"Freefall"
Mar. 1st, 2006 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowAs a result of the suggestions people gave me a while back, I have twenty-three webcomics either bookmarked or on my FL. I find all of them entertaining to various degrees, but five of them stand out, and I'm going to devote a post each to those five, in no particular order. First up: "Freefall", by Mark Stanley.
Setting. "Freefall" is an SFnal strip, set some centuries in the future. Interstellar flight is not routine, but it is well-established. There are some experiments in Uplift under way, but it's still viewed with caution. There are plenty of Asimovian robots, but this is not an Asimovian universe - there are aliens, and that has some interesting consequences. The storyline so far is set on and near a planet which is still undergoing a certain amount of terraforming.
Characters. There are three principal characters. Sam is an alien, of squidlike ancestry, but always wears an environment suit which looks at least vaguely human. (The suit's face is impressionistic, with no nose and a wide, lipless and toothless mouth; he generally appears to be grinning dopily.) He is a wannabe spaceship captain and a smalltime hustler, but he's not smart enough to be a success at either role. His open and rather naive amorality is actually rather charming.
Sam owns a decrepit in-system ship, which has just been repaired and refitted by Florence Ambrose, his newly acquired ship's engineer. She is a Bowman's Wolf, a member of a recently-uplifted species of canid. She is friendly; people like her. (Robots in particular do so; the first reaction of almost any robot, on first meeting her, is to cry "Doggy!" and run to embrace her. The results, when she enters an area with lots of robots, are... amusing.) She also has a well-centered ethical system, and is far more self-aware than Sam; her canid instincts do flavor her interactions with people, but she controls them well, for the most part. She has good reason to tread carefully; there are only a few dozen Bowman's Wolves in existence as yet, and they are, as it were, on probation. The race will not be permitted to breed until its creators are satisfied that it is safe.
The third member of the crew is Sam's right-hand robot, Helix. Helix approaches every task with great enthusiasm if little skill or sense. He seems very impressionable, which is probably a Second Law artifact; Sam's amorality has rubbed off on him to a great extent. However, Florence's influence is beginning to show as well; he seems to be acquiring a morality of sorts, and has begun to enforce it - enthusiastically, of course - on Sam from time to time. (It is only recently that he's realized that, since Sam is not human, the First Law does not apply. "Shall I get my stick?")
There are only a couple of recurring secondary characters, a truck-sized mining robot with a major grudge against Sam and a vet who stitched up Florence after an accident and who has taken a shine to her (and she to him). The vet has a (non-uplifted) fluffball dog as well, which has appeared several times.
Art. "Freefall" is a black-and-white comic; the level of detail is comparable to, say, "Peanuts" or "B.C.". The artist does a marvellous job of conveying emotional states, especially considering the material he has to work with: Sam's mask, Florence's canine snout, and Helix's eyestalks. (Helix doesn't really have a face, so body language has to convey a lot.)
What I Like. Much of the humor of the strip is simply silly, as Sam evolves money-making plots which inevitably fail disastrously. The interaction between Sam and Florence is another delightful element, as she tries to gently coax him towards ethical behavior, and he attempts the converse with her. (He did finally get her to admit, recently, that some laws are meant to be broken. The laws in question? Leash laws...) Ethics is not the only issue on the table; misinterpretations are rife. (Once, Sam ate some food that Florence had been saving; on finding out, she was pleased to see that he was finally acting like an alpha...) All three major characters are charming, in their different ways.
The strip first appeared in 1998; eight years have elapsed externally, but only a few weeks in internal time. That Stanley has been able to milk every incident for several days of humor (and occasional drama) is, I think, a measure of his storytelling skill. (He recently devoted no less than ten strips, several of them hilarious, to an effort by Sam and Florence to retrieve a boat which had come unmoored during a hurricane - half an hour of real time, at most.)
There's more to the strip than its humor. The science presented (barring handwaving about FTL drives) is careful and reasonably accurate; as Websnark comments, it really qualifies as fairly hard SF. Florence, as an engineer, frequently has to explain things to Sam and Helix, and does so quite well, without eye-glazing techspeak.
