Today we published Princess Pricklepants Presents issue no. 6: Hedgehogs In Space. In case you missed it, here it is:
This is the intro comic boldly going where no hedgehog comic has gone before. While this particular issue has some Star Trek influence, now that we’re through this intro comic, the goal is to be more akin to Muppets in Space, the single greatest sci-fi show ever produced. Every real sci-fi fan knows in their heart that the Muppets in Space Star Wars episode was the most ambitious crossover in history.
It’s always helpful to start a sci-fi thing off with an explosion. This helps the audience immediately know that we’re dealing with sci-fi, and not, say a torrid hospital-based hedgehog soap opera (which starts with a hospital scene) or a hardboiled hedgehog detective (which starts with some moody, noir setting). We bet you knew this was a sci-fi episode right away. Explosions. They work.
Another fascinating explosion fact we’d like to share is that the model for the explosion we used to make the drawing say “explosion” was the Atari 2600 Missile Command box art.
Excelsior!
We don’t have a lot to say about this panel, since it really speaks for itself. We’re very pleased to be able to bring Boris in as Boris here. You might be wondering why Boris is calling the robot a “little robot” when in terms of the scene, the robot’s not small. The reason has nothing to do with the robot, and everything to do with a bear who wants to pursue a science of scent-based phenomenology.
Crew members complaining and gossiping behind the backs of other crew members are a staple of sci-fi. Fun fact: the background of the bear and cow scenes are the same drawing mirrored. We liked a lot of the details the bear’s speech bubble hid and didn’t want to waste them. That bear’s a talker.
We think this panel pretty much speaks for itself and manages to say a lot with one image.
We are still generally following ligne claire here though we were looking at a lot of Möbius drawing when coming up with a setting. Apparently we really like the Franco-Belgian comic artists.
One little detail we haven’t mentioned before but which is nicely illustrated here is that we follow the Law of the Simpsons: hands have three fingers and a thumb. We’ve been quite consistent with this from the start.
We think this one came together pretty well. We’re back to the view screen from the beginning, the crew is all together save the robot, and we have some new mysterious bits like the hedgehog-esque shuttle. The robot is flying the shuttle, hence not in the scene.
If you can identify the blue planet with two rings you’ll find the text has a richer, deeper, more symbolic meaning.
We hope you liked this one, and we look forward to future Hedgehogs In Space where we can explore things like Space Madness, Existentialism In Space, Cows and Bears Bickering In Space, etc.
The Pleasantries of Princess Pricklepants 