[PA Comic] Monday, August 5, 2013 - Sand, Part Ten

Geth

Sand, Part Ten
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/08/05

Raiden333

I want an entire comic series ala Lookouts.

Goatmon

Oh man.

Oh man.

TheAngryGazebo

Holy fuck what an ending.

Please tell me there's a Sand Kickstarter launching tomorrow so I can have more of this.

Redthirst

Hope they will continue this series, because it is awesome, best of all their long-going series so far, in my opinion.

Venkman90

Awesome, I was sceptical they could tie it up in this panel but that's a great ending.

I really need more of this to answer some of the questions:

Why are the survivors of the crash living like they are in the Old West?
Are all the people we have seen survivors? Do they know or have they forgotten?
How is he immortal? Is that her doing?
Why is she filled with daggers (cool as it looks)?

jklong

I cropped this out of the last frame for potential use as a background because it looks awesome. The size came out a bit wrong for my use, but it looks ok. Maybe someone with more skill than me can make use of it.

Looks like Gabe posted an official, much better one here.

Honk

This series has been so good.

Kagera

Venkman90 wrote: »

Awesome, I was sceptical they could tie it up in this panel but that's a great ending.

I really need more of this to answer some of the questions:

Why are the survivors of the crash living like they are in the Old West?
Are all the people we have seen survivors? Do they know or have they forgotten?
How is he immortal? Is that her doing?
Why is she filled with daggers (cool as it looks)?

Complete speculation:
The survivors of the crash eventually split into seven groups to try to eek out a way of life when they found the ship ai was kinda batshit which the ai used as a sort of betrayal imagery along with her biblical bent to create her new avatar.

macademician

This entire series has been strewn through with Biblical/Catholic Imagery. The previous strip's quote is Luke 15:22-24, recounting the Father's (in the allegory, God's) response to the parable of the Prodigal Son; today's strip shows Esther (the name of a biblical heroine, albeit in a story that never mentions God) done up as Mary of the Seven Sorrows. Each of the daggers represent one of the major traumas in the life of Mary (according to the four gospels):

The Prophecy of Simeon. (Luke 2:34-35)
The Flight into Egypt. (Matthew 2:13)
The loss of the child Jesus in the Temple. (Luke 2:43-45)
Mary meets Jesus on the way to Calvary.
Jesus dies on the cross. (John 19:25)
Mary receives the body of Jesus in her arms. (Matthew 27:57-59)
The body of Jesus is placed in the tomb. (John 19:40-42)

Presumably Esther is referring to bringing in the entire human race back to the mothership, and is acting as a divine figure.

Abdy

Holy hell I love this concept so much

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

in the first panel, who's the other guy? Just like, a guy? At first I thought it was supposed to be his reflection, but it doesn't look like it

Enlong

Wan or Tuu, probably.

Langly

I love that the Angel Cowboy's name is a number.

FettS1

Eat it You Nasty Pig. wrote: »

in the first panel, who's the other guy? Just like, a guy? At first I thought it was supposed to be his reflection, but it doesn't look like it

It looks like Phorr is holding the kid who sprung him from jail in his arms.

Skull2185

Ohhhhhhh

So the spaceship scenes were like, flashbacks?

Dark Raven X

That last line is all kinds of perfect

Skull2185

Also, someone needs to get Rockstar on the phone and tell em to make a Sand game.

Enlong

There are probably agents up to Seffin, for symbolism.

Chris FOM

This is the best of their long-form comics since Cardboard Tube Samurai. Better than Lookouts, better than Automata. That first panel intro strip a few years ago didn't even begin to hint at how amazing this would turn out.

Snork

yeah i was by far more excited about automata at first but this is outrageously cooler

Xaquin

damn fine end to this arc.

damn fine.

Hiryu02

Eat it You Nasty Pig. wrote: »

in the first panel, who's the other guy? Just like, a guy? At first I thought it was supposed to be his reflection, but it doesn't look like it

Isn't that the kid he brought back? He is wearing a hat but it is set down beside the kid when Phorr lays him down.

