PAGE FORTY EIGHT. Interior Ziggy’s Café.
Friday again already, Marsers. That seemed like a quick week. In any case, welcome back to Ziggy’s. Someone has some good hearing- probably from working all those years in demolitions himself, Ventiss Klegg knows the sound of an activated micro-fusion plastique bomb.
And the girls do apparently have a guardian angel named Veruca. Lucky for them. And while I’ll be the first to admit that I was a fan of “showgirl Veruca”, I also like “guerilla agent Veruca.” I would get both versions of the action figure. When the spin-offs start, I’d like to go more in depth with this character. But for now, she remains an enigma wrapped in a purple Mohawk.
I can’t wait for next week’s first panel. Any guesses what it’ll be?
I thought a lot about music pairings this week, but I’m going with a suggestion from Derek G, one of the original Blue Blaze Irregulars. He like Rage Against the Machine and ‘Calm Like a Bomb.’
I’m gonna keep it short this week- I’m on vacation now. It’ll be a working vacation, though, and I’ve got the outline done for the next Hannah Valerus tale.
Oh, if you get a chance. The gentlemen at Digital Strips reviewed ‘Free Mars’ this last week. Check it out. I would urge you to make their podcast a regular stop along your digital wanderings. And I’m not just recommending it because they give us a good review- I’ve been listening to their reviews for a while and I’ve found some interesting new comics as a result.
Until next week, may the odds be ever in your favor.
Dave
“Suprise Suqqers!”
From the look of them though, I doubt it’s the first time they’ve been blown up!
Why would you make a beeping bombs in the first place ?
Keep up the great work guys
Toasty!
My keen, clairvoyant skills lead me to believe that it is highly probably that at least 1 of those guys will survive the bomb. How long they hang around after that is anyone’s guess.
Yeah, why would you make it beep? I mean… what purpose does that serve?
It just wouldn’t be fair play if the bomb didn’t beep a little. Or a lot.
And if that’s not enough of an explanation, I suppose that they could’ve discovered the bomb some other way, but it might not make a good story when you have to delve deep into the measures and countermeasures game, with chemical sniffers and stuff. Or maybe it’d make an even better story if at least the majority of the readers didn’t see the silliness of making a hidden bomb beep like that?
I just read an article recently about some piece of electronics confiscated at an airport because it was beeping. The article went on to say that modern bombs probably wouldn’t beep- that the “beeping time bomb” was a Hollywood trope. It certainly serves a purpose, dramatically.
Here’s my explanation: if you are in a position to hear the beeping (indicating a live signal), it’s too late to do anything anyways. If the bomber(ette) had accidentally activated the bomb, the beeping would provide a 30 second warning to deactivate the micro-fusion explosive. Since the members of Orbital Burn don’t have the de-act code, the beeping becomes more of a taunting than a warning. It has also, obviously, stopped them shooting the joint up.
But it’s possible I think about this too much. Thoughts? You buying my explanation?
Oh, and to prove that I do indeed think about this stuff too much- I looked back through my notes. The bomb (Bom-omb) is more of a controlled mining explosive. So the 30-second de-act period makes more sense in industrial usage versus blow’in people up terms.
Finally, I think Bomberette should be another band name now.
Fellow Martians!
I rarely post here, mostly because I’m up to my neck in work trying to ring you updates, so… but I hought this discussion was interesting enough for me to chime in.
Since I’ve been drawing FREE MARS, several echnological items have come up for which we have (or Dave has) an explanation for. Sometimes he doesn’t, and soI do; I actually have an explanation for every device I draw (including, for example, a security failsafe on the CSCs headquarters’ gardens and fauna tanks in the event of an earthquake or building collapse for unknown reasons). Ys, we think abou t that much, but it’s great because it makes this world all the more alive.
The Micro-Fusion Explosive, as explained by Dave, is a mining explosive used for specific controlled environments where extreme care has to be provided to the surrounding structure. The beeping, thus, is an incorporated safety measure to warn the mining units to evacuate the immediate area; and whilst modifying the detonator would be the logical thing to do, these devices are all made by the CSC which makes any tampering with them not viable unless you wan to render the apparatus useless.
With due time and care, you could import a fresh detonator from other colonies through the black market, but I would suppose those items would be extremely expensive for the MLF to use on a less than subtle operation. Like this one.
So, yeah, we think about this stuff too much
Nic.-
I guess there are downsides to having a table reserved.
Thanks for the replies
I did consider that the beeping might be because the detonator was a commercially available part. But then I also had Improvised Explosive Device in the back of my head, so I thought that an underground movement would most likely build their own bombs. At least when stealth is an issue. 30 seconds seem to be plenty of time for a target to get away, so it seems very risky to alert them when the explosion is as controlled as this one turns out to be. But I suppose that “beggars can’t be choosers” might apply to Veruca and bombs.