I can not believe I’ve drawn 1000 of these comics. I’m not fully sure how I feel about it except that I’m really glad to have had the chance to do it at all. Selkie is pretty much the first project I started and actually, well… STUCK WITH. And I’m glad for it, every day. I love the characters, writing them drawing them and bringing them all to life. They’re in my head pretty much every day, and I love letting them out to play.
Looking forward to continuing the story, especially on where… current developments may be leading. 😀
Additionally, I got a 1000th Comic gift from Kristine Melendez on the Facebook page. Super cute!
Thank you for the gift Kristine!
And thank you, all of you reading for continuing to support me and the comics and just generally being awesome. You all are a big part of why I love doing this, and why I look forward to many many more.
Thank you, everyone. May the Eel God bless you all on this day.
(Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaants!)
Happy 1000th dave! Been around for years and you and qc are my fave webcomics
For those of your readers who do not live in the US and don’t know its geography by heart, just making sure but is that the same beam seen in all three locations from three different angles?
Calumet City isn’t a real city in our world(or at least I couldn’t find it with Google Maps), but there IS a Calumetville, Wisconsin. Assuming the fictional Calumet City’s center is at the center of RL Calumetville, all three beams could be the same one, coming out of Lake Michigan and beaming in a south-southeasterly direction. I made the Website link associated with this post into a link to a screenshot of a map with Detroit, Chicago, and a pin where Calumetville can be found. For reference, Chicago is on the coast of Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior(the one protected by the “Save our Trout Act” in Selkie’s world) is the lake at the north.
Okay, if the beam comes from that much further north than I assumed in my comment below, Calumet City could well be a good bit north of Chicago.
In that case, Calumet City could be Calumetville, as you say, or perhaps Madison.
Fun fact, though: There´s a Calumet City in Illinois, right on the border to Indiana just west of Gary.
Actually Calumet city is a small town and is basically a suburb of the chicago metro area. Google “calumet city chicago” it even has a wiki page
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calumet_City,_Illinois
Todd and the rest in the car can’t currently see the beam because they are currently driving. Southeast away from lake superior and towards chicago and home.
If they look behind the car they will see it if the snow isn’t too heavy.
Okay i think there is a mistake in the comic
There are two locations called Calumet
One is the town of Calumet in wisconsin north of chicago
The second is Calumet City in illinois south of chicago
and is a suburb of the chicago metro area
Second there are no lakes large or deep enough to allow a submarine other than one of the great lakes. Which would imply the refugee village would actually be in a western bay of lake superior.
You’re correct about Calumet City (well, the one I write the story in anyway) not being a real-world city. It’s fictitious, but is named after Calumet City, Illinois (no real reason for that than that I liked the name. One of my early silly story decisions, when making up a unique name would have been a better idea).
It is a separate entity from Calumet City Illinois and Calumetville Wisconsin. It’s fictional location is roughly equidistant from La Crosse, Wausau, and Eau Claire, about where Neillsville is in the real world.
Havei Jin ‘Sur is located in one of the lesser-visited lakes in Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin, not in Lake Superior itself.
The beam is indeed firing at approximately a south-by-southeast angle. Here’s a map for those curious: https://imgur.com/c2lFFBZ That name for the beam is of questionable canonity. ;P
well that certainly clears up most of the confusion.
so in the Selkie universe, do the two real world calumets still exist ? or not exist ? or have different names ?
so safe to say we can’t base any future assumptions on real world geography anymore. now I’m curious how many other details are different, similar, or missing between our wold and Selkie’s.
Well, looks like Sarnothi aim is a bit off. They missed both Detroit and Cleveland.
Go to Chicago on Google Maps and then zoom out until you see the surrounding states.
If the view is to the north-northeast from Chicago (roughly down the length of the lake) and to the west-northwest (roughly in the direction of Grand Rapids) from Detroit, the view from these two cities works out; the beam would come from somewhere east of Milwaukee, maybe in the vicinity of the state border in the lake, and point more or less straight east.
But that would mean that Calumet City can´t be that much further north than Chicago – maybe somewhere in the vicinity of Rockford, Illinois, to see the beam at a similar angle to Chicago.
I’m firmly convinced that the beam is coming out of Lake Superior, per the maps that Dave has posted showing the beam originating from Lake Superior.
