This story began here but with some input from Zombie Rust , Mike Lee , and Ausven it has evolved to the point where I decided that a fresh start was needed.

Here’s the story in its new form :

1——-—
[splash page] Shud ; the last legionary on planet Simiacle after the great invasion.

2——-—
Simiacle; a very small blue-green planet resting at the outer edge of a little known and seldom visited galaxy.
It’s inhabitants lived simply and peacefully. They had never had any reason to do otherwise.
Shud was the King’s bodyguard;
an honorary position since no attack on the King had occurred in well over 500 years.
Even still, he took his job very seriously, even teaching himself a form of martial arts from a book he’d obtained from a rare traveler.

A little under a week ago everything changed…

3——-—-
Shud watched helplessly as the King died in a pool of blood and ink, wearing a ghastly contorted mask that mirrored his own shock and confusion.
He stood rooted to the ground doing nothing, not believing what was happening until it was too late.
The small creature that took the King’s life was fast and deadly, and was gone again through an open window before anyone else even moved.
..and in that moment they heard the grinding whir of alien ships arriving, parting the clouds and casting a strange glow on those standing in the streets gazing upwards.

4——-—-
Before the ships had even cleared the clouds pods began to emerge and shoot downwards. The wonder of those gazing upwards turned quickly to panic.
Shud’s eyes went wide with sudden realization that his family was in danger. This time he didn’t pause, not even long enough to use the door, instead choosing a window in the same fashion as the recent intruder.
Shud was fast, and took every shortcut that his speed and agility made possible, but it wasn’t enough.
Before he could reach them his family had already died, along with thousands within the castle and surrounding city.

5——-—-
The small assassin Shud had already seen was not at all like those who followed; tall armoured creatures with bodies almost entirely devoid of hair and with strange crude limbs.
Their expressions glimpsed through reflective shields were vile and hateful.
Shud could see them in the streets as he crouched, resting a gentle touch on his wife and child, saying a final farewell and letting tears flow down his face.
He paused longer than was safe, telling himself in that moment that he had failed in every way he could imagine failing.
Feeling cold and numb, but still scared, Shud had to fight his impulse to flee from the men with flash-sticks. But he stood his ground.

6——-—-
He let the anger flow and well up into his tensed limbs, replacing every last shred of grief and fear with something more useful.
The first man that Shud killed left him retching and sobbing, the tears returning when he thought he’d already wiped away the last of them. But he had already lost everything dear to him, along with his self respect..
…so he paused, and regained his composure just in time to defend himself and kill another.
Shud knew that he would soon be surrounded, and killed. There was much more to be done to stop this atrocity and he needed to be alive to see it through. Using the rooftops to remain unseen Shud made his way to the edge of the city and then to the cover of the nearby swamp.

7——-—-
While Shud watched through the gaps in the foliage of the tree he was in, he glimpsed the invading forces continuing to arrive in increasingly large numbers.
He saw others of the peaceful Simiaclians fleeing from the monsters, some even making it to deep dark caves nearby, but they were quickly hunted down and killed; the invaders unleashing monsters like the one that took the King’s life only hours ago. The small beasts were well suited to the task and made short work of it.
Shud frowned, bowing his head, and wondered if he would be the only one to fight back.

8——-—-
A very small group did survive through the first day and also took refuge in the swamps. They banded together, looking to Shud for leadership.
They did not know the secret that gnawed at him; that he had failed to defend his King and his family.. and that he was as scared as they were. They knew only that he was the strongest of them all.
The Simiaclian Legion, as they called themselves, consisted of Shud, 6 farmers, 2 doctors, and a bar maid. And for all they knew they were the last of their race left alive.
Their weapons were all crude; kitchen knives and farming implements and the like.
Shud avoided the more cumbersome tools, opting only for a hammer.
He quickly discarded his ceremonial armour, knowing that it too would slow him down. He had seen what the enemy’s weapons could do and he didn’t think the armour would help in any case.

9——-—-
They stayed hidden in the swamps, striking only when they had the advantage of numbers.
The enemy, along with their vile pets, seemed disinclined to enter the boggy wetlands; a fact which no doubt had kept the band of survivors alive so far. When they did send men into the swamp they rarely thought to look upwards.
Shud learned quickly how to quiet his breathing, and remain very still.
Many of them felt the brief crushing blow of Shud’s hammer, or were dragged upwards struggling breathlessly, without ever having a chance to call for help.
But by the end of the third day Shud was the only survivor who remained. Many of the others had died without ever having struck a blow themselves.

10——-—-
Now the enemy ceased coming to the swamps. Whether they thought the Simiaclians were all dead, or whether they arrogantly assumed that Shud was no threat, he didn’t know.
So Shud rested, regaining his strength, and preparing himself for the job ahead of him. He was going to take the fight to them.
Arming himself with a knife, a hammer, and some light-weight leather clothing, Shud finished by coating himself head to toe in black mud, and then he waited for night fall.
He didn’t know why he was still alive, and he didn’t care. He felt only a seething determined hatred for those that had taken his world.. taken his family.. taken his dignity.
This night he would teach them a lesson…make them suffer for the mistake of leaving him alive…
As darkness fell, Shud made his way stealthily towards the city..

