True Stories Comics - Angel Nebula Commentary

1 Jack buries Tara. The only first page without a funny layout, although it is kind of symmetrical.
2 Jack burns all of Tara's stuff. Notice I haven't figured out how to draw Jack yet. Maybe I should've sketched him first.
4.1 Jack spies an escape pod from the Nebula like the one that Thena escapes in p34.
4.6 Jack picks up the air pack which reminds him of killing Tara.
5 Jack finds The angel in the guise of Thena.
6.1 Thena originally had black streaks in her hair (a bit like Day in Frontiers), but it didn't come out right so I dropped it.
6.3 Do you remember Corona orangeade? Well I do.
6.4 This must have been a steal from somewhere, it's far too good for me.
7.3 The first mention of Angel Nebula, a phrase which wasn't in my first draft. It's just two random words I like flung together to make a meaningless title.
7.5 The angel can talk to computers with her mind. Good trick, no?
8 Angel was named after a girl in Home & Away (straight up), rather than the big foreheaded vampire who came later. Thena was named after the goddess Athena, not the 80's naff poster chain-store. And it's pronounced Thee-nah Kwin-tez.
9.3 I figured circular ships that create their own gravity would be the smart way to go in the future. Kind of like space spinners.
11.6 The word Cadre represented the inner sanctum of the corporation that Milo worked for. In the end I decided to leave them faceless and mysterious, as most corporations are.
11.8 The first confusing flashback, and our first proper glimpse of Tara. She was modelled on Laureline from Valerian, a French 60's sf strip, which I loved as a kid.
15.3 The year on screen is 2137. Check Frontiers: Deadworld to work out how far after AN that's set.
15.6 Jack says they lost contact with the Nebula 1 year ago. It was actually 10 months, the date they set off. But I presume Jack was rounding up.
16.3 The angel's not really a mindreader, she got that info from Tara's dead body. Cos y'know, the dead speak to her.
17.6 The first of many "Does it matter?"s from The angel.

18 The first of my trademark dream sequences in AN. Thena doesn't actually have this dream until p50. The narration is actually Thena starting her log in the escape pod, as we see in p66.
18.3 "Everyone aboard the Nebula is dead" Thena says, as she stands over Angel's pod (hint hint).
18.4 It's the same greenhouse she finds on p168, with the roses, Mars, stars... Foreshadowing or what?
19.1 Thena's first word is "Mother?", as the stasis pod is similar to the pod she was created in.
20.2 Angel got the snake tattoo (which was a pain to draw) sometime after she merged with The angel. Perhaps some subconcious outward sign of her new dual persona. Or something.
20.3 I always figured The angel woke Thena up. She knows her name and she arrives just as she awakes.
20.4 Thena dons the same jumpsuit that The angel wore as her in #1.
20.5 The only episode of the original Outer Limits series I've ever sat through featured this queen bee who becomes human and tries to seduce the beekeeper. I liked it so much, Angel was modelled on that bee.
21.6 I always had a feeling that Angel was kinda gay.
22.6 Barnards Star. One of my favourites. I figured at this time in history people were just starting to explore outside the solar system. But by the time of Frontiers, the general apathy has made people look inward rather than outward.
23.5 The angel tells a little white lie, as she knows the computer's already shut off life support to the others.
24 The clones are mentally and physically unstable (as it turns out recently so are the real thing. Spooky.), which is why Thena's a pill-popper and Calum's a septegenarian.
26.3 The angel readies the escape pod for Thena to leg it in.
28.4 Thena's "That doesn't matter" echoes the title.
29.6 I was going for a HAL 3000 moment here.
31.4 The angel gets all metaphysical here. I guess she means Angel's spirit is still alive.
32.3 The angel says she's going home (back to the dust). When she tells Thena to do the same, she means go back to her birthplace Mars, rather than the place Thena thinks is home, Earth.

