The story needs a place to grow. Even in Star Wars, Han shot first and ran instead of standing with his friends. His redemption was created through his return, and his character further developed to see things through in future episodes.
If Cort was already redeemed of his wickedness, there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell. Instead, we get to witness his transition as he earns it, rather than it just being given to him and being worthlessly hollow. This will be a far better story as a result.
Jacob isn’t referring directly to Han’s introduction, just the status of his character at that time. He’s the type to end or avoid conflicts as quick and conveniently as possible, but grows more selfless later on. Jacob is making the point that we’re watching Cort undergo that same arc.
Calibus
3 years ago
What bother’s me about this scene is that Nyrah upset him and dragged out something Cort clearly hated about himself, then just looks down at him with this judgmental look and walks away.
Problem is, Cort has gone on and on about the Federations corruption. About how the Galaxy is a bad place full of bad people. For Nyrah this has made him look more like a person that is, yeah the Galaxy is awful but I make do, I do what I HAVE to in a bad universe… Now it turns out, oh i’m also one of those people that make the Federation corrupt. Unless he was giving that bribe money to an orphanage, or if there was a deeper story (And there may very well be). Cort has now become one… Read more »
She wasn’t ready for that revelation from Cort. She hasn’t exactly put him on a pedestal, but she thought he was a better man than that. It caught her completely off guard. And let’s not forget that she’s still processing a lot of her own recent trauma, including the death of her brother. She’s been trying to hold that all down so she can be supportive of Cort this entire time. She’s been trying to stay positive, stay patient, and give him reasons to believe in himself. For his sake and for the galaxy’s sake. That was a LOT of… Read more »
And furthermore – Nyrah’s understanding of the world as it is now, is mostly due to the influence of Cort and Speck. They lied to her in the beginning when Cort pretended to be an under-cover agent, which nearly destroyed their partnership; only when Cort rescued her from clear Federation corruption did she start seeing that they couldn’t necessarily trust the Federation. Since then, though, they’ve done a LOT of running, from those who seem from all accounts to be decently trustworthy, and having to deal with unsavory criminal-world types to do so. And here again is Cort, hiding the… Read more »
It changes a fundamental part of her understanding of him. Up until now, he’s spun the narrative that he turned to a life of crime after being forced out of the Federation, and even though he’s done some selfish things over the course of their journey together, he’s repeatedly shown his good side as well, and reader input seems to have done as much of a good job as it can of walking back her dislike of his choice with the explosive powder (he doesn’t demand the Starcaster, he turns to her for guidance) – but her understanding of his… Read more »
The thing about Nyrah is that her moral absolutism, her naive idealist nature, is so strong it’s amounting to a Greek tragic flaw. She is judging him for something that happened before she even knew him, as if it should somehow weigh on the person she is in the trenches with. And it’s a situation about which she has no details, except the word “bribe.” Nyrah’s flaw is that she judges hard and fast. There is not one frown she has dished out in this entire comic that was made after she had all the details. She can never work… Read more »
I don’t think it was judgemental. What if she was just drained, and also perhaps felt empathy and/or sympathy for him having been forced to lose control by her words? It’s a big assumption that she’s judging him in any way. She could not give a shit about what he’s done, but feels sorry about what she’s just done (no regrets, since she obviously believes it’s necessary, but still empathising with the pain)
Jonathan Adams
3 years ago
I think that’s actually concern, and she walks away because she feels too guilty
Yeah, not cool Nyrah. How dare you not like being lied to. ?
