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Drive #3
Drive: Act Three
THE STORY CONTINUES IN ACT 3!
“The story is serious. The characters are hilarious.” —Jeff Kapalka, The Post-Standard
DRIVE is an epic sci-fi graphic All the serious scope of “Dune”, mixed in with a joy-filled dash of “The Muppets”.
The Empire was built on the back of an amazing interstellar drive invented by Conrado Cruz. He and his descendants have gone on to rule all of humanity, as they maintain sole control of the Drive. Whoever controls space flight controls the ultimate levers of power. As such, “La Familia” control the banks, the courts, the military, and politics. Under their rule, humanity’s domain has come to include other species — such as Veetans, Fillipods, Tesskans, and more.
But two waves are crashing down on the the Continuum of Makers, and the Vinn.
The crew of the Machito — Captain Taneel, Familia engineer Fernando Cruz, the gentle Veetan Nosh, the artistic Fillipod Cuddow, and the Jinyiwei spy Orla O’Malley — have been tasked with finding “Skitter’s” kind, as he can fly a spaceship like none other. They have searched Earth, Veeta, the crime planet Slaughter, the Nyxian homeworld Du Fu, and the crumbling remains of the the Great Hold of the Sill. In their search, they’ve found just one The planet they seek has “Tall trees with high-built homes, in endless jungles of blue.”
As the crew continues their search, they come across the brilliant Maker, Ahmis. He’s been hunting tantalizing clues of the Continuum’s past -- all while the Continuum hunts him for his past crimes.
But first, we rejoin the Tres Primos -- the three Familia rebels -- who’ve reverse-engineered the Cruz Drive to build their own ship, only to stumble upon a mysterious object in deep space...
The full third act of this epic sci-fi is brought together with these fun
- FIVE guest stories from Gurihiru, Terry Blas, Cat Farris, Beth Reidmiller, Ryan North, Tahid Bondia, Dave Malki, and Der-shing Helmer!
- Early character sketches!
- Behind-the-scenes stories!
- Detailed timeline!
“The story is serious. The characters are hilarious.” —Jeff Kapalka, The Post-Standard
DRIVE is an epic sci-fi graphic All the serious scope of “Dune”, mixed in with a joy-filled dash of “The Muppets”.
The Empire was built on the back of an amazing interstellar drive invented by Conrado Cruz. He and his descendants have gone on to rule all of humanity, as they maintain sole control of the Drive. Whoever controls space flight controls the ultimate levers of power. As such, “La Familia” control the banks, the courts, the military, and politics. Under their rule, humanity’s domain has come to include other species — such as Veetans, Fillipods, Tesskans, and more.
But two waves are crashing down on the the Continuum of Makers, and the Vinn.
The crew of the Machito — Captain Taneel, Familia engineer Fernando Cruz, the gentle Veetan Nosh, the artistic Fillipod Cuddow, and the Jinyiwei spy Orla O’Malley — have been tasked with finding “Skitter’s” kind, as he can fly a spaceship like none other. They have searched Earth, Veeta, the crime planet Slaughter, the Nyxian homeworld Du Fu, and the crumbling remains of the the Great Hold of the Sill. In their search, they’ve found just one The planet they seek has “Tall trees with high-built homes, in endless jungles of blue.”
As the crew continues their search, they come across the brilliant Maker, Ahmis. He’s been hunting tantalizing clues of the Continuum’s past -- all while the Continuum hunts him for his past crimes.
But first, we rejoin the Tres Primos -- the three Familia rebels -- who’ve reverse-engineered the Cruz Drive to build their own ship, only to stumble upon a mysterious object in deep space...
The full third act of this epic sci-fi is brought together with these fun
- FIVE guest stories from Gurihiru, Terry Blas, Cat Farris, Beth Reidmiller, Ryan North, Tahid Bondia, Dave Malki, and Der-shing Helmer!
- Early character sketches!
- Behind-the-scenes stories!
- Detailed timeline!
