Kerboom Super Comics

[Hayoo]

I originally made this comic book cover as a prop for an image with Jeb relaxing in space, but several players have asked me to look into making this a real thing. As this would be one of several KSP projects I'm working on I won't be able to do a steady release of pages, but we'll see how it goes. So um, first, I have to make up the story. Here's a teaser image below.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Hayoo
Update/Restore Image Links

[spaceman1999]

Can't wait to see more. I quite like the cover!

[SuperWeegee4000]

Best.

Comic.

Ever.

This should be an official series.

[Hayoo]

Thanks!

Below I go into a what kind of a world I'm setting this comic and other KSP projects into. Figured I should start a stream of thoughts of where I can go with this. So, here we go:

The World of Kerbals

Since every character, building, plant, and item has to be drawn (and I'm obsessed with details) I figure some serious world-building will be in order just so I don't go nuts. I've been thinking about these kinds of things for this game for years since I started playing and below are the general ideas I've come up with or adopted from others. I will stick to what Squad has said as much as I can but given the game is still in Alpha there will sadly be a lot that I have to make up (or adapt to the story) and will be proved inaccurate as time goes on. Oh well, here goes.

Setting: There will be cities of course, a growing space program (they've launched Kerbals, explored the moon, sent probes to other planets, but not much else yet). There are roads, farms, grocery stores, office buildings, television, radio, flat-screen monitors, basically a lot of familiar-looking things but with a few twists here and there. Tech will be a mix of Space Race, Shuttle era, and today's networked age. Tech like touchscreens, smartphones, tablets, and onward will reside with the superheroes to give them that magical edge among the population.

Kerbals: I see them as curious, inventive, clumsy, and almost child-like. They are not very safety-minded and yet many are risk-averse if they clearly know the dangers. They have a "good-enough" mentality in attempts to solve a problem (duct tape, band-aids, and space-tape will do for them). I see them as compulsive infomercial junkies, going nuts over As-Seen-On-TV ideas, and their garages and junkyards are full of half-working gadgets. Examples of any additional behaviors I'll probably make similar to Despicable minions, the Pit droids from star wars, Jawas, LEGO game people, Rabbids, DuckTales' Launchpad McQuack, the Hobbits Merry and Pippin, and Richard Scarry characters.

Biology: I'll just say their bodies have a skeletal structure (since it looks cool in art), but it is strong and flexible like a reinforced cartilage or something. They have general amphibian or reptilian internal organs with perhaps a plant-based twist. I'll make them omnivorous though just so there's a variety of ways to express their meals in images. I will attempt to stick with the cloning idea, perhaps an unspoken understanding that their consciousness is preserved in the community and they can come back should something befall their bodies. As this would be a communal birthing, I don't see a need for Kerbals to couple to procreate. I see simply two sexes sharing genetic material with the pod-pool or something to create succeeding generations. While they look both similar and different, they are the same biologically, neither more advantageous over the other in any category. This brings up issues of immortality but as long as I treat it like it's no big deal then the story should flow ok. Even if you are immortal you will still feel pain, fear, sadness, etc. so Kerbals would try to avoid these things in conflicts.

Speaking of genders. For the purpose of the story, and to give readers characters they can identify with, I do need to establish what girl-kerbals look like. The choices presented to me I've shown below:

Relationships: Let's just assume that every Kerbal considers the other a family member, childhood friend, or life-long-friend, depending on where know that person in life. Now of course, since everyone is friendly to one another, that means there aren't many conflicts between them except maybe over sports teams or whose music player/computer company is better. This means no Kerbal supervillains. Now one would assume aliens then would be the next logical choice. Well I'm leaning to just having alien creatures like the Kraken rarely pop up. Instead, the great enemy will be robots, AI that some zany scientist cooked up and forgot to flip it off when he went home, creating Skynet or something. And I will explain how this came about and what the first AI villain is called. This allows me to have human-shaped, animal-shaped, and space-ship shaped villains throughout the story, and little resistance to smashing them to pieces for the evil-doers they are.

