FAQ
Over the years, we’ve had a few questions that have cropped up several times. So here they all are, collected and answered in one place. If you have a question that’s not answered here, drop us a line!
Why do you only release one page a week?
We wish we could release pages faster. We’re just as eager to tell this story as you are to read it. But it takes 8 to 12 hours to create each page, and between our day jobs and families, there’s just not enough time to do more than a page a week. We’d either have to sacrifice quality for speed, or work such long hours that burnout would be inevitable. (To get an idea of what goes into making each page, check out Al’s two-part description of his process, which begins here.)
Why are the flags on The Specialists’ shoulders backwards?
Recent military tradition is to depict a flag as if it were mounted on a pole and streaming out behind the soldier or vehicle on which it is displayed, so a flag on the right shoulder of a soldier would have the union (the stars) on the right and the stripes trailing behind. However, this is a relatively recent development, and during WWII, the tradition of always displaying the US flag with the union in the upper-left was observed.
Click for larger version
Isn’t [a character from The Specialists] just a ripoff of [another popular character]?
We’d certainly never try to deny that there are similarities between some of our characters and other, better known characters. Captain Victory is obviously cut from the same cloth as Captain America, and The Bombardier shares a defining trait with The Rocketeer. We intentionally based our characters on the same archetypes that those other characters made famous, and we’re certainly not the first to do so. There have been many patriotic superheroes since Captain America, and The Rocketeer was not the first hero to don a jetpack. Also, these similarities are only skin deep. There may be parallels between Captain Victory and Captain America, but Luke Jensen bears little resemblance to Steve Rogers.
What’s going on in [my country]? Do they have super-soldiers of their own?
In our version of WWII, the only supersoldier teams are the German Übermenschen and the American Specialists. This isn’t meant to imply that other countries couldn’t or wouldn’t initiate their own supersoldier programs, it’s just a matter of the scope of the story that we want to tell. Our story is about eight extraordinary people, and how their special abilities affect themselves, each other, and the world. If supersoldiers were a common phenomenon, our story would be very different. Which isn’t to say that that wouldn’t make for a cool story; it’s just not what we’re going for with The Specialists.
Why haven’t The Specialists been sent into battle?
As mentioned above, in our story, supersoldiers are not common. So when stories about the Übermenschen started coming in from the front lines, the Pentagon brass was dubious. This was long before the days of cheap and portable cameras, and any photographic evidence of the Nazi supersoldiers would look something like footage of Bigfoot.
Only General Hightower took the Übermensch threat seriously, and he managed to convince President Roosevelt, who initiated a series of programs intended to give the US its own supersoldiers. But before these programs were complete, President Roosevelt died. His successor, President Truman, was not so easily convinced, and The Specialists were put on ice. It was only thanks to the opportunism of Frank Goetz, and the fact that so much money had already been spent on them, that the team was ultimately put to work as propagandists.