Electric Team

Page 294 is here, and I’ve got commentary on it!

1. This is the last page of the montage sequence. Next week Jeffrey Johnson returns as artist. He’ll draw the last two pages and then we’re done, for the foreseeable future.

2. As I mentioned last time, Space Lobster was originally planned as the villain for The Electric Team #6. We changed it at the last minute because a.) we got very excited about using Dr. February and Larzipan, and b.) I was having trouble coming up with a clever way for our heroes to defeat Space Lobster.  The beauty of a montage sequence like this is that I can just write, “Leeta and Jaxula talked it into leaving the planet” and I don’t need to elaborate.

3. It’s hard to come up with a good resolution when your heroes are fighting a vastly more powerful opponent. One of the all-time great comic book stories is the Galactus Trilogy from Fantastic Four #48-50, when the FF go up against a cosmic menace more powerful than anything they’ve ever faced, a foe they can’t possibly defeat. And they win through a total deus ex machina. The plot shouldn’t work, but Lee and Kirby sell it, and the dramatic execution of the story keeps you from minding that the Watcher basically just hands the heroes the necessary plot device.
 
4. Like the members of the Electric Team, Space Lobster is based on a toy. It’s a toy lobster I had when I was a kid, and it was still around when Abi and I played with the Electric Team.

5. Though the plan for the Electric Team to fight Space Lobster came first, I drew a space lobster into my comic Laser Brigade years ago. In fact, it was . . . four years ago. Space Lobster is showing up here way behind schedule. 

6. I also put Space Lobster into Leopard Women of Venus, the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG setting I co-wrote with Josh Burnett, which is coming very soon.

Here are Space Lobster’s DCC stats:

Space Lobster
Init +6; Atk claw +16 melee (1d16) or energy beam +12 (2d16); AC 22; HD 20d12; MV 40’, fly 60’; Act 2d24; SV Fort +15, Ref +5, Will +16; AL N.
Special: Immune to damage from fire or radiation.

The Space Lobster is a terrifying, city-smashing crustacean behemoth that crackles with cosmic energy. It soars through space under its own power, pausing only to feed on radiation. Periodically the Space Lobster will land on a planet. Though it is highly intelligent, it does not communicate with lesser beings. It simply seeks out the nearest power source and begins to feed. If any native lifeforms attempt to interfere with its meal, it will incinerate them without a thought.

7. The first panel of this page is the pay-off to a joke from an earlier issue. Back on page 148, the Electric Team looks at a list of the villains they need to fight. There’s a tiny little picture of a frog guy labelled “Gagar.” Brianna then says,

Now, at long last, she gets her chance. No wonder she’s so happy!

8. This page was drawn by James Hornsby. I’ve been wanting to work with James for a long, long time. He’s a phenomenal artist. Unfortunately he, like Josh and Sam and the rest, has plenty of his own ideas and doesn’t need me to write things for him. Curses! But he’s available for small gigs, like this page, and I’m glad we got him to draw the Electric Team at least once.

9. James is married to Lindsay Hornsby, who also contributed a page to this montage sequence. The two of them met in art school, naturally. Lindsay writes and draw the Princess Pups comic, which is delightful, and is illustrating the upcoming RPG Laser Ponies.

10. Can you believe I delivered ten comments on a page that only has two panels? I didn’t know if I could do it, but I did! See you next week!