toughluck
3 years ago
A lot of people seem to absolve Cort of everything solely on the fact that he’s the protagonist. But to be honest, I saw nothing in this series that makes me sympathize with him. I figure lots of people like him only because he’s a typical charming quick-witted rogue. Cort specifically called out corruption in the Federation as a reason for his current life and presented himself as morally superior to the corrupt Federation. And don’t be so quick to judge Nyrah. She doesn’t want to have an argument now, she obviously needs time to think because it’s not a… Read more »
“But to be honest, I saw nothing in this series that makes me sympathize with him.” This seems unfair. After she forced him at gunpoint to hand her over to the Feds, he went on a suicide mission to save her after those very Federation agents tried to sell her to the Syndicate. The Syndicate being the ones that tortured her for centuries and sent a sadistic bounty hunter after her. Afterwards he – willingly and without expectation of reward – continued to put his own life in danger to keep the weapon of mass destruction from the Dranglaex. He’s… Read more »
“Afterwards he – willingly and without expectation of reward – continued to put his own life in danger to keep the weapon of mass destruction from the Dranglaex.” The expectation of reward was he was going to sell the Starcaster to the highest bidder. He never expected to be stuck wearing it. I mean, what did you think he would do with it after he had it? Give it to the Federation? Not even Nyrah would want that after what they did to her. We’ve seen time and time again that he does dirty things for money. There was no… Read more »
To your point, that was the argument he used to convince Speck in the first two issues. That they could sell the starcaster to the Federation, accomplishing Nyrah’s goal of getting it to them while making money in the process. https://cad-comic.com/comic/the-starcaster-chronicles-02-03/ However Speck called bluff on the 3rd issue and accused him of trying to be the good guy (and implying this was not the first time he couldn’t resist helping others): https://cad-comic.com/comic/the-starcaster-chronicles-03-08/ The bluff being pretty much confirmed when he went back for her: https://cad-comic.com/comic/the-starcaster-chronicles-03-11/ And also on later on, when Speck said he hoped this would fill Cort’s… Read more »
Up until now he has told everyone (Maybe Speck knew?) that he was a victim. That the Federation was corrupt and when he wouldn’t play along then they falsely accused him and drummed him out… Now it turns out that he was part of the corruption all along accepting bribes. Nyrah can be a bit of a pain with black and white moralising, but based on what she thought she knew of his character, she saved his life bolting one of the most powerful devices in the cosmos onto him… Now it turns out she didn’t know him as well… Read more »
Just go back one page in the comic and read what Cort is saying and you’ll be all caught up as much as any of us.
Derptastic
3 years ago
Every time they use the Starcaster and it’s pointed up/outwards, I keep wondering around the details of how/when does the beam end?
Does it keep travelling until its energy dissipates, does it travel until it hits something (“..making Sir Isaac Newton the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!”), or is there some ‘magic’ around it, preventing it from going more than X distance?
Sir Isaac Newton only applies with kinetic weapons in space 😛 This is a release of energy however, so I would say to treat it the way you would energy released from a star. It’s going to dissipate over distance until it just fizzles out completely. Remember, our Sun releases a ton of energy every second, but only a tiny fraction of the energy reaches the earth. Part of this is due to how quickly radiation releases its energy, and part of it is due to the fact that space is not an empty void (dark matter has mass and… Read more »
Radiation loses its energy through the inverse-square law, but that does not apply to focused beams. Every individual photon will keep going forever until it hits something without ever losing energy.
A star emits photons in all directions, so the density of photons will keep decreasing the further you go away from the star, but a focused beam like a laser (or a Starcaster, from the looks of it) does not have that issue.
So yes, that beam will probably keep going until it hits something.
although each photon will continue, the beam itself will spread out. a perfectly columnated beam is all but impossible. it looks to have spread quite a bit even in that short distance to the mountain top
Part of the spread is the perspective, but I agree that it will eventually spread out and lose potency. And the statistical chance of it hitting something outside of the atmosphere is 0% on an uninhabited planet. Or, you know, 100% if it’s for plot reasons.
Only if it has perfect focus. Even then it will encounter interstellar dust/etc. On top of that the beam is about a foot across. There’s practically zero chance of it hitting anything clear out to the end of the universe.
dark mater does have mass but does not interact with light at all, hence being “dark” the decrease in intensity from a star is purely proportional to distance in most cases.
Mass results in gravity which does interact with light. Not going to reflect the light but varrying densities of dark mater could still scatter a perfectly coherent beam over long enough distances. Realisticly hiting random hydrogen atoms in the void going to do it faster though.
