Thursday, May 5, 2022

Read This: Spacetrawler the Webcomic

Spacetrawler was a webcomic which ran from 2010 to 2013, featuring a cast of humans abducted by a galactic revolutionary group to free the Eebs, a species of telepathic technologists, from slavery. It was primarily comedic, and leveraged that to deliver some quite effective drama later in its run. Explosions, blaster fights, dismemberment and alien lovemaking abound. 


I quite enjoyed it when I read it years ago. I remembered and went back to it recently, and was surprised to find it actually continued in 2016 with a second series, and then a third starting in 2019 which is ongoing. 

If you're a fan of sci-fi webcomic, especially if you were previously a reader of Schlock Mercenary, you'll enjoy this. It takes its premise in an interesting direction, and rereading the original chapters knowing the ending was still quite enjoyable. 

I also find that its framing device, and the montage in which the human characters are 'recruited' might be a fun way to open a similar sci-fi game. Each player character starts out in their own part of the world, have to deal with a mundane challenge, then get shanghaied by aliens, or possibly go along willingly. Only on the spaceship do they come together.