YMMV / Nebula

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Jupiter a whiner with an over-inflated sense of self-importance, or is he just the only one brave enough to say that Sun doesn't deserve to be the leader and that someone needs to stand up to him? Is his refusal to stand up to Sun to his face cowardice or just plain self-preservation?
  • Does Uranus actually believe in Jupiter's cause or do they just say whatever they think will make him like them? For that matter, do they actually want to befriend him and are just going about it completely the wrong way or do they know perfectly well that they're pissing him off and that's the whole point of doing it?
  • Stemming from Jupiter's complaints, is Sun a Reasonable Authority Figure that the planets would be dead without? Or is he a tyrannical bully who uses the fact that he's bigger than everyone else to force them to do what he wants? How much does he actually care about the planets, and how much is his duty as their leader to protect them? Making it murkier is that we only really know him when it's established that he's Not Himself.
  • Was Ceres a willing accomplice of Black Hole who got what they deserved? Were they an unwilling vassal of Black Hole who was once just like Pluto, and who didn't know/want to do what they were doing? Were they just a mindless puppet that Black Hole was moving around as an avatar? Nobody knows.
  • Does Earth really just want the friendship of the people around her, or is Mars right and she just tells herself that because she doesn't want to admit that what she really wants is to satisfy her own curiosity, everyone else be damned? And is she genuinely happy all the time in spite of everything that happens to and around her, or does getting a Friendship Denial from everyone but her little sister get her down and she just refuses to show it?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In one of the short in-between comics included in Spectra, Neptune discovers a giant space worm thing eating stars(?) and reacts in silent horror. No explanation is offered, in either the comic itself or following ones.
• Creepy Awesome: Black Hole, a sentient black hole and incredibly eerie villain from the void: she's loved because she frightens everyone who sees her, not in spite of it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Jupiter's comet, by virtue of being a hilarious Ugly Cute space dog. It only appeared for one comic and was never mentioned again, but it remains enduringly popular.
• Genius Bonus: There are quite a few nods that you'll only get if you're familiar with astronomy.
  • Part of Earth's head being knocked off after she was hit by a rock in the first comic is the favored theory of how the Moon was formed.
    • Jupiter Taking the Bullet for her; Jupiter does indeed take the impact of a large amount of comets/asteroids that would otherwise enter the inner solar system (take a look at what happened with Comet Shoemaker-Levy if you're curious).
  • Earth's "interrogation" of Mars, and the way her curiosity gets on the nerves of everyone else: Earth is, as far as we know, the only planet that has sent probes to investigate the rest of the solar system, with a particular focus on exploring Mars in recent years.
  • Mercury's friendship(?) with Sun, as Mercury is far and away the closest planet by distance to it.
  • Neptune's circular sash might be a nod that Neptune has rings around it, which were not discovered until around the 1980's.
  • Mercury's outfit resembles the clothes of NASA engineers during the Apollo program.
  • On a more well-known note, the solar system's argument about Pluto ("He's still one of us, he—" "Is he? Really?") is a reference to the IAU's controversial decision to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet.
  • Jupiter's comment that Earth hasn't gone "up there" to talk to Pluto; Pluto's orbit is slanted relative to the ecliptic plane, meaning it's often floating high above or far below the planets, not directly level with them. ^note The planets exhibit this too to some degree, ranging from the highest of about 7 percent tilt (Mercury) to the lowest of about 0.8 percent (Uranus). Pluto's, by contrast, is around 17 percent- much higher than the planets.
• Moral Event Horizon: Black Hole deliberately sending Ceres to get killed and then blaming it on Sun and the people that Ceres had been torturing.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Earth and Pluto are both quite unpopular in-universe, with most of the other characters seeing Earth as irritating and Pluto as creepy. The fans love them nigh-universally.
• The Woobie: Pluto, left isolated and alone for centuries on end, able to look at the planets but never able to talk or interact with them. And then the one person who does reach out to him turns out to be a Manipulative Bastard who manipulates him into hating/fearing everyone he cares for and then turns him into her warped living puppet.