Webcomic / Galaxion

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Life. Love. Hyperspace.

Galaxion is a Space Opera comic book and webcomic series written and drawn by Tara Tallan.

Galaxion, a unique starship currently belonging to the Terran Space Administration (TerSA), a civilian space survey company, is being loaned to the Interplanetary Patrol (IP) for the testing of an experimental new drive. The two previous tests, on Hiawatha ten years back and Pathfinder three years before (see the short story Pathfinder) have ended... explosively, so the tensions are high. Especially that Scavina Nelson, whose engineer husband died on the Hiawatha, is on board, personally overseeing the proceedings. But the problems with the new drive have been straightened out, so the engineers say.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Alongside the main story, the site contains a number of shorts:

• The Real Reason (one-page): Aria talks about life in the colonies and why she left.
• Minor Adjustments (one-page): Fusella repairs a panel.
• Spring Break: Fusella and Darvin, Space Cadet Academy students, meet up with Darvin's friend Zan, who wants to enroll. And he has a Zany Scheme for obtaining the necessary scholarship.
• A Matter of Principle: How Vessa joined the Galaxion crew.
• Fusella vs. Interplanetary Patrol: Fusella makes good use of Exact Words.
• Pathfinder: The previous test of the Nelson drive, conducted by general Nelson, Zan, Darvin and chief Anderson.

It has been on hiatus since 2018.

These tropes can't possibly be dangerous:

