DIGITAL CHARACTER INDEX

A high-flying Zap Jockey who sticks up for his friends and doesn't take any B.S! Having served in a mechanized infantry unit during the Hundred-And-One Secessions, Snakes was already a crack shot and a tough cookie when he volunteered for a one-way trip to the Pyre Cube. But that trip taught him to love life, be cool, and fight for justice, and also introduced him to his best friend: fellow Zap Jockey Captain Gunsmoke. He may not be the brightest egg in the carton, and his stubbornness can drive even his friends a little crazy. When the chips are down, though, there's no one you can bet on like Snakes!

Snakes first appeared in the debut issue of Space Cowboy Digest in a short story titled A Gunslinger Called 'Trouble'. Although his best-loved incarnations cast him in a comic relief role, Snakes' first appearances (in stories by Greg Hokum and Brent Libertino) were more in line with the serious, slightly po-faced cowboy comics that were popular at the time (albeit transposed into a sci-fi setting). This version of the character proved to lack staying power, though, indistinguishable as he was from a hundred other similar tight-jawed gunslingers. It wasn't until Laughing Lizard Animation bought Space Cowboy Digest at auction and recast Snakes as a wise-cracking parody of self-serious desperadoes in Zap Jockeys: The Power's In The Heart that the character found an audience, and Snakes would remain a mainstay of the series' cast until the closure of Laughing Lizard Animation in 1991.

Snakes' best friend and the pilot of their home-on-the-go, the Blues Traveller, Chris Edison Gunsmoke is just about the only person in the galaxy who can keep Snakes reined in. A bomber ace from the Secessions and the only small-craft pilot to bring down a Kozark Accretion, the Pyre Cube let him focus on the things he loved best- rockin' out, bein' cool, and swinging his plasma-sword in the name of all that is righteous! A friend to all in need across the galaxy, the light flashing from his blade is a signal to all that help is never far away!

Like Snakes, Gunsmoke's first appearances were in Space Cowboy Digest. However, before Zap Jockeys, the two were never featured together. Furthermore, Gunsmoke's current incarnation hews more closely to his original character: an easygoing gambler riding from town to town, always finding a way to involve himself in- and resolve- whatever crisis besets the inhabitants that day. The decision to entwine Gunsmoke and Leningrad- and thereby form the foundation of both Zap Jockeys and The Valiant Stars- came from Virgil Tennyson, the Laughing Lizard writer/artist in charge of the series. Alongside co-writer Benson Corbett and colourist Imogen Moon, Tennyson brought the pair to vivid life in the original 109-issue run that would culminate in the Kobra Stallion TV series.

Owner of Club Cavalier and two-fisted master of mayhem, Fox Burke never met a brawl from which she could back down! A Jockey who can Zap with the best of them, her martial arts skills have carried the day more than anyone would care to admit. Yet the path she walks has not always been one of light. A century ago, she served as the chief enforcer for the Raven Tyrant herself- Lady-Corvus Kubaryi Liyon! If not for the love of fellow Jockey Fractal Fatale, she may yet stand in the ranks of darkness. As it is, she is keenly aware of the razor's edge she walks: her Zap powers alienate her from the humans she's sworn to protect, and the consequences of her terrible deeds forever threaten to catch her up. And so at all times, she stands in the path of evil: fists raised, heart ablaze!

While Gunsmoke, Leningrad, and Fractal came from Space Cowboy Digest, Fox was originally published in a manhwa titled Bounce Mode, written and illustrated by Lei Hye-Ja (better known for her mystery fiction written under the name Beth Lei). Bounce Mode follows a group of foreign students at Seoul National University's six-week International Summer Program, all of whom are there to participate in a top-secret campus table tennis tournament. Fox- originally a Sri Lankan exchange student with effortlessly good grades but a delinquent attitude- served as the series' recurring antagonist, although her relationship with the protagnoist (a pre-Valiant Stars Claudia Kildaire) oftentimes seemed more complicated than simple antipathy. When Laughing Lizard hired Lei to write a new mystery series, Virgil Tennyson drew Fox and Claudia into an issue of Zap Jockeys as background characters as a tribute to Lei's work. With urging from Imogen Moon and Lei's blessing (since she had long moved on from Bounce Mode), Fox and Claudia were formally welcomed into the series cast as friends to Gunsmoke and Leningrad.