Strip 15: Flesh and Steel

Most of the revised draft of Part 2 has just been altered or rearranged from the first draft, but Dy-Gar’s latest vision of Treya is completely new. I’d thought that an explanation of artificial intelligence would be unnecessary considering how ubiquitous it’s become in our pop culture, but after giving it some thought, I realized that in order to fully explore the relationship between organics and machines, we needed to define that relationship within the context of our story. Originally, the “flashback” of Part 2 happened earlier, when Roger asks Dy-Gar what his first memories are. Dy-Gar explains how he wakes up, how he finds the trishula, how he first meets the Goddess, and even where his cloak comes from, but in revising the script, it became clear that none of that information was mission critical. That story helped flesh out Dy-Gar’s life post-war, and maybe those details will resurface someday, but this is far more important and in keeping with the style of the comic. It always bothered me that the first draft of Part 2 didn’t have an appearance by either Treya or the Goddess (or are they one and the same?), so this scene solves all kinds of problems.

- J.S. Conner

April 9th 2015