• Abnormal Allergy: Some of the Orehu suffer allergic reactions to trenat - they become feverish and delirious when stung by Miesti, but they still can be tracked by them. Patty suffers the reaction, as well, while Aria and Zan don't (but they're still made miserable by the intended effects).
• Aerith and Bob: Mostly Aerith, with names such as Fusella, Scavina or Zandarin, but Bobs: Alex, Anna or Patty - pop up here and there.
• After the End: Planet of the Orehu, designated 76432-69-GM, looks exactly like Earth - after a nuclear war.
• Alien Invasion: 76432-69-GM has been invaded by the Miesti (tiny Insectoid Aliens Puppeteer Parasites). The locals disagree whether this was independent of the war or the Miesti caused it (as Vanguarthe thinks). Seeing that the Miesti crashed on this planet and found themselves needing hosts, he may be right.
• Amicable Exes: Fusella and Darvin used to date when they were together in Space Cadet Academy, then broke up due to different life goals, but remain good friends. They still have no intention of getting back together and Fusella assures her Best Friend Aria that she can go and act on her crush on Darvin.
• Apocalyptic Underground Refuge: Downplayed. The Orehu village is located in what seems to have been a subway station, connected to the surface by natural-looking caves.
• Bait-and-Switch: Patty becomes seriously ill because of the trenat allergy. When it seems she's recovering, there's an explosion in the engine room which Anna contains in a Heroic Sacrifice. But Anna survives, while Patty dies suddenly because of an aneurysm rupturing during the hyperspace jump.
• Beneath Notice: In their first appearance, a new reader is guaranteed to not see the Miesti, even though they're right there and one panel focuses on a Miesti. Namely, the Miesti that has stung Patty and got smashed, because she just instinctively swatted at it. This is because the Miesti look like large butterflies. A little later Aria lampshades it.
• The Bridge: Quite a lot of scenes occur there, mostly those involving Fusella or the jump.
• The Captain: Fusella Miertier, the captain of the Galaxion and the Deuteragonist alongside her Best Friend Aria, is not a Kirk-style captain (she never sets foot on the 76432-69-GM), but a Reasonable Authority Figure who thinks outside the box and her family's her crew. She also bakes chocolate chip cookies for them.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: Downplayed. 21,5 parsecs would take about seven months to travel normally at the in-universe-current technology level (two hundred years since humanity first went into space, more or less), with two resupply stops. The whole inventing FTL drive thing is precisely to make interstellar travel properly casual.
• The Charmer: Darvin Deloren, Fusella's ex-boyfriend and good friend, The Social Expert (his official job description is "executive officer", but he's the one to butter up sponsors and officials) for the Nelson project and the only protection Zan has from getting spaced on occasion. He knows everybody's names, smooths social difficulties and is so helpful it's difficult to believe he actually means it sometimes.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Zan Wilder being a technical genius and friend of the Myradi, but prone to forgetting his own safety and all the rules he doesn't really care about, his Best Friend Darvin tends to stay around and keep an eye on him. Darvin himself Forgets to Eat sometimes, though.
• Colonized Solar System: Aria is a colonist, which Darvin can tell by her accent. Colonies needing faster, more reliable ways to bring them supplies is part of the reason why they're developing the FTL drive.
• Comm Links: Technically, the bracelets used by the survey team are just emergency beacons, but Zan modifies Aria's and links it to her main communicator.
• Cool Starship: The Galaxion used to be a private yacht of an "insanely wealthy" eccentric. That's why it's nautilus-shaped, incredibly spacious and wonderfully decorative inside. The spaciousness, incidentally, is why IP comandeers it - according to Zan, the FTL drive needs to be physically separated from the main engine lines, necessitating a large ship.
• Corrupted Data: When they finally find Hiawatha's logs, it turns out they're encrypted with obsolete IP keys, which a TerSA ship does not have and won't be able to access before returning to the home universe.
• Cunning Linguist: Vessa Khavis is a polyglot. She even speaks a bit of Myradi which may or may not be Starfish Language and tries her best with Orehu (but is still reduced to miming, because she's never heard this language before).
• Ditzy Genius: Zan. Gadgeteer Genius who automatically starts tinkering with any device he gets his hands on (and makes it better as often as he breaks it), has been relegated to desk duty because of insubordination (and because he has good standing with the Myradi so he couldn't be fired), prefers to do star charting from outside the ship (which is unusual in the setting to the point that Mal suggests he's being weird), bonds with Patty over her crazy hat and has "the attention span of a pair of puppies". In Spring Break he's trying for the Naismith Scholarship, the most difficult one to obtain and gets it by breaking into the observatory to get the data he needs for the essay .
• Escape Pod: Anna's team jury-rig one to rescue Zan and Aria from the planet, since the TerSA rulebook precludes landing a manned craft in the circumstances.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: It's being invented (in part by Jeff Nelson) and firmly in the "toothing problems" stage (read: Stuff Blowing Up). Nelson's drive works - by moving the ship it's on to an Alternate Universe. Not necessarily to the spot parallel to the place it started, since Galaxion's second jump moves it 21,5 parsecs away from when they had been in the home universe.
• Famed in Story: Jax Augustus, the man who made the First Contact and inspired many people, including Aria (who's a geologist and people keep saying "just like Jax Augustus" when they hear that). He seems to be still alive, but never appears in the story.