52 Thena remembering leaving her escape pod and boarding Calum's ship.
53.4 Thena complains about the Martian sky being pink. We'll soon change that...
53.6 Thena can't recall where she was born.
54.1 Calum offers her new improved memory restoring pills in exchange for her accompanying him.
54.4 Thena's developed a mild case of agrophobia after being stuck in an escape pod for a month.
55.6 Thena and The angel's paths cross again, as Thena almost recognises her. From this moment on the two story paths diverge, with Thena, Calum and Milo heading one way and Jack, Mal and The angel the other.
58.1 The mystery of the dead guy in the closet (p42) is solved. It's one of the pods from the wreckage of the Nebula. After all, Jack's true mission was to search for the Nebula and retrieve any survivors.
58.3 Jack landed rather than scan the planet in order to bump off Tara.
58.7 Haile's shoulder makes its first appearance.
59 That's Haile as in hail. Notice the crucifix.
62.2 Evil security guy makes his debut. I tried to make him as inconspicuous as possible, but in the end even I kept forgetting which one he was.
63.1 This film is from p55.1, where Calum deliberately looks up and smiles at the security camera hidden in the lights.
64.5 Thena calls for her imaginary pet (rat?) Henry, while Calum talks about "breaches to the hull wall" while planting the bomb.
65.4 Mal appears to have been promoted to security since Tara left. He and the guys from p41-42 approach Calum's abandoned ship.
66 After drawing I noticed this layout looked a bit like the Diamond logo. From that moment on I vowed to cut down on the fancy layouts. This is the beginning of Thena's escape pod log from p18 which Calum has put on automatic activation for the benefit of Milo.
67.3 The angel watches Mal's home movies. Notice how the window is just a videoscreen and can be also be used like a TV.
68 The angel has an identity crisis, switching from Tara to Angel and back again.
68.4 It's Quantum Leap!

69 Milo waters a garden similar to the greenhouse Thena ends up at.
70.4 Milo's plan is to push a huge ice asteroid into orbit, where it will burn up on entry, adding a great deal of moisture to the atmosphere. In theory.
71.1 Angel considers buying the top worn by The angel as her in #2.
71.3 Haile's not really Angel's mom, just her guardian, but Angel's unaware that she's really a clone.
71.5 Milo mentions that all the windows are actually videoscreens, like the one in Mal's room. Here I was getting at the absurdity of travelling to another planet just to live in a plastic bubble. It's a point I tried to make a few times in AN, that times may change but human nature remains the same, and the majority of people will always lack vision and imagination.
71.8 Angel being watched by Mars Central security. Presumably security guy keeping tabs on the clones.
72.6 Always liked the 4-3-2-1 bit.
73.1 The ice asteroid enters the atmosphere.
74.1 I hate doing narration, and this issue was my first attempt. I came up with a way around it as usual (Milo writing his memoirs), but there's still some awfully clunky prose in this issue.
74.2 The first ever view of Mars from Viking's leg.
74.3 This was just a made-up theory I liked at the time. Although it comes into play in Frontiers...
75-77 Martian dust storms are usually a lot worse than this.
78-80 I was struggling with the writing of this issue, when I dreamt this whole sequence. I tried to reproduce the dream as accurately as possible, considering it was a dream and all.
80 After getting sucked down a hole by The angel, Angel finds herself shrouded in blackness with a bright circle under her feet. Running to the other circle is the only escape, but that means bonding with The angel's spirit. Least that's the way I see it.
82.2 I like Milo and all, but he's hardly boyfriend and surrogate father of the year is he? Too busy obsessing over Mars to notice Haile and Angel.
82 Haile quizzes Milo on the cloning lab Angel stumbled upon, which was very similar to the one run by Milo. In the foreground Angel finds her imaginatively named cat Kitty doesn't trust her anymore.
83.5 Milo gets all excited about it raining, failing to notice the rain burning a hole on the window ledge.
84.2 Notice Milo's base is also similar to Thena's greenhouse.
84.4 Milo gets burned dancing in the rain.
85.5 Angel utters the 2nd "Something's gone wrong".
86.1 At the clone base that Angel found. Notice the 2 craft parked outside, as Haile has just pulled up.
86.4 Flashback time (rounded borders). Note Security guy backing up Milo.
86.5 A younger looking Calum makes his escape by holding nurse Haile hostage with something sharp and pointy.
88.7 Milo makes his fateful choice between Mars and Haile.
89-90 As Milo heads for Mars Central, Haile, Angel and The angel speed toward imagined safety on Earth.

91-93 I must confess I added this scene because the issue was only 13 pages long. But it turned out to be rather important to the backstory.
91 I figured the clones would have some kind of failsafe built into their false memories, so the bad guys could send the signal and gather them all together if need be.
91.2 I like to think that's how you'd park a Nebula.
91.4 The memory implant would make them think they all wanted to be sent into space to colonise the Barnards system. Angel is the only one to suspect something's up because of the presence of The angel inside her.
92 I deliberately tried to echo the Nazi gas chambers with this scene. After all, wittingly or unwittingly, the guards are sending them off to their deaths.
92.6 Here's the 9 clones in a line (minus the at large Calum). There are 10 stasis pods on the Nebula after all (p19.5). Unfortunately on p150-151 I forgot this and said there were 12 test subjects. So I guess 2 of them didn't make it past the early stages.
93.5 "Something's not right." Ooh, so close Angel.
94.6 Calum's looking up at Milo on the monitor again.
95.2 Made me laugh.
96.2 I'm not sure how Mal could've lost Tara in his tiny apartment.
96.4 Tara's hair is shorter from when she changed back into the shorter-haired Angel(p68).
97.4 Mal's just about to confess undying love...
97.5 when he notices she forgot the tattoo as well as the hair.
99.4 Milo's got security guy and girl as Calum's welcoming party.
99.7 It's been 5 years, Calum. The memory goes as you get older.
100.5 Calum kindly reminds Milo of his promise to kill him should anything happen to the clones (p87.3).
100.7 I don't think I'll ever write a better line than "Get your coat."
101.2 The angel outside Mars Central. Presumably she just walked through the walls to get there, as she's not corporeal.
101.4 She wipes off her tattoo.
102 This is The angel's second attempt to return to the dust. The first time she was disturbed by Tara's body. Here she decides she's not yet ready to give up having a body. Think of it like the Beyonder in Secret Wars II, once you've experienced humanity you can't just go back to nothingness.
103.3 Calum dishes out another pill to Thena.
103.5 Calum tells Milo "maybe I'll kill you." He's obviously going soft in his old age. And as we know, he does let Milo live, albeit stranded in the desert.
104.6 Ah, the big fist panel. Possibly my worst ever. Just think of it as a Kirby tribute.
105.6 Milo's security bods listening in. They're actually controlling the ship's course remotely.
106 The bomb Calum planted on p64. When Milo asks him if he was bluffing, Calum answers yes and no. Yes, he was bluffing about it going off on his signal. No there is a bomb, and it's primed to go off whenever someone gets near it.

129 Thena's second dream (or third if you count p52, but I think she was just remembering that) has the same panel layout as the first, just flipped. Here is one of her memories as a child.
129.3 Her mother calls her, her real mother being the pod that birthed her.
129.5 Note the roses in the garden. It's Thena's recurring motif.
129.6 The illusion is shattered as her real memory of her room in the cave facility returns. Note the vase with the roses is the same as p25.1.
130 Mars Central security make the ship go down not far from the base, so Calum decides to walk the rest of the way. Presumably they were to then rescue Milo after they'd disarmed the bomb. It was a good plan.
131 The beeping is the security team's patented bomb detector.
131.4 Calum hooked the bomb up to the air supply to make it look like it was going to poison the station's air, when really it was just meant to blow a big hole in the outer wall.
132.5 In p64.3, Thena asks if there are any rats here, and Calum replies they don't allow animals on Mars as it's too dangerous. So I figured it'd be funny if the station was destroyed by a stray rat. Let's call him Henry.
132.6 I thought a big white space would be more effective than the usual loud KA-BOOM sound effect to illustrate the bomb going off.
133.2 Well it is home Calum.
133.5 That's how Calum managed to rescue Thena just over a month after the Nebula crashed.
134.2 That's what The angel told her on p32.1.
134.5 To finish Milo's sentence, it was the nasty old corporation who signalled the computer to terminate life support.
135.2 The angel refers to her trouble with door locks as mentioned by Mal on p104.4.
135.3 Jack's holding them hostage with a Star Trek phaser. Life imitates art...
135.6 Jack recalls burying Tara.
136.3 The angel almost says "Does it matter?" but is rudely interrupted by Jack, who's heard her catchphrase before on p17.6.
137.6 An acid rain shower similar to the first ever one on p84.
137.1 Milo seriously underestimates his terraforming, as some vegetation is already thriving on Mars, as we see in p169-170.
137.4 This is the main ethical argument against terraforming is that Mars is Mars, and should be left unspoilt, not transformed into a second rate Earth. But at the rate genetic engineering is progressing, Milo's previous argument that we'll have to change rather than the planet seems the more likely way forward.
139-140 The secret origin of The angel in just two pages.
139.1 "I was dust. Earth and dust." is a repeat of her speech to Thena on p27.3.
139.2 One of the first manned ships to Mars.
139.5 Same panel as p79.5. She refers to Angel a child of Mars because she was created there to be able to survive there, therefore she regards her as a fellow Martian.
139.7 The Nebula obviously. "Something went wrong" is yet another variation on that phrase.
140.1 The angel exiting Angel on the point of her death. See how she can go through solid matter. I decided against ghost nipples.
140.2 Wreckage of the Nebula is visible.
140.3 Tara's grave.
140.4 The angel in her Thena guise walking towards the escape pod where Jack found her. This indicates that there was more than one escape pod on the Nebula (makes sense), as Thena got away in the other one. How the escape pod survived the crash i'm not certain, but I guess that's why they call them escape pods.
140.6 This raises the question of identity which was a major theme in AN. Even though The angel has the memories of Angel and Tara and no form of her own, she has her own seperate persona and personality. She is, therefore she is.
141.6 I know Calum's got his superhuman clone powers, but I'm still at a loss as how he managed to beat Milo down that hill without him noticing.
142.2 Calum states that he's 19, which makes Thena and Angel 18. Obviously Calum's process was faulty which is why he looks so much older.
143.5 Thena repeats her angels question originally put in p24.8.
143.6 The same false memory of the nun as p25.1, better drawn this time.
143.7 The real memory of the facility. The room is the same as in her dream (p129.6), and the nun who taught Thena about religion turns out be nurse Haile.
145.4 From what I recall, a human could only survive in the freezing carbon dioxide laced Martian atmosphere for less than a minute. Although nobody's actually tested this theory yet.

