This is a frame from my 3 episode short story comic Codename Magic which is live on Webtoons this week!  I wanted to bust out into magnificent technicolor in this piece, right as the action starts to heat up and bring in those beautiful summery hot tangerine and flamingo pink.  Sort of eye popping colors to set the scene as we start to unwind Xander’s journey into a sleepy little California town (lol Palo Alto) to analyze an alien artifact that ate someone’s dog.  Go give part 1 a read if you haven’t already!  https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/codename-magic-b/list?title_no=453121
Technical Stuff:
There’s a fun bit of internet lore behind this location too, the site of the mysterious Palo Alto CARET Lab (Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology, right across the street from the USGS building if anyone’s interested) and all the crazy 1970’s psychic research CIA/US ARMY program called the Stargate Project conducted in this whirling maelstrom around Stanford University. It sounds totally fake, or at least totally stoned.  Here’s the wikipedia page: . It was declassified in 1995.  The rabbit hole on the Stargate Project goes deep.  Anyways the CARET stuff can be found here and involves something that the authors don’t have a name for but are trying to figure out, the use of written language as a kind of hard-coded computer instructions to accomplish physical effects in the real world. I can help them out here, that’s straight up rune magic, and the implications of a sort of sci-fi fantasy crossover here has always intrigued me.  Just.  Don’t do drugs n’ stay away from the clockwork elves. Also you gotta read Codename Magic, and give me a like and a follow if you’ve got a webtoons account.  Otherwise just read it, you don’t need an account.  It’s a ton of fun, even if you’re not into comics. Â
