueille, obviously, don’t think that Letter of Marque is worth the paper it’s printed on, and the same can be said for the Hollern Unity.
Tanitin itself becomes more problematic, because it’s a colonized land without a strong (though it is emerging) unified government. This means that regions of the Land are governed by law as dictated by the colonial powers, ie, Fueille, Allyria, Hollern, etc. This relates back to Drake’s authority – his ability to enforce the law is, on paper, very strong; in practice, it’s less-so, because the colonial powers have representatives whose “interpretation” of the law can overrule his own.
Wow, Tanitin politics must be nuts. Kind of a late 18th century Louisiana deal, except the Louisiana territory didn’t really have a large enough or rich enough population to make the politics on the ground all that complex.
That’s an excellent analogue. Tanitin is rapidly approaching a self-determination “tipping point” – one of the only things that has held Tanitin from declaring itself free of its colonial masters is the fact that each of those colonial masters is very worried about the other colonial powers, eg, the Fueille are very worried about what happens if they’re ejected, but Hollern isn’t, etc. That propaganda has worked so far, but is becoming less and less effective as the populace moves further and further away from self-identifying as, say, “Allyrian,” and instead views themselves as “Tanitin.”
I’ve been aiming people at this since you started writing it and it occurred to me that in this first part you’ve set up what seems to be the main players for a while: Allyria, Fueille, Hollern and The Smoke.
I’m curious how many more characters you have in the background who haven’t come onto the stage yet. How many other Aetherships are there? Will we meet other captains? How large is the world?
My big question is what is The Smoke? One devious person or a whole group of people? I’ll understand if you want to keep it enigmatic for revelations later on but I couldn’t resist asking a few questions. 😀
Hey, Ryan – thanks for the support and for spreading the word; you’ve no idea how much we rely upon and appreciate that!
Most of the initial characters (with a few exceptions like the Rose, the Hollern Regent, and a few others whose names I’m withholding at the moment ;)) that I drew up bios and notes for have appeared, at least in some fashion or another. There are many more characters who exist only as names and concepts, with only a few jotted notes, nothing more. The world itself is quite grand, and as you’d imagine, there are fleets from every major nation sailing the Aether. As for other captains… eventually, but not for quite a while yet.
As for the Smoke… well, the entr’acte that’ll run when we resume should go a ways to explaining the who and the what. But yes, I’m somewhat obligated to keep that answer obscured for the time being.
An “ideas” question–Greg, to my knowledge, this is probably the most fantastic property of your own that you’ve ever worked on (fantastic as an adjective, not a compliment–though that too!). You seem pretty comfortable working with magic and superscience and the like when it comes to romping in existing playgrounds (adding minotaurs to Wonder Woman’s supporting cast, for instance), but your own worlds tend to be grounded in reality pretty exclusively. Was there any particular motivation behind creating your own fantastic world, in fully both senses of the word?
I think, when Rick and I started bandying ideas about, one of our immediate thoughts was to make it bigger and grander and pulpier. I’ve tended to shy away from high fantasy and the like (though Rick and I did try to get a high fantasy comic off the ground about eight years back; obviously that never took flight) because I’m… I wouldn’t say obsessive (others might disagree), but rather very committed to the world having a reliable and consistent internal logic. The further you take your story-world from “our own world,” the more difficult that can become. And as much as I am a science enthusiast, my own basic knowledge of chemistry and physics has been culled by the passing years. Which is another way of saying, I get very nervous about things making sense.
Working like this, in something that is wholly ours, and in something that had no expectations attached to it, is very liberating. Most of the publishers I work with in comics expect certain things from me at this point in my career, and amongst those things are “realism” or a “realistic” feel. So being beholden to no one, Rick, Eric, and I have been able to pretty much follow our fancies; hence Aether and aetherships and magic and monsters and the like.
Motorfirebox’s question is mine and I bet many others!
Hi, Dad! Happy Father’s Day!
Just finished the archives. However much Time passes until the story’s resumption, it will seem to crawl. Wonderful work, guys – SO much fun. All the best.
The good news is you won’t have to wait as long as everyone else has, Michael! The other good news is that we’ll be back pretty soon!
Love the homages to the artwork of Roger Dean, and the aether ships — and a Marshall! (Would he be played in the film by Tom Selleck or Sam Elliott? LOL!) I like how you’ve conglomerated multiple genres — wild west, pirate adventures on the high seas, Victorian, Jules Vern/steampunk, magical/mystical, dangerous lady/ — I’ll be interested to see where you go with this, especially what direction you take Sabre + the Marshall.