The Starslip Crisis books I ordered arrived yesterday, sooner than I had dared to hope for. They arrived just as I had to leave for work, so I spent most of that trip wanting to be home and reading. With good reason, as it turns out, because both of the books were great. All the strips reformatted to fit on a page each, and plenty of character profiles, insights into 35th century society and culture, and other interesting tidbits. My favorite extra in the first book is the excerpt from the quickstart guide for the starslip drive.

Wow, ‘excerpt’ is a really ugly word.

Anyway, I was also relieved to see the matter of the Cirbozoid hive mind settled in a satisfactory manner. Meaning, what I rooted for won. The second book had a nice page about Cirbozoid evolution and the origin of the Battlesong, but lacked a similar page about the Mothersong, which was disappointing.

I think I saw one strip that does not appear in the digital archives, but it’s been a while since I looked at those, so I may be wrong.

The forewords for the two books are written by Steve Troop and Jerry Holkins respectively. The second one, eh… To me, it looks mostly like “This foreword was written by Jerry Holkins. He’s famous.” It wasn’t really very interesting to read and didn’t say much about the strip or its creator, unlike Troop’s funny two pages.

The books aren’t all that big, height and width-wise. In my comics shelf, they end up looking small and pushed in, especially since S and T are next to each other in the alphabet,just like Starslip Crisis and Schlock Mercenary are next to each other on my shelf. The Schlock Mercenary book is abnormally tall and wide, so it looks extra odd.

I can find no Blank Label logo on either of the books. I interpret this to mean that Straub hates his friends. Then again, there is no logo on the Schlock book either, so maybe they just don’t do that.

To end this rather aimless rambling, I’ll just say that both books were well worth the money and a very enjoyable read.

In other comic news, Cyanide and Happiness and Killer Robots from Space are added to the Recommended Comics list, and Blomsten og bien is added under Norwegian Comics.

Also, have a look at what passes for fanart these days over at Terror Island! If I can do it, anybody can! And should that be too small for you, you can have a look at this spiffy .svg version. Now you can zoom in for a closer look at those straight lines!