The giant Clonoid soldier takes the bait! While the great mass of muscle leaps up to the catwalk, Zik launches his grappling hook into the ceiling and swings out behind him! He uses his momentum to land with all the force he can muster right onto the spine of the Clonoid! While the two combatants recover from the blow, Amelia and Trent spring into action! What are they up to?

In this still from the film Inception, notice how the actors are holding their pistols. This is good trigger discipline!

Important note for you kids out there! See how Trent is holding his guns? See how his index fingers are resting on the triggers? NEVER DO THAT! I drew it like that because Trent has never held guns before and doesn’t know about trigger discipline. Basically, in order to avoid accidentally pulling the trigger, you should never even put your finger in the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot! It’s incredibly important to treat firearms with extreme caution.

If you’re interested in knowing more about using guns, please make sure you contact a qualified instructor and are well supervised before picking one up for the first time. And do a lot of reading and learning! I don’t want any of you guys getting hurt.

All that said, I love target shooting, and I used to do biathlon (cross-country skiing and target shooting). It’s a great sport, but again, you need proper training before even touching a firearm!

Also: You might notice a few new buttons on the page. I’ve connected Zik to topwebcomics.com, and if you’re so inclined, you can click the buttons and vote for Zik once per day per computer. I’d really appreciate your help whenever you have a moment! The more votes we get, the more people will see the comic, and the better this whole experience becomes for all of us! This is the link to use for voting. Thanks in advance!!

Meanwhile, back on the prison planet, the giant Clonoid soldier is still going on its rampage, unaware that Zik has recovered. Zik brings the beast up-to-date with a crate. Wham! Do I have your attention now? From up on the catwalk, Zik taunts his opponent, hoping to lure him into direct combat. Hopefully it’ll go a bit better this time!

Trent and Amelia catch up with Zik and help him out of the pile of boxes the giant Clonoid threw him into. So now what, guys? It’s time to come up with a plan! The good news is that Zoot has calculated a possible avenue to subdue the giant – electrical overload! Perhaps a massive shock will cut the giant Clonoid off from the central hub that all the Clonoids share information over, rendering it (hopefully) confused and unable to act independently. Zik has a way to make that happen!

Zik finds out he’s dreaming his encounter with Sensei Raven and Sensei Adam. Well, while he’s here, he’s going to pick their brains about how to defeat the giant Clonoid! His teachers tell him not to be intimidated by the sheer size and strength of the Clonoid. It has the same basic structure as any other human, and therefore the same basic weak points that can be exploited. And Raven reminds Zik of something that he can do that the Clonoid won’t: amp up his attacks with awesome move names! Zik leaves the Dojo, waking back up in reality to find Amelia and Trent racing towards him!

In case you didn’t see the blog on the previous page, Adam and Raven are real people that have helped me immensely in my journey to tell this story. Adam’s guidance with anatomy and Raven’s unwavering focus and audacity with his own comic have both been instructive to me as I take my artistic journey to become a better visual storyteller. Please take some time to check out their comics at Raven’s Dojo and Locus Comics! Both their creations are NSFW, but hey, we’re grown-ups. If you’re not a grown-up, maybe wait until you are before checking them out.

Trent finally catches up with Amelia, only to find her standing over the corpse of her erstwhile Clonoid jailer. They compare notes, and Amelia learns what all the commotion she’s been hearing is about. Shocked, she rushes off to help Zik and the others! The prisoner has become the rescuer!

Amelia rips the antenna right out of the Clonoid’s head! It falls backward, tripping over the guard railing and down to the factory floor. The second Clonoid receives orders to kill Amelia and starts to open the door! But Amelia is ready for it! With a mighty kick and a shove, she beats her way through the door and confronts the dazed Clonoid with the shelf she ripped from the wall. Bringing the shelf down on its head, she ends its miserable semblance of a life! This is one damsel that’s not in any distress!

I tried something new with Amelia’s hair… let me know in the comments if you like it!

Meanwhile, Amelia has been busy! With all the commotion going on downstairs with the riot, maybe now is a good time to escape. She rips a shelf right off the wall and uses it to start breaking the door handle! She’s interrupted by some Clonoids at the door, but the ever-adaptable Amelia hatches a new plan – one that hinges on the antenna in the Clonoid’s head!

Zik is flung into the factory wall, denting it in the process! What a kick! Good thing he has body armor, although according to Zoot it has taken some damage! Zik gets ready as the Clonoid charges — the fight is on! He blocks a mighty punch and returns with one of his own, but the Clonoid grabs his arm and flings him like a rag doll into a pile of boxes! Zik is unconscious! Oh no!

Trying to monopolize this big guy’s attention, Zik starts up some mildly insulting banter. He has a point, though: despite all the muscles, there’s literally nothing to interest the ladies back on Zoz! I guess that’s not why Queen Elcyra has them around.  The Clonoid is only too happy to engage Zik directly, and even finishes his sentence for him!

Zik and Trent try the first, obvious solution: fill the massive Clonoid with bullets! This guy has incredibly thick skin, it seems, so he’s able to simply brush the bullets off and drop them to the floor. Zik decides that guns are of no further use, so he hands his to Trent and tells him to go find Amelia. Zik wants to take this guy on alone?!