About this Strip

So this one took way longer than I expected it to. The comic itself isn't even the longest of the ones I've made (only half the length of the Essential CVRPG IV) but it required a lot of new sprites for it. This was the first of the Essential comics to fully mimic the final art style for the series and, man, I had to make so many assets. This was apparently an ambitious arc.

We have new Siren II backgrounds (added to the ones I'd already made), new sprites for all the heroes (at least new poses if not totally new sheets, such as for Claudette and Cynthia, not to mention all the Lower Deckers, plus Alex and Evie Belmont). Ships, vehicles, and more and more. It was like every couple of panels I had to stop and make new assets.

That said, it does look great, and it was a fun arc to copy over so I do think the effort was worth it. Honestly, all the new assets give the comic a very Earthbound vibe, which I dig.

On the subject of changes, this one had a lot of condensing in its story. Each of the planetary adventures were greatly cut down, as is par for the course at this point. I also had a side-mission at Earth and Claudette and Golem go to talk to the Terran high command during the Stalker invasion -- it didn't feel needed since we've already cleared up the crimes, more or less. Better to just glide on past.

And while I haven't really wanted to do serious revisionist history, I did put Alex and Evie in here because I was reminded I could and it just felt right. Neither of them really get anything to do, but just having them here was nice.