FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Questions that no one asked but I'll answer anyway.

• Q: Do you use AI?

  A: I do not use or endorse AI.

  Q: Where do you get the images for the backgrounds in your comic?

  A: The images in my art are sourced from either postcards or images available through wikimedia or the internet archive. I use a very rudimentary method of compositing the images to make a background. A heavy use of the lasso tool and copy and paste.

  Q: Do the character names have any significant meaning?

  A: You bet they do. Everything in this story has almost an excruciating level of detail.

  Q: I noticed an anachronistic detail in the comic. What's the deal, man?

  A: Please imagine that this takes place in an alternate universe that is the same except for the places where I messed up.

OLDER / MISC. ART

The first iteration of this story began in 2022. I've selected a few older pieces of art to showcase the character design process. Please hover over the images with a cursor to read the extra commentary.

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NAMES

Hooray for overthinking!

• Character	Name Origin
  M. Leigh West/Marian Leigh West	M. Leigh's name is inspired by Majel Barrett (Majel Leigh or M. Leigh). However, Marian is taken from the psuedonym given to Dorothy Martin from the book When Prophecy Fails.
  Benjamin Wilkinson/The Entity	Benjamin is more of less a result of mangling the birth-name of the Public Universal Friend. The surname "Wilkinson" also is derived from PUF.
  MICHAEL/Tomás Cruz	MICHAEL, or Made In Christ's Holy Almighty Eternal Love, took inspiration from the use of Unarius as an acronym ("UNniversal ARticulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science"). His real name is also a pun (Tom Cruise).
  Shelly West	Shelly West is a fake name that Bonnie Nettles used in hospitals near her death.
  Charles and Lillian Armstrong	I just mixed the psuedonyms and the real names used in When Prophecy Fails for Dr. Laughead and his wife.
  Gloria Hill	Gloria is taken from the contactee Gloria Lee. Her surname is taken from Betty and Barney Hill.
  Jean and Carlos Mundo	Shelly's aunt, Jean Mundo, has not been shown in the comic yet--but here's the origin of it anyway. I was listening to a podcast about contactees and I heard the name Jean Mundo. I thought it was neat and decided to use it. Carlos is more or less just my attempt to reverse engineer a name that would sound good with the surname Mundo. Probably the least amount of thought used for names so far.
  Maria Wilkinson	Maria is based off of Tuesday Weld, specifically from the film Play It As It Lays (1972). Her name is taken directly as a reference to the role/character in the book. It is also pronounced the same way ("Mariah"). And as stated before, Wilkinson originates from the Public Universal Friend.