So, do we now find out that he was taking bribes to keep up appearances and he wasn’t accepting them from evil-bad people but from people who genuinely needed help but couldn’t use normal channels?
That is a fair possibility. Given Cort’s complaints against the Federation, there could easily have been a culture of accepting bribery, and he went along with it.
I bet this is going to be a story in the vein of “The Untouchables”, except having the Elliot Ness character be redeeming himself from a corrupt past on the inside rather than being pristine and outside the corruption from the outset.
Gobo
3 years ago
We really don’t know anything about Cort. His introduction was as a shady operator, much as Jacob had mentioned earlier. The Solo. It is a type of character I love to see, but he isn’t a hero when we first see him. Could he have been the promising rookie on the force, slowly initiated into a corrupt system and not realizing how bad it really is until he is too deep? Could his nature have gotten the better of him from the start and it wasn’t until he hurt someone or his eyes were open that he decided to distance… Read more »
One common theme in corrupt organizations is making the new guy “take a taste” Get them to get slightly dirty on a fairly innocuous incident that’s easy for all but the straightest of arrows to justify as not really mattering. Once they’ve taken that first tiny step its easier to make them take slightly larger ones until they are thoroughly covered in the same dirt everyone else is. If they have a crisis of concence later the corrupt can use the past actions to either make them back down or force them to take a fall.The guys who wont compromise… Read more »
Robert
3 years ago
Well, he’s got the “short bursts” part OK, so she didn’t have to slug him again. Progress!
Crestlinger
3 years ago
Do hope he realized how to turn it Off this time or they are Both one sneeze away from a bad day.
Vampyrr
3 years ago
Nyrah is a rather obnoxious character I hope she gets to eventually become more grounded in reality as the comic progresses
24
How typical.
Yes, that usually happens when you find that someone you tought was innocent or persecuted is actually guilty.
The story needs a place to grow. Even in Star Wars, Han shot first and ran instead of standing with his friends. His redemption was created through his return, and his character further developed to see things through in future episodes.
If Cort was already redeemed of his wickedness, there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell. Instead, we get to witness his transition as he earns it, rather than it just being given to him and being worthlessly hollow. This will be a far better story as a result.
“shot first and ran”
Was he supposed to shoot second after the other guy stated that he’d kill him or deliver him to be killed?
Was he supposed to stay and make a standoff with more even-worse guys lining up trying to kill him? And in the process kill them?
Jacob isn’t referring directly to Han’s introduction, just the status of his character at that time. He’s the type to end or avoid conflicts as quick and conveniently as possible, but grows more selfless later on. Jacob is making the point that we’re watching Cort undergo that same arc.
What bother’s me about this scene is that Nyrah upset him and dragged out something Cort clearly hated about himself, then just looks down at him with this judgmental look and walks away.
Problem is, Cort has gone on and on about the Federations corruption. About how the Galaxy is a bad place full of bad people. For Nyrah this has made him look more like a person that is, yeah the Galaxy is awful but I make do, I do what I HAVE to in a bad universe… Now it turns out, oh i’m also one of those people that make the Federation corrupt. Unless he was giving that bribe money to an orphanage, or if there was a deeper story (And there may very well be). Cort has now become one… Read more »
She wasn’t ready for that revelation from Cort. She hasn’t exactly put him on a pedestal, but she thought he was a better man than that. It caught her completely off guard. And let’s not forget that she’s still processing a lot of her own recent trauma, including the death of her brother. She’s been trying to hold that all down so she can be supportive of Cort this entire time. She’s been trying to stay positive, stay patient, and give him reasons to believe in himself. For his sake and for the galaxy’s sake. That was a LOT of… Read more »
And furthermore – Nyrah’s understanding of the world as it is now, is mostly due to the influence of Cort and Speck. They lied to her in the beginning when Cort pretended to be an under-cover agent, which nearly destroyed their partnership; only when Cort rescued her from clear Federation corruption did she start seeing that they couldn’t necessarily trust the Federation. Since then, though, they’ve done a LOT of running, from those who seem from all accounts to be decently trustworthy, and having to deal with unsavory criminal-world types to do so. And here again is Cort, hiding the… Read more »
