Trying to keep track of how AI use the term ‘I’ will cause headaches. I cannot recommend it. Naomi frequently stumbles into this issue with Mium. It seems that whatever is talking to Mir has attained the capacity to be snide. An important stage in the evolution of any intelligence, right up there with introspection and adaption.

Poor Mium, the tallest thing for him to sit on the edge of was a car. This probably bums him. Assuming he can be ‘bummed out’. If he power isn’t ‘appear on top of objects’ (it’s not) I bet that’s what he secretly wishes for.

The text is blurry in the bottom left intentionally. Kally is mumbling. I’m sure she isn’t mumbling anything important (…it’s not, really).

An AM Spike a piece of IDS slang for a single use chemical injection device that delivers a cocktail of things that tend to cause a the subject to be re-conscious-ified from a great deal of things. They are sort of a dirty catch all, counter-acting a wide range of knockout drugs, shock, etc. Due to their drastically unspecific nature, they tend to have some negative side effects, though they don’t tend to manifest for a few hours and usually just entail feeling like shit, headaches, and vomiting. They are also extremely widely used by the IDS field operatives for the intended purpose and less intended purposes, as they make you alert in almost any condition. Long term side-effects are also present, but treatable with IDS medical technology. There have been pushes to use more specific field-drugs (like, say, a fast acting pill that was given to Tyler) but field operatives tend to prefer to the more foolproof catch all nature and have been resistant to adapting and phasing it out.


So the buffer hasn’t been growing, but I did do some stuff, we have two new chapter covers with more coming (I’m fond of the Chapter 1, mostly because it a version of one of the old ‘concept’ art pictures of the early days of The Far Side of Utopia; people that have read a long time will have seen other versions of that drawing – though Naomi’s addition is new because it inexplicable entertained me for her to point out the obvious here… ) 😉

Chapter1Cover Chapter2Cover

A new logo (this largely comes from the Minus Years cover I did awhile ago, but I decided I should use it beyond that project, as we didn’t really have a logo previously – the palm tree/dog silhouette was the logo from my business and never comic specific):

LogoQuery2

And a new .gif that will likely be used in the few places an annoying animated ad is acceptable (yes… that is about three spots on earth…):

PastUtopiaIlaGif

Even than, I can only handle somewhat subtle animation without feeling too bad. For the record, that drawing of Ila is intentionally somewhat older than she appears in the comic (it was original a Patreon art), but it made a neat .gif so I’m trying it out in a few spots. I have previously answered the question of if prototypes age as ‘yes, in a manner of speaking’ so that’s not exactly a spoiler 😉

I’ve also been updating the site. Please let me know if you have any issues.


The poll wrapped up, top four were:

  1. Naomi
  2. Tealy the Hacker Girl
  3. Ila
  4. Miko

Tealy was definitely the darkhorse underdog this round, considering that we don’t have her name, and she’s only been in a handful of pages. In the end Naomi won, but I think Tealy did pretty well considering that she was up against historical vote-powerhouses (Ila and Naomi were the previous top 2 I think). I did say I would take Naomi out of the next one to let someone else win, but since I ended up drawing most of the ones that got a vote last time, I thought it was fair to let her appear again. I will do a vote incentive for at least the top four here, but they will come over time.

The next series of vote incentives will probably be the run up to Halloween costume ones. Have an idea for what for a near The Far of Utopia character costume? Feel free to shoot it along. If we get enough suggestions I’ll maybe set up a vote for them. The ones I remember from last year were Jedi-Tyler, Fairy-Princess-Kally, Scarecrow Mium… a few others. Please note suggestions do not have to necessarily be Halloween themed, and I will put out an official ask for suggestions as we get closer to me actually, you know, drawing those.

Dear gods this was a long commentary.