Greetings, friends. My name is Max West and I am the creator of Sunnyville Stories. What is Sunnyville Stories, you ask? It’s an independent comics series starring anthropomorphic animals living in a small utopian village. I guess if you’re looking for a specific genre that this could be placed in, the term “slice of life” could be used.
So what exactly is Sunnyville? Sunnyville is a small town somewhere out there in the world. It’s quite remote; it’s surrounded by wilderness in least a thirty-mile radius and actually more. Being quite remote has had an interesting effect on this town. Time seems to stand still here. Rather than keep up with the ever-changing fashions of the contemporary world, the inhabitants of Sunnyville dress very traditionally. Males wear suits and hats while females (adult and juvenile) wear skirts and dresses. Oh, they do keep up technologically. Sunnyville has cars, television, cell phones, and the Internet. But the inhabitants tend to be more concerned with the happenings of their little universe as opposed to what‘s going on in the outside world. It is here that our story unfolds.
As for the comic itself, it revolves around two stars – Rusty Duncan and Samantha “Sam” Macgregor. Rusty is a teenage cat who has moved to Sunnyville from a big city. Finding it hard to adjust to this radically different environment, he soon meets local girl Sam Macgregor. Sam’s lived in Sunnyville all her life and befriends Rusty. The two will have many adventures in and around Sunnyville.
That’s it in a nutshell. I intend to post up artwork here that you won’t see anywhere else and as time goes on, I’ll discuss more about the characters, talk about how this comic came about, and even show some of the magic that I work in my comics. Be sure to check back here every Wednesday for updates. There’s also an RSS feed and don’t forget that you can subscribe via email for blog updates.
So on behalf of myself and the denizens of Sunnyville, I bid you welcome to my web log. May you enjoy your stay and enrich yourselves.
There’s a little something I’m confused about here.
In your YouTube promo video and on the site, you show Rusty entering Sunnyville through the forest on an old steam engine. But if the people of Sunnyville have cars, TV, cell phones, and the internet, why are steam engines still a major form of transportation? And how would Rusty, who comes from a big city, manage to find a rail route that still uses steam engines? Their slow speed would hold up the train schedules for the major cities, unless they’re part of an enclosed track that only connects a few villages. This would make sense, because Rusty could take a modern electric or diesel train to a junction, and then take an old steam engine the rest of the way to Sunnyville. But that would mean there’s other villages and towns that still use that enclosed steam engine line. So there’s this whole network of anachronistic towns out in the middle of nowhere? How did Rusty find out about them? And why do they cling to steam engines when they’re accepting of modern technology?
Let me be the first to thank you for being the first to post a comment here.
As to your question over how modern and archaic technology could co-exist (such as the steam engine trains), it’s not at all unfeasible. First off, that’s just the way this particular universe works – time within and around Sunnyville just seems to stand still. That’s one of the reasons that the older technology, such as connections to other areas via archaic style trains, still exists. Perhaps there’s a more mysterious force at work…
Second, considering that this is a remote town, they may be somewhat isolated from the outside world. While they may embrace newer machines (like computers and cell phones), they may be slower or even reluctant to adapt to everything in the ever-changing world outside – such as staying with older forms of trains. That’s an explanation why a number of trains within the surrounding area of Sunnyville are still old-fashioned.
Third, the look and feel of the Sunnyville comic was largely influenced by the 1986 anime series, Maple Town Stories (I plan to discuss this inspiration in a future post). That series too was quite anachronistic – while it took place in the mid-to-late 1980s, the wardrobes and technology resembled that of the early parts of the 20th century. That was where I got the idea for this old-fashioned place existing in the modern world.
And that’s not the only example of modern technology co-existing with older, outdated devices. Look at the BattleTech game universe and novels. Futuristic technology like faster-than-light space travel and interstellar communication exist alongside older machinery like internal combustion engines and projectile weapons.
The “mysterious force” you speak of would be material enough for an entire story arc, so that could conceivably work.
However, your point about Battletech’s technology assumes that the utility of faster-than-light travel and interstellar communication is analogous with the utility of internal combustion engines. But an internal combustion engine and a projectile weapon are more useful on a planet’s surface than the more “advanced” options. On a planet, faster-than-light travel would be counter-intuitive, it would be overkill for every earth-bound militia to equip themselves with energy weapons. There’s another possible reason for the discrepancy in tech: in that show, the planets that united to reclaim their territory pooled their resources to create spacecraft, giant robot things, and long-range devices, so it’s likely they didn’t have the resources left over to offer their citizens every luxury. Allowing civilians to consume as much as the military would have made it more difficult to fix or rebuild damaged equipment.
In the case of Sunnyville, I’m willing to concede that a group of towns might revert to, or remain in, 19th century fashions, but such a society would need incredible mind control to convince its citizens that the internet is okay, but diesel trains and slacks for women are unacceptable.
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