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.

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.

The gender-bending eagle eye who can shoot the ace out of a deck from orbit! Fractal Fatale has mastered the power of using the Zap to shapeshift, a trick only known to a handful of Jockeys. She drifts between male, female, and everything between just as easily as she floats over the battlefield on her Proteus-Schmetterling wire-wings. And from that vantage, she metes out precision bolts of pure justice from the end of a zap-cannon! Don't let her laid-back attitude fool you, though: in the dark edges of the Nightmare Zone, Fractal is a wanted woman. Her alliances with the likes of rebel king Ventakar Colbrid and the Curse-Wild zone-slayer Artemis Philadelphia mean that everyone from the Fallen House Lords of Nega-Venice to the U.S Central Intelligence Agency have put a price on her head! Don't worry, though- they'll have a hard time collecting, since they'll have to go through her girlfriend, Fox Burke! Nothing can stop this gal from taking on the universe and lighting the way to a better tomorrow!

Like Gunsmoke and Leningrad, Fractal's origins trace back to Space Cowboy Digest. The origial character was a master of disguise, Freddie Fatale, who- like Fractal- kept every aspect of their true identity a secret. Thanks to virtuoso ink work by Brent Libertino, Freddie's appearance changed slightly across issues, keeping it ambiguous whether Freddie was a woman disguised as a man, vice-versa, neither, or somehow both. The character never had quite the draw of some of Space Cowboy Digest's other regular stories, usually attributed to lackluster scripts on the part of well-meaning but inexperienced series writer Terry Bayle (Greg Hokum, with whom Libertino co-created the character, was unavailable to write the series owing to other Space Cowboy Digest commitments). Nonetheless, Freddie Fatale was well-liked enough to receive a trade paperback collection of their stories, a well-worn copy of which was never far from the desk of Laughing Lizard writer Benson Corbett. When Laughing Lizard bought Space Cowboy Digest, Corbett leapt at the opportunity to re-work the character and integrate her into The Valiant Stars.

She has hundreds of degrees, and she's ready to turn up the heat! Claudia Kildaire is the foremost engineer among the Jockeys, a wizard with everything from nailguns to drafting tables. If it takes a plan, she's got one, and her supernatural ability to account for every eventuality keeps the Jockeys locked on target! Whether she's locking in a scheme to save the galaxy, court an alien princess, or navigate the terms of her divorce from all-time heel Dirk Deadly, she's quick on her feet and always ready to adapt. With a little help from her Orboid sidekick Hawkwind, there's no problem she can't crack (except how to get Snakes to stop acting like such a dingus all the time)!

Like Fox, Claudia was originally a character in Lei Hye-Ja's Bounce Mode: an Irish engineering student attending Seoul National University's International Summer Program. As in The Valiant Stars, the original Claudia is a supremely talented student, arriving in Seoul having already attained several degrees in advanced math and science subjects. Much of the story follows a fish-out-of-water format, as the staid and stuffy Claudia is brought into the vibrant and colourful world of the top-secret table tennis tournament. Most notable are her interactions with the pre-Valiant Stars version of Fox Burke, their sometimes-romantic, sometimes-hostile relationship proving to be the engine that drives much of the series' drama. Lei Hye-Ja has often spoken of how Bounce Mode is a lightly allegorical version of her own journey from a career in theoretical mathematics to one making comic books, and that in this context, Claudia and Fox represent the two sides of her own ambition. Knowing the character held a personal place for Lei, Virgil Tennyson and Benson Corbett involved her in the development process for the character's incarnation in The Valiant Stars. The result, according to Lei, is a version of Claudia that feels more 'at peace' than in Bounce Mode- reconciled with her course in life, but still with the characteristic brilliance and romanticism that have always been the character's core.

The dark horse of the Dead Hand Vipers street racing league, Calypso March appeared from nowhere on her custom Turbocycle and swept the qualifiers for her year! Like all Dead Hand Vipers, she seeks the ultimate transcendence: the fusion of flesh and steel that can only come when both driver and vehicle push past their limits into the final realm of absolute speed- the realm known as NITRO HEAVEN! But since it's been over a century since anyone's been able to access Nitro Heaven, Calypso makes ends meet with a black market courier business. Anything you need, anytime you need it, she'll make it happen- just be sure you pay in cash!

Calypso March was one of the earliest characters brought into The Valiant Stars under the auspices of Wildheart Acceleration Unlimited. With the unexpected success of Starbreakers 3 in the home video market, Laughing Lizard found itself flush with cash. At least some of this money went towards funding what came to be known as "the Wildheart Sessions": a series of six-week retreats in the Annapolis Valley for members of the Laughing Lizard creative teams, during which time the writers, artists, and other creatives would pitch concepts, characters, and series ideas to each other. All of the Dead Hand Viper characters came out of these sessions, originally from a pitch by Nolan Quisster called ALL DOGS GO TO NITRO HEAVEN! Though some of the pitch's more transgressive edges were sanded off, most of the characters and the core conceit of Nitro Heaven made it into The Valiant Stars unchanged, including Calypso: the mysterious, supernaturally talented motorcycle racer on a quest for the realm of ultimate speed. Virgil Tennyson added the courier aspect so that the character would have reasons to stay involved in the unfolding dramas even when the quest for Nitro Heaven was not the sole focus.