| drive: the scifi comic | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author(s) | Dave Kellett |
| Website | official Drive site |
| Current status/schedule | Updating weekly |
| Launch date | August 15, 2009 [1] (first post) |
drive: the scifi comic, more commonly referred to as simply Drive, is a weekly webcomic created by Dave Kellett.
Drive began as a "Saturday Sci-Fi" storyline on the popular webcomic site, Sheldon .
The strip is inked in shades of blue and is typically organized into several rows of panels per page.
Drive is a space opera that takes place in the year 2401. The strip tells the story of the second Spanish Empire—a galactic empire—and its war with a race called "The Continuum of Makers". The story follows the crew of the Machito, who have been press-ganged into a unique mission by an emperor they despise. As the storyline advances, their mission ripples out in ways neither they nor the Emperor could imagine, to impact the fate of both warring races. [2]
Nosh: The Machito's Science Officer. Nosh is a Veetan (a burly, yet pacifistic Alien race) who learned to speak English while in Russia.
Skitter: The Machito's Pilot. A small alien with amnesia—and a gift for guiding a ship through "pinched space" that could give the Empire an advantage in its war with the Continuum-achieved by sensing gravity wave movements through his mohawk head-crest. Nosh gave Skitter his working name. [3]
Fernando ('Nando) Cruz: The Machito's 14-year-old head of engineering, and member of "La Familia" (the Empire's Spanish Royal Family).
Cuddow: A Fillipod (an insect-like race) from the planet Tesskil. Cuddow was the senior adviser to Tesskils leader. He joined the crew when he fled the planet during a Continuum attack.
Captain Taneel: Described as an "unhappy grandmother captain," she is in charge of the Machito. [4]
Orla O'Malley: A xenobiologist assigned to the Machito by the Emperor, and also secretly a member of "La Familia". [5] [6]
Emperor Cruz: Member of "La Familia" who committed regicide by killing his uncle to take up the throne. Commands the Human/Veetan empire and "La Grande y Felicissima Armada" (the Navy).
Los Tres Primos: A trio of "La Familia" cousins who have rebelled against their upbringing and strive to bring equality to the downtrodden people of the Empire. They move in secret using a stolen ship- piloted by another member of Skitters' unknown species.
The Continuum Of Makers: A race of highly-intelligent aliens who value their inventions (which they refer to as "spirits") above all else. As such, they have declared humanity guilty of "spirit-theft" for using the Ring Drive salvaged from one of their crashed ships.
The Vinn: A collection of alien races united by an artificial parasite that gives each Vinn a tattoo-like patch over one eye along with several other biological enhancements. Vinn are determined to spread across the universe as part of an ongoing search for "the Missing Gods" that led to their creation.
Some fans have made three-dimensional renderings of the spaceships featured in the comic.
In January 2010, Patrick Johns, the author of the webcomic Stickfodder, posted the first of such renderings to his Flickr account [7] and, subsequently, to Dave Kellett's Sheldon Talk forums. [8] In response to the forum post, Dave Kellett encouraged other 3D artists to "take a crack at it." [9]
Three months later, a Drive fan with the screen name Maxwell posted a rendering of the Emperor's ship to the Sheldon Talk forums. [10]
In May, 2010, visual effects student Dan Taubert created a 1-minute animation that features several Drive ships at a Denny's in the sky as well as the Emperor's ship and the Machito in space. Taubert published the progress of his DRIVE 3D Visualization project to his personal website, while he posted the final animation on Vimeo. [11] [12]
On his way to Comic-Con 2010, Gary Tyrrell, author of the webcomic blog Fleen, indicated the first collection of Drive comics (Drive – A Hero Rises) was a must-buy saying it would be "purchased by [him] and probably should be by you". He also indicated he has been "digging" Drive and "[couldn't] wait to get [his] hands on this first collection". [13]
In a review of Drive published on September 19, 2010, Jeff Kapalka of The Post-Standard newspaper out of Syracuse, New York, described the strip as having "taken ... time to set up [the] universe and populate it with a variety of interesting individuals. The story is serious. The characters are hilarious." He also praised Kellett in the crafting of this comic saying, "It's a fine wire he's walking. Telling a continued story at a rate of one page a week is almost a lost art. Making it funny while not being able to reference modern pop culture makes it even more difficult. Kellett succeeds at both." [14]
Mike Braff, a columnist for Del Rey Books' Suvudu site, published a review of Drive on January 30, 2011. He spoke highly concerning the thought and planning Kellett has put into the comic saying, "Unlike most webcomics, which seem to be made up on the fly, ... Drive definitely has a story to tell and I, for one, am excited to hear it." After giving a brief synopsis of the story, Mr. Braff went on to praise the workmanship of the narrative, indicating that "the ideas, themes, and environments presented in Drive are fantastic and make the universe feel very broad". [15]
Schlock Mercenary is a comedic webcomic written and drawn by Howard Tayler. It follows the tribulations of a star-travelling mercenary company in a satiric, mildly dystopian 31st-century space opera setting. After its debut on June 12, 2000, the comic was updated daily until its conclusion in July 24, 2020, supporting its author and receiving five Hugo Award nominations.
