Isn't the Maker switching injured legs, or am I misreading angles? O__o Also, curse you Dave Kellett for sending me archive-diving with that link! :)

*claps* This was really cleverly done! =D

So next week's strip is going to be about how the ship is spotted by "a single pair... of lonely eyes on the desolate plains of the Tabernas" and the week after that a little alien dude who looks suspiciously like Flaco is going to wake up in prison?

You never told us your comic was going to be one giant time loop!

Seriously though, my theory that this Maker was going to spark a civil war that would somehow help Earth has been shot full of holes. I suppose you could say it's gone to meet it's... MAKER. (I'll save everyone the trouble and groan for them).

Now the question becomes, "what's in the box?" Did Conrado find it with the ship? Could it still be in the Imperial Archives? The answer to that seems like it could be as important as (if not more important than) the answer to "Who is Skitter and where does he come from?"

"Bacon", that's the only possible answer for "what's in the box?"!
It's hope in slices, happiness in semi-solid grease, and most of all, it's a Faith by itself!

God I'm silly...

Anyways, one of the most clever narrator type an author can pull out of his tushy is the "unreliable narrator" and I've got the feeling people may be misinterpreting what's being really wanted!

Yeah, it dawned on me that the "spirit" the Continuum wants may not be the Pinch-Drive, but rather, "what's in the box."

Hence my comment about the contents of the box being perhaps more important than who Skitter is and where he comes from.

Maybe Skitter's in the box.

...Um, yeah, I don't think so either.

"Maybe Skitter's in the box" killed me.

So, this second storyline takes place a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. Or, depending on the capability of the drive, a system far away.

I'm sad to see our little protagonist die, and can only assume his AI bot was destroyed as well. If Skitter's not in the box, I'm guessing it's the AI core of the robot maker (which was the best looking thing drawn in Drive yet!)

I wonder why that object would be more important than the drive itself, but I suppose that the Continuum's zealotry supplies all of the rationale they need for war with the man things. The big question is this then:

What took the Continuum so long to get into it with the humans? They put troops on the ground, but they'd have ships in orbit. (Why didn't they carpet bomb?) In any case, they must have known that one ship escaped. Why did the humans have time to build an empire? Thanks, and I absolutely love this story!

Well, one can conclude from the origin of the Maker that created the Spirit of the Spirit-Maker that the Makers do not carpet bomb worlds in general. Despite possessing the ability to travel at trans-light speeds and thus crack planets open like nuts, they send in ground troops, likely as part of their ritual based meritocratic culture, combined with their prodigious capacity for asexual breeding.

One can also conclude, from evidence in sight, that it is not the simple fact that the Second Empire possesses the Rings that caused the Makers to declare war, assuming that the information imparted is reliable.

This informs the following postulate. The Makers detect, in the design of the Second Empires ships, rings and all, the guiding hand of the Spirit-Makers intelligence. As so; The first Emperor, as we were shown, wrote a letter to his heir explaining two things: 1. The Rings themselves, above all else, were the true source of La Familias Power. 2. He had no idea how they worked. It can be, can, drawn from this the possible existence of aid in his creation of other rings, as it is one thing to reverse engineer a technology and begin a sort of renaissance. It is another thing entirely to reverse engineer an entirely alien technology, in a functionally perfect manner, and this is the important part, without comprehending the operating mechanism of that technology all the while. It would take a very, and oddly, uniquely gifted man to do such a thing. Upon this piece of evidence however, there is another key item. The matter of the Makers detection of this guiding hand. This is a matter, so often overlooked, of aesthetics. The Maker-Spirit is quite unlike the other Maker technology. It is defined by sharp edges, parallel lines, and an emphasis on the bare minimum necessary to maintain its function. It does however bear an aesthetic resemblance to the ships of the Second Empire in that respect. Where the makers have advanced enough to expend resources on aerodynamic vessels that do not fly, the second Empire is still doing the logical: attaching engines to boxes of different shapes and sizes. Doing the bare minimum to maintain function. A resemblance that, given their displayed exactness and thoroughness, would not, it is likely, be lost on the Makers.

Some boxes should be left unopened.

I DO remember that, and boy, what a way to tie things together. A bit odd, and a tad vague, but I'm eager to see what manifests further.