146.9 Security guy deletes Haile's plea about Angel before Milo sees it. I figured it needed explaining as to why Milo just sat on his hands for 6 months before sending out Jack's rescue bid.
147 The Viking lander makes its second AN appearance. All the landers sent to Mars have headed for the relatively flat temperate plains near the equator, as it's obviously the easiest place to set down. So I plonked Mars Central and the hidden bases in the same region.
148.3 Calum's pocketed the rest of the pills.
148.7 Thena and Calum have what's referred to on US sitcoms as 'a moment'. I think Calum really cared for Thena in his own twisted way.
150.2 With the recent uproar over human cloning, a ban on all forms of genetic engineering doesn't seem too far-fetched. This is revealed to still be in force in Frontiers: Deadworld.
150.3 I figured if you could engineer people who only required a small intake of oxygen and were immune to certain toxic gases, you'd have the perfect colonist. Hey, it is science fiction after all.
151.2 Not the most secure facility I know, but people very rarely venture outside of Mars Central, so it was unlikely to be discovered.
151.7 This probably happened, as the guardians assigned to the clones would no doubt be on the payroll of the corporation. Even Angel was adopted by employees Haile and Milo. And since all the clones were sent to live on Earth in the interim, Haile trying to hide Angel on Earth was definitely the wrong move.
152.3 Thena as a child in her imaginary room again.
153.6 I don't think Tara ever loved Jack, as she knew she had to kill him from the start. I believe Jack thought he loved Tara, but he didn't really understand what that means.
155.6 Jack slices his head open in the struggle with Mal. I must confess the idea for this ending came from the ending to Something Wild, with Jack playing Ray Liotta. But it's the only way it could have ended really.
157.5 Milo never did find out that his right hand man was the main mole in security.
157.6 Milo says he took the job to try and help the clones, which is how he rationalised it to himself. However I suspect it was more to see his dream fulfilled of people walking unaided on Mars.
158.2 Thena recalls her conversation with The angel (p32.5). So why did Thena survive? What's so special about her? I guess we'll never know now.
160.5 A reference to p27.6, where Thena tells The angel she's never had any friends, which is true, as she spent most of her childhood locked in a room. So at least she finally made some friends.
161.2 Calum has that Nosferatu look going for him.
161.3 Milo's not wrong there. They're too busy dropping like flies...
161.5 Again, a reference to the pod as family.
162.2 Calum's been preparing for his suicide for years, so he's come prepared with some small explosives about his person and a detonator on a 5 second delay.
162.4 Calum's final word in the pod echoes Thena's first (p19.1), as the pod is the only mother they've ever known.
162.7 The rockslide seals Calum's tomb for eternity.
163.2 WEOOW is a great siren noise, dontcha think?
164.1 Security guy on the left is one of the fleeing rabble.
164.3 Always tell a dying man what he wants to hear.
164.6 One final "Does it matter?" from The angel. Note the 'Welcome to Mars Central' sign in the background. Obviously The angel survived because she doesn't breathe, but did she get Mal to the Corona in time before he snuffed it? I'd like to think so,as I'm quite fond of the little tyke. As for the fate of Mars Central, check out Frontiers: Departure.
166.1 A deliberate echo of p79.3, which goes to show there's more than one spirit of Mars that's been stirred by the dead.
166.3 Milo removes his helmet again. Will he ever learn?
166.5 Milo disappears down a hole like Angel on p79.4. Finally Milo gets his wish to become a true Martian.
168.4 After wandering around Mars for hours, Thena spots the greenhouse from her dream (p18).
169.3 Although the place is long since deserted and the Martian atmosphere has got in, some of the plants are thriving nonetheless.
169.5 Thena framed by the roses as she walks through the front exit. Almost identical to p18.4.
170.1 The sun overhead was foreshadowed in Thena's other dream (p129.1).
170.2 I hate American Beauty.
170.5 Thena finally gets her wish, as the terraforming kicks in and the sky turns blue.
170.7 Okay, so I killed most everybody, but it's still a happy ending right?