I forgot to put the brackets around the all the dialog, except panel 6, but everyone is speaking in some alien language or another. Okay, bear with me, I know I talk about Universal Translators a lot, but I’m not sure what else to comment about on this page, so here we go.

On Earth, there are a few major languages that are worth your time to learn. English, obviously, since we export so much entertainment, and a lot of international business is conducted in English. Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, German, Hindi, or Arabic. Basically any language where there’s ~100+ million speakers is reasonably worth your time to learn. Depending heavily on your interests and geography, obviously.

BUT. If you lived in a galactic mixing pot with a chance to encounter any of ten thousand viable languages on a given day, and everyone has access to near perfect automatic translators that even somehow create holograms over people’s mouths so they’re lip synced correctly… honestly, would anyone learn more than one language? You’d only need to learn one language that the translators knew to get your foot in the door, and then you’d be set. Even if you’re a Snarglax, and you move into Little Blogsville, would you bother learning Blorgian? Just pop your translator in your ear (and in this case, your translator is also your wallet and your smartphone with the holographic interface projected into your eye and you’d never leave home without it anyway) and you’re set. Ok, maybe you’d learn the Bolrgian for “I got mugged and someone stole my translator.” but that’s it.

Learning a language is not a minor undertaking. Unless you’re learning a second language when you’re young, side by side with your primary language, it’s a lot of work. I’ve tried several times to learn Japanese, and I started getting decent with it for a while, but at some point I realized I wasn’t really going to internalize it unless I moved to Japan for a few years and immersed myself in it. Eventually I was like, well, I could do that, or I could put more time into this webcomic idea that has been rolling around in my head for a while.

So I tried something different with coloring Cora’s face in that last panel. I think it looks pretty good, except that it’s a little blown out. Also it lacks a certain stylized charm, but hey, I learned a little from doing it, so hopefully that helps build my pool of art skillz.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!