This comic is part of a story arc about our invitation to Katsucon 2016!
Click here to go to the start of this story arc!
You can see all of the Katsucon comics here!
Not following everything in this comic? Follow some of these links instead! The plate is a play on words:
I hated drawing cars, Fox keeps making jokes about them. I think I’ve just taken it as a personal challenge to get the hang of it, now.
This can probably be expounded upon:
We got to Katsucon on Thursday and I realize, despite all the packing we did, I forgot the damn charger for the laptop we needed for our presentation. I had to run home and get it. Fortunately we aren’t that far away.
As I was exiting the off-ramp onto the beltway, the driver of the other car got a full view of the left side profile of my car. Those dog bowl hubcaps, antenna and spotlight scream ‘cop’.
When I’m merging, I slow down to let the person to my left pass, and get behind them. I assume he had been speeding, and started slowing down too…and kept…slowing…down.
I finally had to slam on my brakes to get him to pass me. While doing so, I was further confused by a single, bright green line of light running diagonally along his passenger side door. It looked like an LED light rope. I’ve seen underglow car kits, but nothing like this before.
As soon as I was behind him and read “N0S” it made sense.
At this point he starts speeding up. My initial thought?
“Oh good! I can use this guy as cop bait and get home a lot faster!”
If someone is speeding, I tail them a quarter mile behind. If someone is gonna get pulled over, there’s a better chance it’s gonna be them. After a few seconds of this, I notice the rear ends of other cars are coming at us a lot faster than I’m used to.
I glanced down, saw one more digit on my speedometer than I’m used to, and let off the gas. The ride in the 2013 pursuit is so smooth I’d no idea the speed I was going.
About this time our vampiric speed demon decided to pull the old “I’ll cross over 4 lanes of traffic and onto the exit ramp and he won’t possibly be able to follow me!”
I was far enough behind him I could have easily followed that move. Frankly, for a sec, I thought he was gonna roll his car, but as far as I saw he made the turn.
Disappointed I couldn’t use him as cop bait the whole way home, but pleased I stayed with him for the time that I did. It only lasted two miles, but he was literally “Gone in 60 Seconds”!
Fairly certain he didn’t use any nitrous if he had it. The cruiser wouldn’t have stayed with him if he did. Still, made for a good story the next day at Katsucon. I’d never been up to a buck twenty in the pursuit before.
Oh! And our friends Conner and Floyd (guy in the Agent 47 costume at the end there) helped us out as pack mules for part of the con – thanks guys!
120mph equals approximately 190 kilometres per hour. The highway speed limit in Australia is 100 to 110. Needless to say, if you see one extra digit than you are used to while Driving in Australia, you’re more likely to have a problem with your eyes, or be intoxicated, than the car going fast.
‘Nos’feratu XD
I drove one of those v6 chargers in California. Those cars are dialed in so nicely its hard to notice when you’re doing 100 or over.
I really like the lighting in the second panel. It looks like two different street lights giving dim illumination while the headlights are brighter. I’ve never really noticed a car with illumination on the doors, and I like the Akira style blurring for motion. The road scenes give a very serene atmosphere.
The illumination on the doors was really weird. I thought Fox meant they had one of those under-lighting kits, but apparently he just put LED kits on the doors.
Thanks! The lighting was really fun on this one
Glad to hear that, it looks like a lot of work and a lot of ink was used.
I think I see now what the first panel is for–to say ‘What follows is Katsucon storytelling.’ Or?
Yeah. This comic could have been done without the first panel, but we wanted to ensure it was understood this was part of the Katsucon story arc, rather than just some random event. We needed the charger for the laptop we were gonna use to present. Thanks for the feedback; I’ve updated the description/comment underneath.
I like the guy ducking Fox’s enthusiasm in the last panel. 🙂
Thanks for reminding me I forgot to say who that is!
That’s Floyd – good friend of mine and helpful pack mule for the convention.
Also good reflexes, which is helpful around Fox, who does actually talk with his hands a lot. 😀
And now I’m going a hundred and twenty, which is as fast as I can go.
Beep beep, beep beep, his horn went beep beep beep.