• First Contact: What all the members of TerSA Survey Teams dream of doing (as opposed to their usual surveying and geology work). What Jax Augustus actually did with the Myradi.
  • The Hiawatha crew was first contacted by the friendly Orehu.
  • Our protagonists commit a First Contact Faux Pas by killing an Insectoid Alien, which makes the other aliens rather disturbed. Talking it over later, Aria and Zan decide this had no way of going well in the first place.
• FTL Test Blunder: The first prototype exploded with the inventor on board. It actually got the inventor and crew somewhere else, just in an exploding way. The second prototype went five parsecs from the Solar System and exploded (a bit). The third prototype being tested is the Inciting Incident of this story.
  • The short story Pathfinder has more detail on the second prototype.
• FTL Travel Sickness: As FTL travel is being invented, the sickness is being discovered. The jump is disconcerting to some people, causes blackouts, headaches and at least one ruptured aneurysm resulting in death. Fusella wonders whether it's worth it.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Several.
  • Zandarin Wilder, him who keeps asking to "improve" other people's gadgets. And delivers.
  • This is a requirement to work in the engine room of Galaxion (a rather atypical ship), so Anna Ito, the chief engineer, is a Gadgeteer Genius extraordinaire.
  • The entire story is only possible thanks to Jeff Nelson's gadgeteer credentials, since he invented the FTL drive that they're testing.
• Goggles Do Nothing: According to The Rant, the goggles Zan wears while working on some machine or other in chapter 3 do nothing at all.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Carl recounts how, when the Hiawatha was crashing, the bridge crew sealed themselves on the bridge to keep the fire from spreading and still landed the ship, saving everyone else on it.
  Carl: It was the most heroic act I've ever known.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Darvin is practically Zan's older brother, despite not being blood related.
• The Hilarity of Hats: Patty loves them outlandish and is known for it. Her female teammates make faces, while Zan is excited to learn they own the same model. It becomes sadder at her funeral.
• Hired on the Spot: In Matter of Principle Vessa just up and walks to Fusella asking for a job on survey team. Fusella jokingly tells her if she can fix the latest problem with the ship, she's hired.
  Vessa: Yeah, I used to handle that stuff with my dad, back when everyone wanted upgrades.
• Human Aliens: The Orehu look exactly like humans. Then again, their planet looks exactly like Earth (after a nuclear war) and may in fact be a parallel Earth.
• Illness Blanket: Patty gets one while feverish from trenat allergy, thanks to Vessa asking a local to help get her some water and being handed a bunch of blankets the local was carrying while she goes to fetch a mug. Afterwards, she leaves one of the blankets for Patty.
• Impairment Shot: A rather long impairment sequence when Aria suffers trenat poisoning. Her confusion is underscored by lack of panel borders and general dream-like surreality.
• Insectoid Aliens: The Miesti look like large butterflies, sting like mosquitoes (and make you either telepathic and somewhat sick or really sick).
• Insistent Terminology: 76432-69-GM is not Earth (it just looks identical, except for the After the End), and they didn't land on New Zealand, but on an island analogous to it. This is supposed to keep the crew from worrying.
• Jurisdiction Friction: IP versus TerSA. Constantly. They both operate in space, stepping on each other's toes. Their somewhat different methodologies (general Nelson is nonplussed to learn that TerSA won't allow any weapons on alien planets) don't help any.
• Language Barrier: English and Orehu are not mutually understandable. The survey team has to depend on Carl as their interpreter. The barrier may or may not exist in telepathic communication, as the Miesti had ten years to learn.
• The Last DJ: Vessa. As we learn from a side story, she's ridiculously qualified (she speaks Myradi) and could have a job on any ship - but she considers it important to work under a commander she respects, and Fusella's handling of certain matters has earned her respect.
• Last Moment Together: While exploring the Hiawatha wreckage, Scavina has a flashback to the last time she's seen her husband. For added irony, he jokes on how his work on FTL drives will put her out of a job and they'll be able to spend more time together. It becomes a Troubled Backstory Flashback when Scavina and her daughter witness the ship Jeff is on explode.
• The Lost Lenore: A Rare Male Example. Jeff Nelson's tragic death in the Hiawatha disaster informs quite a lot of his wife's motivations. Especially after she finds out he may be alive on the parallel Earth. And then that he has, actually, survived and she left him behind again.
• Made of Explodium: The primary drawback of the Nelson drive - its activation caused fires and explosions on every ship it's been on, so far.
• Mad Scientist: Mal's research team consists of people who experiment on themselves and their coffee For Science!
  Their motto: If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research!
• The Matchmaker: Fusella thinks rules against fraternization are stupid and actively sets her crewmembers up with each other.
• The Medic: Patty is one for the Survey Team. She diagnoses her own broken forearm, using the proper Latin name. When she's incapacitated, Vessa takes over.
• Messy Hair: In a World… where men wear their hair slick, Zan looks the part of a slightly mad genius with his mop top which isn't quite Einstein Hair and isn't really "combed by electricity", but definitely looks like the only sort of combing it gets is with Zan's fingers while he's thinking. It's even messier when he's sick with trenat poisoning.
