Pirates of the Coal Sack #29
It’s been a rough couple of months on the personal front, and this issue started to get away from me. I thought it was going to be just a slice of life and tie up a few loose ends from High Barbary, but the further I got into it the more threads I found that needed to be at least picked up, if not tied off. After a lot of reshuffling, I decided it needed to be at least two issues. And here we are.
The most urgent thing was Sonne’s situation; Harding and Athena didn’t want to let it fester. Obviously there’s still more to say about it, and closing this issue will open others. So will the Senators as they rub up against the crew.
It’s only one page, but the scene between Bowlin and the Bosun in the garden is one that’s important to me. Too often in fiction we treat shooting bad guys as easy. In reality, killing another human being, especially up close, is traumatic no matter how justified you are. When we treat it otherwise, we make it harder for our combat veterans who have to deal with the real trauma they suffered on our behalf. I wanted to acknowledge how hard it can be. I got some help from someone who works with veterans to make sure I got things right, but any errors are my own.
Our song this time isn’t a traditional shanty. “You Can’t Hold A Good Man Down” by The Pirateers really stuck in my head though, and is a message I personally need right now.
It’s also past time I credited Dwight Williams for his map work on The Edge of Midnight and In the Raptor’s Claws: Earth, Romulus and War that Birth the Federation. While I can’t use his maps exactly, there’s a lot of inspiration and more than a little swiping in mine.
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