Carbon Wars

The Buck is both the basic unit of currency and the basic unit of energy. Short for Buckminsterfullerene, carbon credits are “hypermatter” packets left over from when global currency went on the carbon standard. The global supply of Bucks is unknown, but is thought to be over ten times what is in circulation. In addition to the initial minting in various denominations (distinguished by the color of their rim and their shape), an unknown amount of raw fullerene matrix was condensed and unminted, analogous to gold boullion. Bucks are incredibly durable.

Bucks are redeemed for fuel by decompression in a dedicated and standarized module which accepts the deposited Buck as a credit and shows the remaining fuel balance for the associated device.

While there’s some question about the long-term wisdom of using fixed-carbon reserves as a fuel source, the condensation of new fullerene using energy collected via other means began with the Colombian Renaissance. While this is valuable in some situations, it has not made scavenging noticeably less profitable.

For a story about mankind’s sandy future, the dark theme just doesn’t work. We’re aiming for something a bit more sandy, and having everything centered just gets BORING after awhile. We’re getting closer to new content in presentable form, some of which is here. Expect to see more there soon.

As you may have guessed, we have something new planned. We’re shifting the mark from “One enormous epic story” which is, frankly, takes more in both conception and execution than we’re ready for as creative types, to “a few scenes here and there with some smattering of continuity.” The new project is somewhat tentatively titled “Carbon Wars.” If we find that the format of occasional mini-stories works, it’s not inconceivable that we may at some point return to Kir-Sia and pick up a lot of the awesome scenes we had planned as interrelated one-offs without the real continuity we had planned but were unable to get off the ground. Or even just do the thing like we’d always wanted to, but right now neither of us can do the story the justice we think it deserves. So we’re going with something a bit more experimental instead.

While I don’t want to suggest that you’ll see anything besides more sketches and snippets in the coming weeks, don’t forget about us! If you don’t come back to the site until June I’m certain you will find something good then.

So, as you’ve probably noticed in the last months, I’m slipping. It wasn’t so bad when only the color content of the comic was postponed, but now nothing gets done, and I’ve pretty much lost hope that I’ll ever catch up.

It’s time I admit defeat.

We’ve had this sort of love-hate relationship, the comic and I. There were times when we didn’t talk to each other at all, times when we got along pretty well, and times when it was all just sweet passionate love. Hell, we even broke up before and then found together again, gave ourselves another chance. But it just isn’t working out.

Maybe I need more time to think this over, maybe I need more practice, more confidence, skill, or speed. Whatever it is I lack, I couldn’t find it in the last half year, and so I’m ending this one before its misery drags on for even longer.

Thanks for enduring, it was fun while it lasted, sometimes.

- Riess

Sorry for my unannounced disappearance and related delay of the most recent pages. I got in the sort of bad artistic mood for which I should really have buffers in place, but I didn’t. I’m working on catching up now, no update will be skipped in the long run.

Page 29 concludes the first chapter, and we’ll be back on schedule June 9th with the beginning of the second one.

Thanks for reading!
- Riess

Riess already talked about this in the notes for Page 25 but I want something in the blag for new readers / anyone who missed it. We restarted the comic in January so that it would be possible to advance the story at a pace we were happier with. Riess added color because it seemed like it would be possible to get out a color page on a weekly basis. The problem we’ve seen is that it’s not always possible to do so consistently, so what we’re going to do is work ahead with the inks so there will always be story, and that way when the painting gets hard it doesn’t cripple the week’s work. We’ll post updates in the comic notes when Riess has caught up with some of the painting, and we may work out a way to do this more effectively with the website.