• Mildly Military: TerSA, which technically isn't military at all. They still have spaceships, uniforms and command structure (and rules about fraternisation), and a restictive Alien Non-Interference Clause. IP is military, but Fusella considers their need-to-know style of managing things (and the red tape) dumb.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Whatever Zan did to run into so much trouble with TerSA that he got Reassigned to Antarctica - because they couldn't fire him due to another Noodle Incident that caused the Myradi to be protective of him.
  • How "Malodorous", the chief scientist of the research team got his nickname.
  • Fusella's disastrous first meeting with chief Anderson.
• No Seat Belts: Averted. You can see them being fastened when everyone gets ready fot the FTL jump.
• Obstructive Code of Conduct: TerSA rules of First Contact strictly prohibit weapons (any weapons) on alien planets, which makes the IP officer general Nelson nonplussed. They also regulate landings on inhabited planets, but Anna figures out how to get around that using an unmanned capsule for their Restricted Rescue Operation.
  General Nelson: Knowing that threat exists, surely you don't expect me to let you face them again without any means to protect yourselves?
• Painting the Medium:
  • Radio Voice is conveyed by jagged Speech Bubbles. The unreadability of those depends on how much static there is.
  • When Fusella's very pleased suddenly, her Speech Bubbles sprout flowers.
  • While the survey team is exploring the wreckage of the Hiawatha, the panels are slanted, because the wreck's floors are.
  • The Miesti telepathic communication is flowing lines of a difficult-to-read - but readable - script.
  • The language of the Orehu is rendered in a script that can't be read but is obviously linear writing. When Carl translates for Vanguarthe, Carl's Speech Bubbles with English writing overlap Vanguarthe's Orehu Speech Bubbles.
  • Zan demonstrates how Aria smashed her communicator bracelet activating it one-handed by smashing his against the panel border. The panel border dents.
• Percussive Maintenance: Minor Adjustments is a one-page story in which Fusella "repairs" a panel that way.
  Fusella: Just one of the many skills you learn when you're the captain.
• Promotion, Not Punishment: In Spring Break, Darvin and Fusella are not expelled and Zan is admitted to the academy - after the dean explains exactly how their brilliant plan came to light and could get them charged with breaking and entering. But Zan's essay is just that good.
• Puppeteer Parasite: The Miesti, using telepathy, since they can move and live just fine in their own butterfly-like bodies, but can't operate machines. Their usual hosts are Lizard Folk, though, and they're making do with the Orehu (and humans).
• Rebus Bubble: What's a common phrase meaning you just said something embarrassing?
• Refuge in Audacity: Right in chapter one, Fusella just walks on board, Aria fretting at her heels all the time. Galaxion may be dry-docked, having the experimental drive installed, but it's still her ship and, as far as she's concerned, she has every right to be there.
• The Right of a Superior Species: The Miesti's attitudes toward humans and Orehu seem to oscciliate between "disgusting dumb creatures we have to use" and "they perform better when treated gently".
• Shout-Out: An April Fool's strip has Aria wake up in her bunk, groan about the silly clothes the people wore in her dream and get to work - on the Enterprise. In all its silly-uniformed glory.
• The Social Expert: Part of Darvin's job as an executive officer is buttering up sponsors.
• The Stoic: Alex "The Machine" Anderson. He doesn't even care about what seems to be a dislocated arm (his own). In Fusella's opinion, he has No Sense of Humor whatsoever (he's seen - drily - joking once, in Pathfinder, but that was before she met him).
• Space Cadet Academy: Fusella, Zan and Darvin were together in one.
• Space Navy: The Interplanetary Patrol is basically Space Coast Guard. The Terran Space Administration is a civilian organisation that explores and charts space.
• Starting a New Life: Elly and Trev, two of the surviving crewmembers of the Hiawatha, have started a relationship and have a daughter together. When meeting the Galaxion survey team, Elly explains that she tried to keep faith with her husband back on Earth, and Trev was never pushy, and it still sort of happened.
• Sudden Lack of Signal: After containing the inevitable fire, inability to catch any signals is the first sign the Galaxion isn't even close to Kansas anymore.
• Telepathy: The Rautani and the Miesti use it to communicate with each other. Zan and Aria become telepathic by the means of a trenat injection, or actually a Miesti sting (trenat is their venom).
• Touched by Vorlons: Trenat brings out Telepathy, which probably prepares the host for Miesti control. It stays on for at least some time - Aria and Zandarin remain telepathic enough to "hear" other characters' pain and panic across the ship.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Fusella loves hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies.
  Fusella: Stop distracting me with chocolate!
• Wasteland Elder: Vanguarthe leads the Orehu and provides exposition to our heroes about how the civilisation collapsed on his planet. He's not particularly old, however.
• Wham Episode: The end of chapter 12, with Aria waking from her dream and running to tell general Nelson what she suddenly remembered of her captivity, namely, that she met Jeff Nelson who gave her some messages.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: In the flashback where she appears, we're shown the eleven-years old Hilena Nelson's strained relationship with her mom, Scavina "Meteor" Nelson, who's career IP and never home. Hilena's dad, Jeff, seems to have had a much closer bond with her.
• The Unseen: Even after Fusella has had a (videophone) conversation with one of them, the readers still have no idea what they look like and precisely how starfish the Myradi are. Humans are not allowed outside the special guest space station, which Vessa dubs "human zoo", and it's only mildly alien-looking.