Funky Strong

Does anyone else get the impression that Automata took inspiration from The Big O whilst Sand takes inspiration from Trigun?

fightinfilipino

Funky Strong wrote: »

Does anyone else get the impression that Automata took inspiration from The Big O whilst Sand takes inspiration from Trigun?

both Automata and The Big O take a lot of inspiration from Film Noir and Steampunk, so i think that's more of a coincidence.

as for Trigun, Gabe actually addresses the apparent similarities in the thread for Sand 7.

Darkewolfe

So, the ship's AI has been generating superhumans as agents to go out and try to round up the ship's crew (or the descendants of the ship's crew) who for some reason have forgotten that they are all spacefarers and have instead formed a western-style society in the badlands of this unknown planet.

They are all on this planet because the ship had to crash land somewhere due to an alien attack, and it identified the most habitable planet in range. This leads us to wonder if the ship didn't perhaps crash land years or decades ago to conduct some sort of self repairs. It couldn't sustain life support for the crew while doing this, so it maybe implanted this western mindset in the crew and set them loose as a temporary way to keep them alive. It sort of makes sense, a semi-technological frontier is a reasonable corollary for the circumstances she was having to dump them in while she repaired herself.

She has now affected sufficient repairs to put them all back into cryo-sleep before either A. she launches herself off to continue her original mission or B. she keeps them in cryo-sleep forever because she's gone rogue and wants to "protect" them.

So far she's had to create four saviors to round up the crew, either because bad things keep happening to the saviors or just because of how long this process is taking.

The ship seems to be sufficiently large for there to be an entire nation of people that were supposed to be in it.

Enlong

At least four.

Gaslight

The AI says "there are so many." Four seems like a pretty small number for a supercomputer AI to have trouble counting to...so maybe there are legions of other cowboy pseudo-messiahs roaming the wastes?

Auguste

If you'll indulge me quoting myself from Part Six...

I will stand corrected if need be, but I was unsettled by the narrative shift to sci-fi, then this strip settled me back down.

IOW, I suspect that when we look back on this story once it's finished we'll find that the shifts were well-done and appropriate.

Et voila.

Enlong

I'm sticking with seven, for symbolism purposes.

Crafty

Wow. This story was losing me, and now it's got me good and hooked.

Darkewolfe wrote: »

She has now affected sufficient repairs to put them all back into cryo-sleep before either A. she launches herself off to continue her original mission or B. she keeps them in cryo-sleep forever because she's gone rogue and wants to "protect" them.

For me, not knowing is the hook. Is she really sufficiently repaired? It looks like she can put them to sleep, but forget launch - is she even sufficiently repaired to maintain them? Are the townspeople totally ignorant of her existence, or is she a known evil that sends unkillable minions to steal their children? Did she have some early failures that soured the relationship? She portrays herself with daggers in her chest, and the townspeople execute people for talking that crazy talk, both of which make me think there may have been some mishaps.

Like I said: Hooked.

foodle

Wow. Awesome.

I had my doubts with the basic similarities with Trigun, but this is fantastic.

Questions:
1) Is the boy "Phorr" or the adult protagonist "Phorr"? The way I read the dialogue has me believe the boy is "Phorr" and the adult protagonist is to round up all the others. It would seem the boy is the Prodigal Son figure, not the adult protagonist. The adult is more a servant of Esther, who is in constant contact with her. So he was never lost to her.

2) What manner of being is the adult protagonist? Clearly he's immortal (to a degree) which would indicate that he's either some kind of enhanced human, cyborg, or fully artificial lifeform/machine.

3) What are the "others" like? Presumably they are special in some way, and some could have discovered that power and used it for nefarious purposes.

Gabriel

Thanks you guys!

the adult is Phorr

he is not "human"

foodle

Gabriel wrote: »

Thanks you guys!

the adult is Phorr

he is not "human"

Thanks!

100% down for sponsoring a Kickstarter on this!

chamberlain

Excellent stuff.

I got a bit of a Xenogears vibe from it, but that may just be me.

Gaslight

Gabe did a brief Q&A as a newspost:

So that’s it for this chapter of Sand. If you want to read all ten parts you can find the very first page of Sand right here. Sorry it took us two years to get around to finishing it. Hopefully it was worth the wait.

I rounded up some of the questions I’ve gotten about the series and I’ll do my best to answer them here.


When is the space stuff happening in relation to the western stuff?