If you know that song, you, like me, are TOO old to be reading these. LOL. But, hey, age is just a number. Right?
Or like me, his parents only listened to the oldies station growing up and he was forced to hear it in the car all the time. 🙂
Mine’s a bit of both.
My parents -were- the oldies! 🙂
I’ve used cop bait for decades! I came up with calling them that before the internet. But my follow is usually a half mile, just far enough to see the tail lights.
I’m a bit confused about the license plate on the other car. What does the fictional name for a vampire have to do with street racing? (Sorry to seem so dense about this. The only speed I’m interested in is at a minimum of 5,000 feet above ground level.)
Nitrous Oxide System, a system for high-performance automobiles that injects said compound into the combustion chamber for increased horsepower, is frequently abbreviated ‘NOS’.
I’m fairly certain his vehicle was just as dark as my cruiser, if not a matte black paint job. So his pun of ‘NOS’feratu was just a play on words about having a dark (and I guess green is scary?) car.
It took me a minute – sometimes with car comics, Fox has to explain them to me first, too…
Also need to edit this comic, the license plate is a little hard to read…
Your “cop bait” looks like a late 90’s Supra by the shape of it.
At this point those cars may as well actually be vampires.
And my first thought at the overhead shot was “Porsche 928?” 🙂 From any other angle it’s obviously something more on the lines of what you said though. 😉
Absolutely; I was able to tell it was a Supra the moment I saw it. Mandy is getting better at drawing cars. 🙂
Thanks! Starting to get the hang of it!
I’m glad you could recognize it!
Fox didn’t remember exactly what kind of car it was – but I don’t know enough about cars to know what a “typical street racer” would look like… so I made him give me an exact model to look up references for.
It’s fun when people who are doing something they know is wrong, get scared at nothing and run away.
Pressing the NOS button is like activating the Hyperdrive (click my name)
What’s even more fun is to pull up next to them in something they wouldn’t expect (small truck w/ a blown small block V8) and walk away from them like they’re standing still. }:->
or a Beetle with a tuned up engine
an -oooolldd- Beetle with a Porsche engine in the tail. 🙂
Or a 61 Corvair that was lightly massaged on the last rebuild. (102 to 110-115HP with 63 heads and overbored cylinders.)
Still do that with a Pontiac TransSport, that 4.3 SFI V6 will get up and boogie.
About two decades ago, I dropped off a friend in W. Newbury and jumped on 495 to head home. It was about 2A and I was really thinking of getting home. I hadn’t seen another car for at least ten minutes and had the highway to myself. I was focused on the road, not the speedometer and much else, apparently. A spotlight kicked on to my right…unmarked cruiser.
I was driving a ’69 Beetle. The officer gestured “112”. I looked at the speedometer and the needle was wound down below the 90 and the oil warning light, so I looked back in surprise and nodded guiltily.
The officer laughed, waved and accelerated away. Kept my foot down until my exit came up. Beware the man with 92 c.u.of angry sewing machine!
So, whos the Agent?
I didn’t get his number 😉
No, seriously, it’s in the bottom of the comments on the comic. (Floyd)
When do you guys usually respond to fanmail?
On social media? Usually within a day. Our twitter feeds are to the left of these comments.
Via email? That goes to Seley. She’s nowhere near as social as I am so it can take a bit, but I do remember her mentioning something about that recently.
While some artists produce their comics as a full time job, Seley and I both work a 9 to 5, and have responsibilities when we get home too, so at times we’re a bit slower to reply than some.
I use cop bait all the time, though I’ve always heard them called the “rabbit” after the rabbit used for dog racing.
I refer to them as “decoys”. Every time a car goes screaming by me in the left lane, I say “Thanks, decoy!”
Recently, since I live in the middle of nowhere and cops effectively stop giving a shit after 9 PM, I took the the back road to let off some steam from earlier that day, and just floored it for about 2-3 miles. Broke 120 MPH, and according to the dash-eco-thing, burnt 60 miles worth of gas in the process.
Huge coincidence I read this comic about the same time i’m reading a book by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) about a car that has Nos-4a2 on the license plate