History: Who knows what they evolved from, but we'll just pick up from the Cave-kerbal era and assume their development came at the expense of long extinct creatures that my son declares were giant bug-dinosaurs. Good enough for me. I've always wanted to draw a T-rex Beetle. After the meteor strikes on Kerbin that wiped out these monsters, the Kerbals went underground until things got better. Since emerging I'd say they retained some of their "dig down" tendencies like Hobbits did, but largely build above ground like we do. I'd like their cities to have developed a look of both being open and yet arranged in such a way they resemble a busy, interconnected rabbit warren.

As above, their only contention among themselves is based around trivial things like sports or products. Think Apple vs. Android, Rice vs. Texas. Companies even go along these lines. Instead of political parties they have fans. Before civilized times, arguments might come to serious blows, or at least attempt to. Each side would stock up what weapons they could, but ultimately one side would do something clumsy and wipe themselves out, letting the other side win by default. And so bit by bit Kerbals settled the ways they resolve fan conflicts and today they are generally one happy planet.

Then one day, a scientist accidentally sent a camera up into space and for the first time in their history, Kerbals saw their planet alone in the darkness. This simple change of perspective galvanized the entire planet with the goal of exploring beyond their world.

(Below are minimalist images I made back in 2011 as background flags for an international kerbal mission. I'm sure some of you can guess which flag represents what rival company/fan-base. I will be re-tooling some of them to serve in the comics.)

Economy: I'll probably have some kind of exchange going on. Budgets and resources might be talked about as a constraining factor. Don't know what it'll be with, maybe some kind of kerbal bucks or credit, or simoleons or something. There aren't any crazy greedy moguls running around. The desire for wealth doesn't drive Kerbals, sometimes it just happens, and they then after paying for food and gas will blow it all on celebrations or goofy gadgets.

Art styles: Kerbals are fond of circles and hexagons.

Superheroes: Superheroes are fiction to Kerbals too, but the rest of the setting mimics their own. As for hero origins, well what can I say; with Kerbals haphazardly experimenting with all manner of radiation, chemicals, wavelengths, explosives, and devices you're bound to have a few crop up. The catch is that it only happens to that particular Kerbal once. If they die, they lose all their powers and come back as a normal Kerbal. This means when Kerboom goes into peril, Jeb is holding his breath while he turns the page.

The superheroes will be analogs. You can expect mashups and gender changes of your favorite heroes, to keep things interesting.

Story Mood: As Kerbal as possible while maintaining suspense, action, and conflict.

Communicating: I'm going to do something strange with this. Since Kerbals read/write English but don't speak it, I will attempt to simulate this by only having Kerbals speak in speech bubbles with an icon or two, much like The Sims and their moods. The idea is to have you look at the icon, have your brain recognize it, but also hear the kerbals mutter it in their own language. This will get tricky at times, but it's an amusing idea for me to try. Where needed I can at least have a narrator translate in English. This is the same method I would try if I ever made flash animations or youtube videos.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Hayoo
Added images for flags and dialgoue

[Mekan1k]

I like this. I really like this.

+rep and subscribed.

[astropapi1]

Awesome.

[sumghai]

Most interesting! Slightly different from what I've been working on, but I'm definitely looking forward to how yours pans out.

[Hayoo]

Thanks, guys!

This weekend I will be doing more sketching of characters and perhaps locations. Hopefully Monday I can post some concept art.

[czokletmuss]

This looks fantastic! Subscribed

[Jones-250]

What is this? A challenger? To the ´official comic´? Dear Jeb!

[Needles_10]

Extremely excited for this! (Maybe you could add in some mechani-krakens, like in RogueMason's Kraken Saga.)

[DJEN]

Amazing worldbuilding! I like it.

[Hayoo]

Thanks, All!

Extremely excited for this! (Maybe you could add in some mechani-krakens, like in RogueMason's Kraken Saga.)

