Artie Sketches
Shaenon: Some sketches I did of Artie for another project. Man, I’ve been drawing this guy for so long.
Channing: Artie was always my favorite character in Narbonic and it is immensely satisfying to be able to write him in canon. I just hope I’ve done some sort of justice to his character.
I can’t recall seeing Artie Narbon the man and Artie Narbon the gerbil together before now. Sorta like Clark Kent and Superman…
I can’t either, but it would be great to see it worked into the story. Shouldn’t be too hard. It’s just his altered ego.
It’s not his altered ego. His physical body changes form from one to the other. So without a duplicate of himself (say from an alternate universe) the two forms could not actually appear at the same time in-story.
I see. So Shaenon & Jeff would need to incorporate an alternative ego.
I could see doing it in a time-travel story, just because Current Artie and Pre-Shapeshifting Artie would annoy the hell out each other.
Indeed they would. And we’ve already seen Artie testing Dave’s time machine in that bonus story a while back.
We’ve seen him use it too. (L’il Mel)
Now I want to see Man-Artie doing the “arms thrust up high cheer” like that
Shaenon can have *both* gerbil and man versions do that cheer, then look at each other in the next panel with either appreciation or apprehension: Probably after solving some reality blindness situation.
I love Artie either way. He’s just so cute!
Ugh.
I’m completely spacing on why Helen B gave him a human form.
Because Mall was hired to assassinate Helen’s mom; they needed someone to stop her. And to infiltrate a villain’s lair, you need a hero; and since there wasn’t one readily available, Helen decided to create one.
Mell, not Mall. Damnyouautocorrect
And it wasn’t the first time. When they crashed Professor Madblood’s lunar lair, Artie briefly had Dave’s form. (Whether that’s a human form or not is up for grabs.)
Yes, but technically Helen didn’t give him THAT human form. It was the teleporter with Dave DNA in it that was responsible.
She created him specifically to appeal to Mell, but his appeal is a lot broader than that.
I don’t recall his design having anything to do with appealing to anyone except Helen herself. If everything had gone according to plan (yeah, like that ever happens), Mell would never have known who he was, and he would never have had this human form again.
He was designed specifically to stop Mell. Even in this form, that’s sort of like trying to stop a runaway train with a Ford Pinto. There was a distinct likelihood that things were going to blow up spectacularly, and the freight train would keep right on going.
Why does her never knowing who he really was contradict Helen creating him to appeal to Mell? She details pretty sell what her plans for him are here. It certainly sounds like seduction was at least part of what she intended for him.
Yes, appealing to Mell was kind of essential to the mission, but my point still stands. Helen’s design in and of itself was purely selfish. She just chose that particular design because she knew it would also appeal to Mell.