So: humor, charm, intelligence, and nice cleanly-drawn art. What's not to like?
Setting. "Freefall" is an SFnal strip, set some centuries in the future. Interstellar flight is not routine, but it is well-established. There are some experiments in Uplift under way, but it's still viewed with caution. There are plenty of Asimovian robots, but this is not an Asimovian universe - there are aliens, and that has some interesting consequences. The storyline so far is set on and near a planet which is still undergoing a certain amount of terraforming.
Characters. There are three principal characters. Sam is an alien, of squidlike ancestry, but always wears an environment suit which looks at least vaguely human. (The suit's face is impressionistic, with no nose and a wide, lipless and toothless mouth; he generally appears to be grinning dopily.) He is a wannabe spaceship captain and a smalltime hustler, but he's not smart enough to be a success at either role. His open and rather naive amorality is actually rather charming.
Sam owns a decrepit in-system ship, which has just been repaired and refitted by Florence Ambrose, his newly acquired ship's engineer. She is a Bowman's Wolf, a member of a recently-uplifted species of canid. She is friendly; people like her. (Robots in particular do so; the first reaction of almost any robot, on first meeting her, is to cry "Doggy!" and run to embrace her. The results, when she enters an area with lots of robots, are... amusing.) She also has a well-centered ethical system, and is far more self-aware than Sam; her canid instincts do flavor her interactions with people, but she controls them well, for the most part. She has good reason to tread carefully; there are only a few dozen Bowman's Wolves in existence as yet, and they are, as it were, on probation. The race will not be permitted to breed until its creators are satisfied that it is safe.
The third member of the crew is Sam's right-hand robot, Helix. Helix approaches every task with great enthusiasm if little skill or sense. He seems very impressionable, which is probably a Second Law artifact; Sam's amorality has rubbed off on him to a great extent. However, Florence's influence is beginning to show as well; he seems to be acquiring a morality of sorts, and has begun to enforce it - enthusiastically, of course - on Sam from time to time. (It is only recently that he's realized that, since Sam is not human, the First Law does not apply. "Shall I get my stick?")
There are only a couple of recurring secondary characters, a truck-sized mining robot with a major grudge against Sam and a vet who stitched up Florence after an accident and who has taken a shine to her (and she to him). The vet has a (non-uplifted) fluffball dog as well, which has appeared several times.
Art. "Freefall" is a black-and-white comic; the level of detail is comparable to, say, "Peanuts" or "B.C.". The artist does a marvellous job of conveying emotional states, especially considering the material he has to work with: Sam's mask, Florence's canine snout, and Helix's eyestalks. (Helix doesn't really have a face, so body language has to convey a lot.)
What I Like. Much of the humor of the strip is simply silly, as Sam evolves money-making plots which inevitably fail disastrously. The interaction between Sam and Florence is another delightful element, as she tries to gently coax him towards ethical behavior, and he attempts the converse with her. (He did finally get her to admit, recently, that some laws are meant to be broken. The laws in question? Leash laws...) Ethics is not the only issue on the table; misinterpretations are rife. (Once, Sam ate some food that Florence had been saving; on finding out, she was pleased to see that he was finally acting like an alpha...) All three major characters are charming, in their different ways.
The strip first appeared in 1998; eight years have elapsed externally, but only a few weeks in internal time. That Stanley has been able to milk every incident for several days of humor (and occasional drama) is, I think, a measure of his storytelling skill. (He recently devoted no less than ten strips, several of them hilarious, to an effort by Sam and Florence to retrieve a boat which had come unmoored during a hurricane - half an hour of real time, at most.)
There's more to the strip than its humor. The science presented (barring handwaving about FTL drives) is careful and reasonably accurate; as Websnark comments, it really qualifies as fairly hard SF. Florence, as an engineer, frequently has to explain things to Sam and Helix, and does so quite well, without eye-glazing techspeak.
So: humor, charm, intelligence, and nice cleanly-drawn art. What's not to like?
