The Astonishing Excursions of Helen Narbon & Co, Chapter Four.

Ah, if only I’d invested in a fifty-cent circle template, so I could draw non-wobbly circles. That’s just sad. But I’m happy with the way this installment turned out overall. I mean, fish ships. And Mell’s got a blunderbuss! It may be anachronistic, but I don’t care.

Hey, there’s some decent circles! About time!

In much the same way that I thought putting lots of tiny lines on the art gave it period flair, I was obviously under the impression that adding unnecessary dashes to dialogue made it old-timey. I was, of course, correct on both counts.

I made up the Victorian storyline as I went along, so plot twists like having Madblood show up were very spur-of-the-moment. For the next installment, I had to figure out why he was there.

The grappling arm was directly inspired by a scene in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. I’m not proud of this, but it’s true. Incidentally, that’s one freaky-looking mechanical hand?

7 thoughts on “The Astonishing Excursions of Helen Narbon & Co, Chapter Four.

  1. Miss Narbon’s arrow-tipped umbrella is very pretty.

    Fun fact: prior to 1910, the only metals available to mad scientists were copper alloys.

  2. that’s one freaky-looking mechanical hand

    Indeed —   it’s got individual (ball?) joints for every finger, nicely imitative “musculature” for the crotch of the hand… but then for the arm, it looks like you were thinking of rabbit-ear TV antennas!  And never mind the missle-like fingertips!

    But hey, the whole victorian biomorphism thing is kind of a running joke anyway, as you drift from giant fish-ships to giant fish in ships… hmm, there’s a deep-fried joke in there somewhere.

     

  3. <i>What sort of anti-gravity moongoing bathyscape doesn’t have a grappling arm?</i>

    I rarely laugh out loud at my computer, but for some reason this page really got to me.  I started laughing at this line and didn’t stop for the rest of the page.  I *love* this page.

    Incidentally, I thought the word was “bathyscaphe,” but Wikipedia lists -scape, -scaphe and -scaph as acceptable endings, then proceeds to switch between them throughout the entry.  Reminds me of a lot of other multiple-author works I’ve seen.

  4. I second Lenore’s comment … that line of Helen’s in the first panel literally had me laughing aloud as well.  You might as well question the rationale of equipping a ladies’ parasol with a spring-loaded harpoon.  It just works.

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