I don't see why not. I can see an AI villain creating such a monstrosity or downloading itself into one to get an edge on any superheroes. But that would be in later stories.

[Hayoo]

Some concept art tonight. Front and side character views, and scale comparison with Kraken.

[Captain Sierra]

I love the, what may turn out to be almost cute, rendition of the kraken. Gotta love the fan art that comes from it, but dang, gotta hate it ingame.

[Hayoo]

Thanks, Sierra!

Quick update.

The story outline is finally finished and will be made up of 10 parts or issues. This story will focus on the bumbling but brave Kerboom as the original superkerbal. Following this I have stories that can introduce nine more heroes and eight villains. All of these are tied directly back to what happens in this first tale (blame the kraken).

I've decided to tie this to the space program and kerbal science as much as possible, either having it directly involved with the program or concerning characters associated with it. I feel this will ground the series into something relevant that Jeb, and hopefully you, would want to read. Also it means I can draw more explosions.

In the meantime I've been sketching scenes, drawing concept art, and doing what I tell my son is "research."

Edited October 2, 2013 by Hayoo

[Hayoo]

Currently have the origin tale of Kerboom sketched out. Trying to decide if it should be a prologue, flashback, or a separate one-off, considering the title of the issue.

Below are a few of the kerbal expressions sketched out. Where possibly I will keep eyelids/brows off, but I will use them if a wider range of emotion is needed.

[Hayoo]

Here's a character that will appear briefly in the first story. As seen, it's your typical Iron Man/Batman Beyond amalgam, but with a few twists I'll be adding. It still needs some work and will go through some more changes before it makes an appearance to help poor bumbling Kerboom solve a mystery.

[blizzy78]

ohhh, Gadget looks really awesome... I love him!

[JustinS222]

So your gonna have cities in it, why not add Kerbin City from the mod of the same name?

Here are some pics (many of the buildings are not in the mod):

[rewdew2]

So your gonna have cities in it, why not add Kerbin City from the mod of the same name?

Here are some pics (many of the buildings are not in the mod):

<img snips>

Well, the problem i see with the Kerbin city mod, is that it's not all that much like Kerbal architecture.

I'm currently working on some kerbal-like architecture.

If you want to wait a few weeks before adding the cities, i could get you some building designs.

[Hayoo]

Those look cool. Yes, there will be cities shown in the story. The plot requires one be less than 10km away though, so I'm placing one just north of the space center. For the buildings I'm taking cues from the new R&D complex, as well as a dense layered style I've been working on.

[Tw1]

Well, the problem i see with the Kerbin city mod, is that it's not all that much like Kerbal architecture.

I'm currently working on some kerbal-like architecture.

.

To be fair, Kerbin City is unfinished, and the only examples of kerbal architecture we have are the space center, airstrip island, and some ruins. If you look at our own architecture, it's incredibly varied.

Kerbal architecture is also likely to vary a lot as well.

Mentioning it would be interesting*, but it would be a little hard to properly portray it, as it's nowhere near its final form. But, you could portray individual buildings by looking at WIP versions in this document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq-Kp1pObiWgdEVRSG54eHFtS2NKWFoyZHJranFub1E&usp=sharing#gid=0, should you need to.

Or trawling through that thread.

*I've been suggesting that it could be used as Kerbin's capital. But do what you want.

If you ever want to portray a kerbal railway.. head my way. [/shamelessplug]

Edited October 10, 2013 by Tw1

[Hayoo]

Lot of great designs in there! My designs are a very kerbal blending of several architectural styles: 60's retro-futuristic; 60's Chicago; the compact layering in Anime cities such as Macross, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Appleseed; Batman Beyond's Gotham City; and a bit of the city styles from Halo Reach. I want almost a gerbil city/termite-mound feel: dense, stacked, a hive of activity. I do plan to show elevated trains or monorails zipping around and between cities. Still lots to design.

Edited October 10, 2013 by Hayoo
spellcheck

[JustinS222]

So something like this (from halo reach) :