Happy Saturday!

We're back to storytelling instead of pinups!

There's always room for both here, and maybe sometimes even together.

And look who we're back with... Kamiko, or rather, if we go with her former human name, Natsumi.

This comic is taller than the previous ones. Honestly some of the previous ones were also tall comics, but for the sake of stretching content out, I would cut them in half and share the comics over two weeks instead of one. It's my sneaky way of making more content because drawing comics is a slow process. But, for today's comic I felt it better if it were all left intact so you can get the setup and punchline together.

I also worked on some slightly new functionality for the website to get this comic to work. Image-wise the original comic is something like 11500 pixels tall and 2048 pixels wide. That would be quite a huge image to download, but with some minor changes I made to the website, I can split the images up and present them as a list. This way each part can be compressed by Gatsby and then lazy-load in. I hope this means even though there are a lot of big images here, it'll still load fast so you can view the first part of the comic. By the time you scroll down the other parts should be loaded in.

Cameos

This comic also features some cameos by fellow webcomic creators.

On the left we have three characters from the webcomic Groovy, Kinda created by Charlie Wise, a fellow Webcomic Underdog.

You've got Larry Pye on the left holding the map of Tokyo. In the middle is Stephanie Rossum, which according to the character notes on Groovy, Kinda's site, she's an artificial human, so she'll fit right in with the variety of weird things in the world of This Mortal Coil. On the right of the trio, we have Edison Lighthouse and her messenger bag filled with sake, which she probably intends to drink on the sly. I guess though if Edison is Larry's long time girlfriend, he probably wouldn't be so surprised about her plans.

A quick google search about drinking in public in Japan though does reveal that there's no prohibition against it. And, if anime and dramas are to be believed, people do go drinking under the cherry blossoms for Hanami.

Another cameo in this panel is Clau from M9 Girls. Rulopótamo is another fellow Webcomic Underdog and the creator/writer of M9 Girls, which is also a magical girl/superhero webcomic. Hey since Natsumi and Catherine are magical girls too, there's always a crossover potential. Of course, Natsumi and Catherine haven't met... just yet.

I guess you could say there's a third cameo...

More of a homage, if you will. The train cars are taken from a 3D model of the Galaxy Express 999. It's one of my favorite anime series.

This isn't the first time Mortal Coil has referenced a train. There was the whole Inktober 2016 comic, "The Galactic Train" short, in which a train, also modeled after the Galaxy Express, (which is an old Japanese steam locomotive) is the setting of the story. Is this the same train? (Yeah, it certainly is.)

Oh... some more interesting things about fictional special trains... I believe the train in Galaxy Express is also based on Kenji Miyazawa's "Night on the Galactic Railroad." There's an old anime to Night of the Galactic Railroad somewhere if you can find it. That train goes... hmm... well, I won't spoil it, but if you read the comic above, Natsumi alludes to where this train is going, and that in turn is also what Night of the Galactic Railroad is about.

Also, as a bonus, Densha Otoko, references the Galaxy Express 999 (or at least a space bound train) at the end of that jodrama.

So that's all I have this week. More new comics next week. I am busy trying to draw the next chapter of the story. In any case, have a great weekend, and I'll have something new for ya next week!