Kindle Edition
First published December 31, 2021
2 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Dave Kellett
31 books104 followersDave Kellett is the cartoonist of "Sheldon" (http://www.sheldoncomics.com).
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 5, 2021
Act three of the very fun Drive webcomic is right back into the thick of it. The Second Spanish Empire is now at war with two alien species: the Continuum of Makers and the Vinn. And it's losing both. The scout ship Machito is tasked with finding more of of Skeeter's alien species - he's able to navigate a spaceship like nobody else - but they're running out of clues, and Humanity is running out of time.
I actually had to go back and read the whole previous volume to bring me back up to speed before I started into this one. The characters are still as immensely fun as before - Nosh, in particular, is so loveable. The plot is pretty twisty, as different factions have different agendas, most of which aren't compatible with each other. The Fillipods are a brilliant species - very intelligent, but more concerned with turning that intelligence to poetry slams than weapons or technology. And the Astronomer Royal in particular is brilliant, in his inability to sensibly compliment the emperor.
It's not a long volume, the main story is only about 160 pages long, but it is very pretty. The comic pages are well-produced with lots of detail. There are also a number of short stories set in the universe at the end, although given that these aren't written by Kellett, it's not clear how canonical they are. But notwithstanding that, the story Motherbear by Beth Reidmiller is marvellous, and quite heart-breaking.
I don't know how many acts the story as a whole is envisaged to cover, but it feels like we must be past the mid-point now. We've had many revelations about the universe, and we've finally found out who Skitter's people are. It sort of feels like it should start to wind up a bit fairly soon. Although mind you, at the pace that the webcomic is released, that could still take several years to come to completion.
I actually had to go back and read the whole previous volume to bring me back up to speed before I started into this one. The characters are still as immensely fun as before - Nosh, in particular, is so loveable. The plot is pretty twisty, as different factions have different agendas, most of which aren't compatible with each other. The Fillipods are a brilliant species - very intelligent, but more concerned with turning that intelligence to poetry slams than weapons or technology. And the Astronomer Royal in particular is brilliant, in his inability to sensibly compliment the emperor.
It's not a long volume, the main story is only about 160 pages long, but it is very pretty. The comic pages are well-produced with lots of detail. There are also a number of short stories set in the universe at the end, although given that these aren't written by Kellett, it's not clear how canonical they are. But notwithstanding that, the story Motherbear by Beth Reidmiller is marvellous, and quite heart-breaking.
I don't know how many acts the story as a whole is envisaged to cover, but it feels like we must be past the mid-point now. We've had many revelations about the universe, and we've finally found out who Skitter's people are. It sort of feels like it should start to wind up a bit fairly soon. Although mind you, at the pace that the webcomic is released, that could still take several years to come to completion.
July 29, 2022
I follow the webcomic, but I always reread the print volumes when I get my hands on them and it's nice to get a refresher on what's going on in the current online run. I'm in such awe of Kellett's alien mythology here as we get closer and closer to a realization among all the different aliens (there is so much going on underneath the Emperor's nose!), and Ahmis and the Continuum of Makers is my favorite subplot of all, though Nosh is my favorite character (and the Qen species were freaking wonderful).
May 30, 2022
A delightful continuation of the Drive saga! I highly recommend the entire series! The only frustration is that it takes so long for the next book to come out especially since the story is only being added to one page per week. Everyone needs to pay Dave more through Patreon so that we can speed this up.
February 24, 2023
The DRIVE saga continues, with further adventures of our favorite semi-rogue Drive ship and its crew. More revelations among the Makers, and about the Vinn. If you stuck with the story through Arc 2 (book 2), you'll want this part also.
Oh, and more excellent short stories by excellent writers and artists!
Oh, and more excellent short stories by excellent writers and artists!
June 3, 2022
The characters remain the main driver of this series. The story moves too slowly to be truly compelling on an "ideas" level. But the jokes are fun and the poetry is so enjoyable bad that I want to spend more time with these characters and this world!
August 11, 2024
And now the intrigue ratchets up. So many empires, so little time!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews