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Webcomic / Freefall

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From left to right: Florence, Sam, and Helix, crew of the Savage Chicken.

Freefall is a long-running webcomic (reaching 4,000 strips in December 2023 and still going), started in 1998 by Mark Stanley. Starting with the April 19, 2006 strip it's been colored by George Peterson. Set on a planet in the early stages of Terraforming, the strip deals with the antics of alien spaceship "captain" Sam Starfall, his robot friend Helix, and their Bowman's Wolf engineer Florence Ambrose.

One of the last words one would use to describe Sam is "trustworthy". He's not always the brightest and is a petty crook (at least by human standards). It's a wonder he hasn't gotten himself killed yet, although the local police may have something to do with this. He can be summed up as "a larcenous squid in an environment suit."

Helix has the mind of a child, and were he human, a weak stomach. He's described by Florence in one strip as being "one of those robots who faints at the sight of battery acid." That being said, life with Sam has made him considerably more savvy, and he's quite a good person.

Florence, an anthropomorphic genetically-engineered red wolf, is one of the most intelligent members of the entire cast (not just the main characters). Intelligent, strong-willed and skilled, she's good at pointing out flaws in Sam's plan, fixing things to stop them from getting killed, and making new plans. While she isn't as...chaotic as Sam, her ethics and her intelligence prove to be a good way of getting people on her side.

For a humorous comic, Freefall actually packs a lot of real-world science into its science-fiction setting. Most of it is pretty accurate, especially regarding space travel and physics — the author often likes to show his work.

Chapter One is now complete after 18 years and chapter two has begun.

Freefall has a WikiFur article, after The Other Wiki removed its entry due to lack of notability under Wikipedia guidelines.

The webcomic is named after, and inspired by, the Falling Free novel by Lois Mcmaster Bujold, which has as its central topic the legal status and rights of artificially-engineered sentient species in a capitalist setting — the setting and concept that the webcomic embraces, too.


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