Strip 1097 - Click strip above to goto the next strip.
First Seen: Tue 2015-05-19
Story & Art: Scott Bieser - Colors: Lea Jean Badelles
Sci-Fi Adventure Monday & Thursday.
Quantum Vibe
A thousand years in the future, humanity has colonized worlds in nearly 100 galaxies, thanks to Quantum Vibremonic technologies developed five centuries earlier. Other new technologies have created various off-shoots of humanity and extended life expectancies five-fold. The story begins with how a mad scientist and his plucky assistant, along with their robot friend, brought humanity to the stars, and continues with the adventures of some unique people in fantastic places.
Indiegogo Campaign Has Begun! [ Nov 10, 2024 ]
Second times a charm. The epic QUANTUM VIBE: This Means War story concludes with Part 3, and we require funds to publish a print volume. To sweeten the pot a bit, a 3 pack of the print and PDF copies of all three parts of the This Means War story is a new perk. The stickers and magnet add-ons for the Project for a Free Cosmos concept (explained in the story) are available. And one final incentive for the first 20 who get there first, an add-on for a Free Cosmos Project coaster (1 per perk).
The campaign starts today, Sunday, November 10th, and will conclude in 31 days.
Click on this link or on the picture to back our campaign!
Transcript For Strip 1097
From the beginning the idea was to start with a solar-system-spanning, human civilization which had not yet developed a practical interstellar drive. For gameplay purposes I wanted seven ‘factions’ which I determined early on would be grouped into ‘mercantile corporations’ which I originally called ‘Mercans’ before I learned about the word ‘merkin’ and what that means. After that I changed the term to ‘Mercorps.’It took me a bit to work out the factions, their characteristics, and where they came from. Here’s an early graphic outline:
[graphic]
‘Elfive,’ which later became ‘L-5 City,’ was an early player, as I had long been fascinated by the idea of an anarcho-capitalist space-city. ‘The Sisters’ and ‘Titan’ were aligned, and Pluto and Triton were aligned with the Jovian Moons.
I spent several weeks of my unemployment fiddling with these concepts, adding aspects, and dropping others. The seats of power shifted to the inner planets, with the outer worlds (as well as Mercury) being mere colonial outposts. The Belt was a bit Rougher in my original conception than it was to become, owing in part to my work with Sandy Sandfort on Escape From Terra.
Along with the scene-setting came a back-story to the back-story. I’d worked out a 500-year history from the 1990s into the 2500s with important events sprinkled throughout. This timeline chart is too small to read here but you should be able to get the general idea:
[graphic]
The details don’t matter now because I have since added, removed, and repositioned most of the events. (I didn’t come up with ‘The calamities’ until I was already drawing volume 1. I need a reason for Seamus to be hiding his true identity and a world-rending disaster seemed to fill the bill.)
As this fictional universe was coming together I knew I needed to populate it with interesting characters, and a plot that would take them through this universe. The plot came fairly easily, but the characters took a bit more work.
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