Training Day
From Encyclopedia Jumpleadia
Training Day is the first issue of the comic. It was written and lettered by Ben Paddon, with art by JjAR. Acting as a sort-of "pilot episode", it sets up the core premise of the comic and introduces the main characters.
A print edition, with some minor dialogue edits, was produced in early 2008. Limited to 175 copies, it was available for purchase from the Jump Leads Store until June 2008. The issue is also to be included in Jump Leads: Tales From The Flurry, the first Jump Leads compilation.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
We join Meaney and Llewellyn, our principle characters, on a Transport ship en route to the Hub with other trainees. Meaney is excited by the prospect of visiting the Hub, the center of the Lead Service and the only known construct to exist in every Universe at the same time. Llewellyn is less enamored with the idea of visiting an ancient space station. They reach the Hub, and are taken to an Orientation Room where they are informed by the arrogant Captain Whedon that they will be embarking on Field Exercises straight away - something the Lead Service has apparently not done before.
On the way to the Landing Bay, Llewellyn tells Meaney of the truth - the service used to do training exercises in the field, but following the discovery of Satan's Playground and the murder of an "entire group of privates", the exercises were abolished. Whedon stops them at Landing Bay 17 where they see a JumpShip. It is revealed to be the JumpShip of Captain Lucas, an eccentric man with bizarre facial hair. After some pontification on his part, the three of them board the ship and they are on their way to their first mission, dematerialising from the Landing Bay into Universes unknown.
Lucas explains their first task: someone has become transposed, and their task is to return that person to their home Universe. Lucas also reveals the name of his JumpShip - the Flurry (he had wanted to name it Serenity, but Whedon had beaten him to the name). As they are about to set out onto the planet they have landed on, Lucas notices a blinking warning light. He says he can fix it when they return, and they leave the JumpShip.
On the planet surface, Meaney asks about the chances of bumping into a Goatee-Toutin' Doppelganger. Lucas explains that this cannot happen because Leads are Non-Multiversal Variables. The Service doesn't tell people about this, and doesn't quite know why Non-Multiversal Variables exist. Lucas' scanner picks up the signal of the transposed person, and Llewellyn discovers it is a gentleman running from an army of Deadly Deadly Robots.
They retreat to the Flurry, but the Robots vaporise both the transposed man and Captain Lucas (leaving his moustache bizarrely intact). Meaney and Llewellyn enter the JumpShip and Llewellyn, after some searching, finds the Recall Switch and activates it. They emerge from the JumpShip to discover that they are not back at the Hub, which is what the Recall Switch should do. Instead they are in a parallel version of the planet they were just on - the sky is blue instead of pink, and the grass is red instead of green. Their time on the planet is short-lived, however, as they are chased back into the Flurry by a rampaging Dinosaur.
They try the Switch a couple more times and materialise on a farm, and in the middle of a city. Llewellyn then parks the ship "between dimensions". He discovers that the Homing Pigeon Circuit, required to return the JumpShip to the Hub, is no longer working. Nor is the Camouflage System. What's more, they can't just fly to the location of the Hub as there is insufficient fuel in the Propulsion Engines. Faced with this situation, Meaney goes into a panic, while Llewellyn calmly suggests that if they hit the Recall Switch enough times they are likely to get back to the Hub eventually...
[edit] Filler material
The last four pages of Issue #1 on the website consist of three pages from a training textbook entitled Lovett's Manifest: An Introduction to Leads and their Involvement and Interactions with the Multiverse, with notes scribbled on the pages by Meaney (in blue) and Llewellyn (in red). The first such page was written by Andrew Taylor, the second by Euan Mumford and the third by Paul Varley. Between the first and second such page is a log entry by Captain Whedon dated 2007-07-06 explaining that Meaney and Llewellyn have not yet returned from their exercise.
[edit] Continuity
- Lucas' is never referred to by name in the comic, until Page 24 when Llewellyn says, "Captain Lucas said it was nothing and he could fix it when we finish our mission."
- Llewellyn's account of the old training exercises and the discovery of Satan's Playground conflicts with Whedon's log report. Llewellyn says that the incident occurred "60 or 70 years ago" while Whedon's log suggests there haven't been such exercises in "over eighty years".
- Llewellyn's attitude changes between the end of this issue and the start of It Came From Space!, where he is much less interested in returning to the Hub. With that in mind, there has probably been some time between the end of this issue and the start of the next one in which Llew has had time to consider his predicament.
[edit] Questions
- What is Satan's Playground?
- If Llewellyn has been through the training process four times and knows that the Lead service travels to parallel universes, why does he ask if the JumpShip is capable of time travel?
- If each JumpShip gives off its own unique identification signature, how to Meaney and Llewelyn manage to get lost in the first place? Wouldn't the Lead service be able to find them? Answer
- What is the exact nature of Non-Multiversal Variables? How do they even exist? Are they naturally occurring phenomena?
[edit] Outside references
- Llewellyn compares the boredom of Hub activity with an episode of British drama/soap Footballer's Wives.
- The Black Hole as a key component to inter-dimensional travel is reminiscent of the Time Lords' requirement of a Black Hole to travel in time, in the long-running scifi series Doctor Who.
- Captain Whedon is seen on page 7 suggesting that Christina Aguilera's music career is some kind of cosmic fluke. Additionally, Whedon is holding a copy of People Magazine.
- Page 11 features the line: "Listen, are we going to stop talking about your, frankly, magnificent JumpShip and actually go inside?". This is a loose reference to the 2005 series of Doctor Who, where the Ninth Doctor uses the "Frankly, magnificent" line to describe the TARDIS.
- Llewellyn suggests travelling back in time to abolish reality TV series Big Brother.
- The "speech sketch" on page 14 is not too dissimilar to some of the art of M. C. Escher.
- Captain Lucas mentions that Captain Whedon named his ship Serenity. In reality Joss Whedon is the creator of TV scifi series Firefly, which features a Firefly-class spaceship named Serenity.
- Emerging from the Flurry in another Universe for the first time, Llewellyn quotes a line from 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
- On the same page, Meaney asks about the potential for running into a Goatee-Toutin' Doppelganger. This is, of course, a reference to Spock's Goatee-Toutin' Doppelganger in the classic Star Trek episode, "Mirror, Mirror".
- Llewellyn mis-quotes a line from Red Dwarf episode Demons and Angels on page 19.
- The appearance of a dinosaur in the first universe Meaney and Llewellyn jump to may be a reference to an early episode of American scifi series Sliders.
- In his panic, Meaney mentions that the characters from Star Trek: Voyager, Sliders, and Lost in Space all managed to get back to their respective homes. In fact only the Voyager crew ever made it back to their home planet.