The “space stuff” is happening hundreds of years before the “western stuff”. I don’t have a firm number for you but it’s been many generations and the people have obviously forgotten (by accident or on purpose DUN DUN DUN?) about their true origins and the existence of their colony ship.

What’s with all the bible quotes?

Esther, the ship’s A.I. has obviously been damaged as a result of the crash and her time separated from her “children”. In her confused mind she has found parallels to her plight in the stories of the bible. In fact she has begun to relate so much to the figure of Mary that when we finally see her in page 10 she has chosen to take the form of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Why is Phorr immortal?

Not sure I want to answer that one just yet. I think we should save that for the next story.

How different is this from the Sand you made back in 1996?

Well artistically it’s very different. In terms of the story it’s essentially the same. The crashed colony ship, the damaged A.I. trying desperately to get her children to return. The “messiah” character of Phorr out trying to convince people that this isn’t where they belong. It was all there 18 years ago but visually it was much more sci fi. It wasn’t until we started to re-imagine it that I cooked up the western vibe.

Do you like making this sort of comic more than the normal PA strips?

I really do enjoy making long form comics, it’s actually what I originally wanted to do as a kid. I love Penny Arcade but I feel like these projects really give me a chance to push myself. The only thing I dislike about them is how rushed I feel when making them. Whenever we take over the site for a series like this I always feel a little guilty. Going forward we are going to make a few new long form comics that will actually run alongside the normal strip rather than replacing it. We have a new Lookouts comic and a new Automata project that will both come out before the end of the year and both of them will have their own space outside the normal strip.

The art looks different from the normal strip, what are you doing?

A big part of the difference comes from my switch from drawing in Photoshop to drawing in Manga Studio. I’m really loving the painting tools and trying to teach myself how to use them. Sand has been a lot of fun to draw as I’ve used it as an opportunity to try and learn a bunch of new techniques.

Will you make more Sand?

I think so yes. This is really just the introduction to this world and these characters. We have many other stories we’d like to tell in this setting. Like I said we have Lookouts and Automata coming up next but once those are finished I’d love to come back to Sand.

Will you be doing another of the three comic idea pitch things?

We’ve done them twice now. The first time we delivered Lookouts, Automata and Jim Darkmagic. The second time we came up with Sand, the New Kid and Queen of Bells. Sand beat out the New Kid in the voting last time and now that we have finally delivered the rest of the story I’d love to cook up another pitch week. I would not expect it this year though.

Were you inspired at all by Trigun?

You know when we cooked this up back in 1996 neither of us were even aware of the Trigun series. Even today I’ve heard of it but honestly never watched it. I’m not a huge anime fan in general. I’ve seen Appleseed, Akira and a few other movies but I’ve never watched a series like Trigun. Maybe I will now!

You and Tycho have said that you both have very different opinions on christianity. How did you work together on something with such heavy religious themes?

Tycho and I do have different opinions on God but one thing we both agree on is how awesome Christian stories are symbolism are. Some of our very first comic books were about angels and demons. Both of us were raised in religious households (although very different sects) and so I think we both enjoy drawing on those themes for inspiration.

Can I have a high res version of the last panel of today’s strip without the text?

Sure.

Warlock82

I don't know why, but I think I like this one the best.

And that last panel is just fantastic.

Gyral

chamberlain wrote: »

Excellent stuff.

I got a bit of a Xenogears vibe from it, but that may just be me.

It isn't just you. The minute I saw the first spaceship themed chapter of this, I got a Xenogears vibe, though they went a noticeably different way with it.

Dark Raven X

@Gabriel Trigun is a much better read than a watch, the anime and manga diverge pretty heavily, and while the anime has a few moments and the broadstrokes are similar, the manga is better on every level. Plus it'd probably be faster to read than sitting through the whole series ;D

Gaslight

I tried to read the Trigun manga once. All I remember is the art being way too visually "busy," to the point where half the time I couldn't tell what was evening happening in the action-y parts.

theonetrueKyle

For anybody throwing around theories on the reasoning behind the A.I.'s new look, I think it's less biblical than it appears at first glance. I think it's an allusion the tarot card the "six of swords"

http://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/minor-arcana/suit-of-swords/six-of-swords/