Real Life is an American webcomic drawn and authored by Maelyn Dean. It began on November 15, 1999, and is still updated, after breaks from December 10, 2015, to September 10, 2018, and again from July 16, 2019, to June 15, 2020, from December 6, 2022 to February 26th, 2024, and most recently, from April 9, 2024, to present. The comic is loosely based around the lives of fictionalized versions of Dean and her friends, including verbatim conversations, as well as fictional aspects including time travel and mecha combat. Characters regularly break the fourth wall. Real Life focuses on humor related to video games and science fiction, and references internet memes.
The Starjammers are a fictional team of space pirates appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The Starjammers have often appeared in pages of the X-Men comic books. The Starjammers first appeared in X-Men #104 and were created by Dave Cockrum. The name "Starjammers" was created on the basis of the type of sailing ship known as "Windjammer".
Patrick Sean Farley is a freelance illustrator and Web page designer. Known as a pioneer of webcomics as a medium, Farley works out of Oakland, California.
Chicken Little is a 2005 American animated science fiction comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Mark Dindal from a screenplay by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, and Ron Anderson, based on a story by Dindal and Mark Kennedy, loosely inspired on the European folk tale "Henny Penny", known in the United States as "Chicken Little". In this version, the title character is ridiculed by his town for causing a panic, thinking that the sky was "falling". A year later he attempts to fix his reputation, followed by an unexpected truth regarding his past being revealed. The film is dedicated to Disney artist and writer Joe Grant, who died before the film's release. This also marked the final film appearance of Don Knotts during his lifetime, as his next and final film, Air Buddies, would be released posthumously.
Alien Loves Predator is a webcomic written by Bernie Hou. It spoofs the Alien vs. Predator franchise. Reversing the adversarial relationship depicted in the comics, games, books and movies, ALP presents an Alien and a Predator as friends and roommates in modern-day New York City.
Ryan North is a Canadian writer and computer programmer.
Brad Guigar is an American cartoonist who is best known for his daily webcomic Greystone Inn and its sequel Evil Inc.
Sheldon is a comedy webcomic created by Dave Kellett. It centers on the odd family unit of 10-year-old Sheldon, his grandfather guardian and his talking duck, Arthur. Much humour is character-based, often joking at traits such as Sheldon's geekiness, Gramp's old age or Arthur's over-inflated ego. Kellett's other webcomic, Drive, had appeared on the Sheldon site each Saturday, before moving to a site of its own.
Wondermark is a webcomic created by David Malki which was syndicated to Flak Magazine and appeared in The Onion's print edition from 2006 to 2008. It features 19th-century illustrations that have been recontextualized to create humorous juxtapositions. It takes the horizontal four-panel shape of a newspaper strip, although the number of panels varies from one to six or more. It is updated intermittently.
The Embroidered Uniform Guard was the imperial secret police that served the emperors of the Ming dynasty in China. The guard was founded by the Hongwu Emperor in 1368 to serve as his personal bodyguards. In 1369 it became an imperial military body. They were given the authority to overrule judicial proceedings in prosecutions with full autonomy in arresting, interrogating and punishing anyone, including nobles and the emperor's relatives.
Jonathan Rosenberg is the webcomic artist responsible for Goats, Scenes from a Multiverse and megaGAMERZ 3133T. Rosenberg has been producing webcomics since 1997, making him one of the original webcomic artists. When the National Cartoonists Society added a new category, Online Comic Strips, in 2011, Rosenberg was the first winner.
Girly is a webcomic created by Jaqueline Lesnick which follows the romantic relationship between two girls named Otra and Winter, as well as other citizens of the city of Cute-Town. It ran from 2003 until 2010. The author describes their work as, “a comic that went everywhere and did everything, for better or worse. But all in all it is a comic about 2 gals who love each other very much dawwww. Girly is a comic that helped sexually awaken a generation of readers, as well as (eventually) myself.”
Platinum Studios, Inc. is a media company based in the United States. It controls a library of thousands of comic-book characters, which it seeks to adapt, produce, and license for all forms of media. The company has released films and/or television programming with Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, MGM, Showtime and Lionsgate. Platinum has developed film or television with others, including The Walt Disney Company's 20th Century Studios, Warner Bros. Discovery's New Line Cinema and Sony Pictures.
Dave Kellett is the creator and cartoonist of two webcomic titles, Sheldon and Drive, the co-author of How To Make Webcomics and the co-host of Comic Lab. He has been nominated for the prestigious Eisner Awards, as well as a Harvey Award, and won a Reuben Award.
Homestuck is an Internet fiction series created by American author and artist Andrew Hussie. The fourth and best-known of Hussie's four MS Paint Adventures, it originally ran from April 13, 2009 to April 13, 2016. Though normally described as a webcomic, and partly constituted by a series of single panel pages, Homestuck also relied heavily on Flash animations and instant message logs to convey its story, along with occasional use of browser games.
The Topato Corporation is a widely recognized online retailer of webcomics and related merchandise. It was established around 2004 by artist Jeffrey Rowland.
Notable events of 2009 in webcomics.
This article presents a list of notable events of 2016 in webcomics.
Notable events of the late 1990s in webcomics.