Commentary for July 7, 2022:

There’s no need to revisit my earlier thoughts about Sonic’s very forgiving nature, because I already covered that here. Instead, I’ll just say how satisfying the visuals for these scenes aboard the Potentia are. I think they turned out really well.

Anyway, you’d think someone as fast as Sonic would be running into things a lot more often, but I guess if you’re as fast as he is, you learn to react quickly to obstacles. But even the best racing drivers have accidents. Now, Kero’Ka has appeared already at the start of Chapter 36, where you could see them on the Potentia’s bridge, but they had no lines then. They’re actually a character who I first created for Eon’s Comic, but I introduced much later than this. Originally, Kathy and the OC I created Black Sabre to replace were the only crew we ever saw aboard the Potentia, but it was a big ship and it felt strange for there to be only two crew, which is why I added more, and I decided to make Kero’Ka one of them.

Fun fact, Kero’Ka is my original non-binary character, who I made non-binary by accident before I was even really aware of what non-binary meant in the real world. Their species, the gytorians, are without sexual dimorphism or gender as we understand it, because why would all sapient species in the universe express these things the same way we do on Earth? Reimagining Kero’Ka as part of Kathy’s crew wasn’t at all necessary, I just didn’t want to create a lot of new alien OC’s for what is actually going to be quite a short story arc. (Spoilers, I guess, but this arc will wrap up in season 4.)

It’s funny really, because I introduced Kero’Ka originally in a story from 2009, I think, and I had planned for them to return in a much bigger role, but Eon’s Comic didn’t last long enough to get there, ending early in 2011. So that actually means that when they do return in a big role, it’ll be in Vol. 2 now, long, long after I’d originally planned. Better late than never, I guess.