Not lake Michighan.
Yes, that would make a lot more sense, on second thought.
while the DIRECTIONS shown from the map linked by Khyrin i think would be generally accurate, i’m not sure the beam itself would be visible in Detroit, due to the curvature of the Earth, even accounting for the length/height of the beam itself, as i’m pretty sure that it would be entirely out of the atmosphere before it could even possibly be seen, and at the point it leaves the air, it has nothing to reflect/scatter off of therefore it becomes invisible.
You are assuming it to be a lazer beam which it is not
It is a lance of resonance field. The field itself emits light
It would easily be visible in the vacuum of space.
Correct. Same beam, but visible from large distances away.
Congratulations on this milestone!
Happy 1000th comic, Dave!
Anyone else feel a little excitement at seeing a city they live near mentioned in comic?
No? Just me? Okay.
I wouldn´t know, it never happened to me. I imagine if I were you, I´d be wondering right now exactly where that beam would be visible from where I live.
I think I am seeing friends and acquaintances from DoA, HTBAW! and SoG? So much fun, on this Special Day!
Congrats, Dave, you stuck with it, and involve your readers, getting them to invest emotionally with you, as you explore your characters and watch them grow and change.
Wishing you many more; good luck and good health,
Gene
I live in Ukraine. If I hear THE REGION I come from mentioned in a webcomic – like, just generally Eastern Europe (that is not stereotypical-Russia)… yeah. That’s a day, made right there.
(If I ever see a webcomic mention my CITY… there might be an explosion)
Is there a government agency in Ukraine that is like the CIA is in the u.s.?
If so, I hope that explosions and your city won’t bode ill for you, Liliet.
Ok now I’m wondering who are those three people in which those eyes belong to? Also I’m glad you like the picture I drew for you.
Going by eye and skin color and asuming it’s characters we have seen before – Middle could be Theo or Mari, last one is agent Brown.
No guess about the first, have we seen anyone with freckles?
Doesn’t Amanda have freckles?
Not that i remember – blue eyes would fit though.
I’m thinking #1 Amanda… given the eye color, freckles, and look of evil glee (frowny eyebrow, but squinted-up cheek like a smile/grin)
#2 Miss…uh… it’s been so long I forgot her name, but the lady who works with Lilian at the orphanage…. Black lady, somewhat knowledgable about the sarnothi situation, also fearful of the feds…
#3. White person, angry eyes… gotta be Brown. (don’t remember if we ever saw him close enough to determine eye-color)
Going out on a limb here, and guessing that the three eyes belong to: 1) local fishing dude, 2) local fishing dude, Agent Gray– or whoever Agent Brown’s boss is.
first: happy 1000 pages, may there be a 1000 more yet to come…at least!
back to the comic: after reading the previous comments and googling the locations, i´m throwing another theory out there: its more then ONE beam!
the angle is just too steep, so i say its three different beam, each from another lake, that will meet high up in the sky….to do what? hell if i know. just one thing is for sure: this time, no one will believe the ‘fireworks’ cover-up story. nope, this cat (or rather fish) is out of the bag for good.
ok, now that dave provided that nifty map, i obviously stand corrected…..which leaves the big question:
WHERE THE HECK ARE THEY SHOOTING AT? AND WHY?
l o l @ the innocense of Todd’s short-lived bliss
this is not just a slice of life webcomic, Todd, you’re shit out of luck
Congratulations on a 1000 pages!
Also, is it me or does the third of those eyes look very angry?
Depends which side of the face the eye is on. Could be angry, could be “Oh no, what now?”
happy 1000th! this looks interesting o.O
Happy 1000th comic! I love the comic and the characters too. When I don’t read Selkie I feel I’m missing something. Thank you Mr. Dave!
Happy 1000th Dave!
Normally the tags include all the characters, however brief or hidden. Love that you only tagged Pohl and Todd to keep the mystery of which three are shown in the faces panel.
Having been adopted out of foster care, and a small stint in a group home, I heavily identified with Selkie at the beginning of the strip. She has turned out to have much more spirit and spunk than I ever did, but that has just made this comic that much more enjoyable. Great job capturing the war between the hunger to fit in the current situation and the hunger to learn about bio family history.
Welp. I’m hoping this isn’t gonna be bad. D=
I think it’s more of a question of scale.