It changes a fundamental part of her understanding of him. Up until now, he’s spun the narrative that he turned to a life of crime after being forced out of the Federation, and even though he’s done some selfish things over the course of their journey together, he’s repeatedly shown his good side as well, and reader input seems to have done as much of a good job as it can of walking back her dislike of his choice with the explosive powder (he doesn’t demand the Starcaster, he turns to her for guidance) – but her understanding of his… Read more »
The thing about Nyrah is that her moral absolutism, her naive idealist nature, is so strong it’s amounting to a Greek tragic flaw. She is judging him for something that happened before she even knew him, as if it should somehow weigh on the person she is in the trenches with. And it’s a situation about which she has no details, except the word “bribe.” Nyrah’s flaw is that she judges hard and fast. There is not one frown she has dished out in this entire comic that was made after she had all the details. She can never work… Read more »
I don’t think it was judgemental. What if she was just drained, and also perhaps felt empathy and/or sympathy for him having been forced to lose control by her words? It’s a big assumption that she’s judging him in any way. She could not give a shit about what he’s done, but feels sorry about what she’s just done (no regrets, since she obviously believes it’s necessary, but still empathising with the pain)
I think that’s actually concern, and she walks away because she feels too guilty
not cool, nyrah
Yeah, not cool Nyrah. How dare you not like being lied to. ?
A lot of people seem to absolve Cort of everything solely on the fact that he’s the protagonist. But to be honest, I saw nothing in this series that makes me sympathize with him. I figure lots of people like him only because he’s a typical charming quick-witted rogue. Cort specifically called out corruption in the Federation as a reason for his current life and presented himself as morally superior to the corrupt Federation. And don’t be so quick to judge Nyrah. She doesn’t want to have an argument now, she obviously needs time to think because it’s not a… Read more »
“But to be honest, I saw nothing in this series that makes me sympathize with him.” This seems unfair. After she forced him at gunpoint to hand her over to the Feds, he went on a suicide mission to save her after those very Federation agents tried to sell her to the Syndicate. The Syndicate being the ones that tortured her for centuries and sent a sadistic bounty hunter after her. Afterwards he – willingly and without expectation of reward – continued to put his own life in danger to keep the weapon of mass destruction from the Dranglaex. He’s… Read more »
“Afterwards he – willingly and without expectation of reward – continued to put his own life in danger to keep the weapon of mass destruction from the Dranglaex.” The expectation of reward was he was going to sell the Starcaster to the highest bidder. He never expected to be stuck wearing it. I mean, what did you think he would do with it after he had it? Give it to the Federation? Not even Nyrah would want that after what they did to her. We’ve seen time and time again that he does dirty things for money. There was no… Read more »
To your point, that was the argument he used to convince Speck in the first two issues. That they could sell the starcaster to the Federation, accomplishing Nyrah’s goal of getting it to them while making money in the process. https://cad-comic.com/comic/the-starcaster-chronicles-02-03/ However Speck called bluff on the 3rd issue and accused him of trying to be the good guy (and implying this was not the first time he couldn’t resist helping others): https://cad-comic.com/comic/the-starcaster-chronicles-03-08/ The bluff being pretty much confirmed when he went back for her: https://cad-comic.com/comic/the-starcaster-chronicles-03-11/ And also on later on, when Speck said he hoped this would fill Cort’s… Read more »
I don’t get it, what did he do wrong?
Up until now he has told everyone (Maybe Speck knew?) that he was a victim. That the Federation was corrupt and when he wouldn’t play along then they falsely accused him and drummed him out… Now it turns out that he was part of the corruption all along accepting bribes. Nyrah can be a bit of a pain with black and white moralising, but based on what she thought she knew of his character, she saved his life bolting one of the most powerful devices in the cosmos onto him… Now it turns out she didn’t know him as well… Read more »
Bribes for what? What did he get bribed for?
Dont know, the story hasnt gone into depth, we just know that he was accused of it. He left the Federation. Last comic he admitted he took them.
I sense… That following this we may get the details.