11——-—-
Making his way back to the palace, Shud climbed the outer wall.
Crouched at the top of the tallest tower Shud looked out over the city. Most of the homes had been reduced to smoldering rubble. The enemy sat around camp fires, making strange guttural sounds that he assumed was laughter.
As he considered his next move, every muscle in his body tensed, and without intending to he tilted his head back and let out an animal howl of rage.
…and then slowly he smiled. “Let them wonder what is coming” he said quietly to himself.

List of Contributors
page artist
1….. Octochimp – done (but will be re-done)
2….. Octochimp – done
3….. Retromancy (pencil) – done / Zombie Rust (ink)
4….. LilyM – done
5….. Zombie Rust
6….. Mike Lee – part 1 : done / part 2 : on the way
7….. Nick Ford
8….. Joozu
9
10…. Damien Mason – done
11

You guys have done good work with the script! I think we have an interesting story here.
It will be quite a challenge to illustrate, but since it’s happening in another galaxy, there’s also lots of room for imagination! I haven’t worked with sci-fi before myself, and after some hesitation I thought that’s exactly the reason I should participate in this project. To get out of the comfort zone. I picked the page 8 because creating an outer-space swamp might be interesting… and challenging for sure!
Hopefully we can get a team together soon and start putting this together.

thanks Joozu. For a while the ‘challenge’ factor freaked me out a bit, but I’ve leaped a few hurdles and I’m back to being excited now. :)
This is well out of my comfort zone too, but I agree that this is probably a good thing.

Mike, yeh I wouldn’t rule out a sequel, but the aim was more to purposely leave it hanging, in the standard literary way of a short story. Or at least my understanding of what a short story should be is that there is only a loose suggestion of how it ends, while deliberately leaving some doubt and some questions unanswered. I like it that way.

I considered doing the extra reference pics, but I’m in two minds still as to whether I’m the best man for the job. Let’s start with the descriptions though :

Shud : reference pics here , here , here and here
Invaders : Humans in heavily armoured suits, with helmets sporting plasti-glass visors.
Invaders ‘pets’: small (about knee height) creatures with a vaguely insectoid appearance, lots of sharp teeth and drool.. lots of drool.

Mike, can I interest you in doing a reference pic for the humans? I have a feeling you have some good instinct on this.
I have done a reference pic for the insectoid beasts so I’ll upload that shortly for some feedback, but I’m not super happy with it.

Sure thing, Octo! I also did a really rough one of Shud a couple of weeks ago if you want to see it.

@Retro: Good idea about making distinctions between captions and actions but I think Octo is intentionally leaving the script non-specific so the artists can bring their own interpretation to the table (correct me if I’m wrong, Octo).

Can I join in? I’d love to do a page..

I have an idea for page 10 if nobody else wants it :)

cool ! page 10 is all yours Damien !

Love how his tentacles wrap into a fist! Nice work Michael.

This project is gunna be a ripper! Hope to get some free time to contribute …………… so pencil me in ….. lightly … for page 7.

I’ll downsize him and make him more chimp-like and less gorilla-like to fit with the first page.

@Octo – cool, I’ll give the pencils a go this week. i didn’t realise you were leaving the script open to interpretation so thats fine, disregard my comments :)

2 thumbs up.

Looks really good, Octo! Great Job! Good page design ie. reading flow, except for the middle three panels. Because the top caption overlaps the larger panel on the right it suggests that I should read it second then the smaller panel under the first smaller panel on the left also has a panel overlapping the big panel on the right which again makes me want to reread it, as it were. This might make more sense when they’ve been filled but even if it didn’t it doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be changed. Sometimes page layout is a compromise between readability and aestheticism. If it were all about readability comics would never depart from the nine panel grid format!

I especially like the last two panel shapes and how you’ve framed the planet as well as the cool THWOK!

The whole thing has a kind of ‘popcorn’ kind of fun vibe going which makes for easy reading. Great stuff.

Sorry about the big critique but I’m guessing you might understand my helpful intentions. :)

thanks Nick and ZR !
@Mike; thanks for all the feedback, and honestly I hadn’t considered that about the flow in the middle section. Having said that, the good news is that all three of those panels will be displaying the care-free day to day life on the planet and so they won’t be sequential at all.
There does seem to be some awesome momentum here already, but I think that will come and go as everyone’s busy lives take effect. No pressure. :)

@Octo – I like the unusual panel shapes you are using but I’d probably need to see some pencils in them before I could comment helpfully.
(I find doing really quick thumbnails of the page layout first sometimes helps if you want to work out how the page flows – it’s amazing how much visual information you can get from quick doodles. )

Speaking of flow I found this on layouts recently and thought the bit about panel “time” was quite interesting
Panel layouts

@Zombie – thanks for the inking offer – that’s great!