Xould range from “Oh no fish men exist what to we do” bad to “oh no fish men exist and they blew up our moon” bad.
Haah. Thank you, I needed that.
However, it’s *their* moon too. The aren’t extraterrestrials, I think.
Congrats, Dave! What an accomplishment! 1000… And I agree with you 1000%. As writer myself, I see and hear all the great and terrible people in my head and love to let them out onto print.
Congratulations, David….good job
Congrats on your first 1000, Dave! Really looking forward to Monday’s news report! 😀
I cannot believe I’ve read a thousand of these strips. But you can believe I’m ready for the next thousand. Congratulations, Dave!!!
Happy 1k! I enjoy this comic a lot and always look forward to every update. 🙂 Here’s to many more, Dave!
Out of curiosity, how much of the story is planned in advance? Like, are you totally winging it, or is there a meticulous outline of the complete plot in a drawer somewhere?
My own sense, just from various remarks Dave has made along the way, is that it’s in between. He does know where this is going — in general. He has a story in mind that he wants to tell. The fundamentals of that story are set in stone and won’t change.
However, details along the way — sometimes very big details — may change radically when he gets to that point in the plot. Reasons may be anything from reader reactions not being what he expected, to a realization that THIS character he now understands much better after writing them for so long, wouldn’t react to THIS situation THAT way.
He then has the fun of working out how a change can be incorporated while still keeping the story heading where he wants it to go. (Sometimes it won’t fit all that well, but hey, nothing’s perfect. The story is still gonna go where it’s meant to. On the other hand, sometimes the change will make the story much better. SCORE!!!)
Sorry for the delayed response to this, Batgirl. Weekend got away from me.
I’m not TOTALLY winging it, despite appearances. 😛 I have a “chapter” outline (quotes are because I don’t really group the story arcs into proper chapters on the website) where I lead from this story into that story and so on. And each chapter has it’s own outline of how it is *intended* to progress.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere and as Sessine has accurately noted, however, I am known to change the intended sequence of events in a chapter on-the-fly. This can be for a variety of reasons.
For example, in the Christmas arc, Mari was intended to give Andi back the urn in a much MUCH more mean-spirited way (wrapped up as a christmas gift to be opened in front of everyone). But as I got closer to that point, a problem that had been nibbling in the back of my head resolved itself: it was both out-of-character for Mari and out-of-tone for the story for an action like that to happen. So it got on-the-fly reworked to where she gave the urn back more privately, rather than setting Andi up for public humiliation right in front of Amanda.
So, basically, yes there is a plan to the story and a layout of this-then-that event progression, but it isn’t super meticulously tightly plotted or rigidly adhered too. Ask anyone who frequents the Discord server, I tend to kind of try to run things without grasping the reins too tightly. I like to keep myself open for flexible adaptation if needed. Sometimes that bites me in the butt (the Tommy the Truck storyline probably could have been a lot shorter if I hadn’t felt a need to completely revamp the ending partway through.), but it’s a way of working that I like more than a super-strict rigidly orchestrated set-up that has no room for variance or last-minute adjustment.
But you can’t see it from Wales, right?
Happy First 1000!
Agent J from MiB: It’s light from Venus bouncing off a weather balloon and, uh, swamp gas.
Ha! Made me laugh! Well done, well done.
Anyone else blaming Selkie and the ribbon?
Congrats on reaching 1,000! I love this story and would happily read a thousand more pages.
Woo congraturation
the first 1000 pages are always the most special and dear
Congrats! I’ve enjoyed the ride 🙂
Congratulations, Dave! Here’s to many more wonderful pages of Selkie and friends (and S&K, too!) and a long and happy life for you, their creator.
“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t! ” — Miranda, in The Tempest, William Shakespeare
[goes off to bake a caviar-frosted eel cake with “Happy 1000th!” spelled out on top with salmon roe]
Omg. WHAT’s the bet that Selkie’s awakening and her constantly glowing eyes have something to do with this new mystery beam. She’s the daughter of two Echoes, after all
Just saying… BUT I CALLED IT.
But it is coming out of the lake, and Selkie is in a car headed home. I don’t think that it can be Selkie. — but I’m betting good money that it is from an echo.
Thank you for all the pages of Selkie so far. I hope there’s no end to them, unless/until the story itself ends. 🙂