Just go back one page in the comic and read what Cort is saying and you’ll be all caught up as much as any of us.
Every time they use the Starcaster and it’s pointed up/outwards, I keep wondering around the details of how/when does the beam end?
Does it keep travelling until its energy dissipates, does it travel until it hits something (“..making Sir Isaac Newton the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!”), or is there some ‘magic’ around it, preventing it from going more than X distance?
Sir Isaac Newton only applies with kinetic weapons in space 😛 This is a release of energy however, so I would say to treat it the way you would energy released from a star. It’s going to dissipate over distance until it just fizzles out completely. Remember, our Sun releases a ton of energy every second, but only a tiny fraction of the energy reaches the earth. Part of this is due to how quickly radiation releases its energy, and part of it is due to the fact that space is not an empty void (dark matter has mass and… Read more »
Radiation loses its energy through the inverse-square law, but that does not apply to focused beams. Every individual photon will keep going forever until it hits something without ever losing energy.
A star emits photons in all directions, so the density of photons will keep decreasing the further you go away from the star, but a focused beam like a laser (or a Starcaster, from the looks of it) does not have that issue.
So yes, that beam will probably keep going until it hits something.
although each photon will continue, the beam itself will spread out. a perfectly columnated beam is all but impossible. it looks to have spread quite a bit even in that short distance to the mountain top
Part of the spread is the perspective, but I agree that it will eventually spread out and lose potency. And the statistical chance of it hitting something outside of the atmosphere is 0% on an uninhabited planet. Or, you know, 100% if it’s for plot reasons.
Only if it has perfect focus. Even then it will encounter interstellar dust/etc. On top of that the beam is about a foot across. There’s practically zero chance of it hitting anything clear out to the end of the universe.
dark mater does have mass but does not interact with light at all, hence being “dark” the decrease in intensity from a star is purely proportional to distance in most cases.
Mass results in gravity which does interact with light. Not going to reflect the light but varrying densities of dark mater could still scatter a perfectly coherent beam over long enough distances. Realisticly hiting random hydrogen atoms in the void going to do it faster though.
That’s one of the assumptions. The other is that it emits x-rays … thus it could interact with these x-rays to create a reverse effect?
One of the reasons given for “dark” matter is the old meaning of “dark” “being unknown”, that we are in the dark.
Haha, I’ve always loved that speech.
Looks like he sizzled his hand there
Probably he did. Probably he incinerated his hand, and the strarcaster is already rebuilding it.
I could hear that second panel
So, do we now find out that he was taking bribes to keep up appearances and he wasn’t accepting them from evil-bad people but from people who genuinely needed help but couldn’t use normal channels?
That is a fair possibility. Given Cort’s complaints against the Federation, there could easily have been a culture of accepting bribery, and he went along with it.
I bet this is going to be a story in the vein of “The Untouchables”, except having the Elliot Ness character be redeeming himself from a corrupt past on the inside rather than being pristine and outside the corruption from the outset.
We really don’t know anything about Cort. His introduction was as a shady operator, much as Jacob had mentioned earlier. The Solo. It is a type of character I love to see, but he isn’t a hero when we first see him. Could he have been the promising rookie on the force, slowly initiated into a corrupt system and not realizing how bad it really is until he is too deep? Could his nature have gotten the better of him from the start and it wasn’t until he hurt someone or his eyes were open that he decided to distance… Read more »
One common theme in corrupt organizations is making the new guy “take a taste” Get them to get slightly dirty on a fairly innocuous incident that’s easy for all but the straightest of arrows to justify as not really mattering. Once they’ve taken that first tiny step its easier to make them take slightly larger ones until they are thoroughly covered in the same dirt everyone else is. If they have a crisis of concence later the corrupt can use the past actions to either make them back down or force them to take a fall.The guys who wont compromise… Read more »
Well, he’s got the “short bursts” part OK, so she didn’t have to slug him again. Progress!
Do hope he realized how to turn it Off this time or they are Both one sneeze away from a bad day.
Nyrah is a rather obnoxious character I hope she gets to eventually become more grounded in reality as the comic progresses