The move was Friday. It’s Sunday night as I’m posting this, and I’m positive 6 days have elapsed.

Tired.
Itchy.
Tasty.

Deus doesn’t need an excuse to invade neighboring countries, but it sure helps with motivating his people and keeping the international community off his back if the countries 1) provoke him or his allies or placed that threw a coup in hopes of inviting his “meritocrigime” in, 2) Are “bad” and 3) are poor. That isn’t to say some rich countries don’t have specialized interests in areas he’s bringing his administration to. But when they confronts him about it, he points out the infrastructure improvements he’s brought to his territories, and then promises their particular resource will become easier and cheaper to ship once there’s reliable roadways, electricity, un-navigable rivers that now have locks and navigation channels put there by geo and hydrokinetics. And those specialized interests go, “You know? Maybe a politically stable Africa would be good for the world. I mean, my pockets.” And the guy next to him says, “You said the quiet part loud.” And the Specialized Interest goes, “We all know why I’m here. Let’s not pretend we care about the temporary meat cogs.” Which would make for a heck of a mission statement.

So that last panel. Female solidarity? Or are they thinking, “By Jupiter’s angry red spot, he’s right! And that annoys me! But him being right also turns my delicate and capricious female brain into goo. Not to mention other parts! Gosh, I bet he has a huuuuuge… bank account. Boobily!”

Okay, maybe not that exactly.

Deus does have his work cut out for him though. Honestly, toppling a bunch of ultra corrupt dictatorships when you have access to a heavily positive Super ratio, a brigade of literal demons, and advanced alien tech support… that is technological materiel support, not like aliens doing tech support. “Yes, my iPhone is having trouble connecting to the carrier?” “Phoooone hoooome….” “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to do…” Anyway, toppling a bunch of relatively poor countries is the easy part when you have a super army and supercomputer levels of tactical and strategic acumen. The hard part is convincing everyone under your new banner that it’s a good thing. And we all know that there are plenty of people out there who would willing cut off their own nose to spite their neighbor whose wife they covet. Or some other aphorism. Tribal rivalries going back dozens of generations, religious tribalism, racial tribalism, nationalism. Just tribalism in general. Promising people a better life and even showing that you can deliver on it just isn’t enough in some cases, because hate and distrust and fear is often stronger than hope. Also, Deus is white, and that can be a hell of a handicap in Africa. The distrust has been reforged and reinforced since well before the industrial revolution. So does Deus have one easy trick that metathesiophobes hate? Probably at least one. Stay tuned!

I’m going to try something with this new vote incentive.

This month, I’m closing on a new house, selling my Mom’s house, finishing packing Mom’s house, moving city to city to the new house, forwarding mail, canceling utilities, all that. And after that’s done, I get to start the process of selling my old house, which needs a little work before it can realistically go on the market.

SO. I’m going to try and do this vote incentive in stages. Currently it’s just pencils. The TopWebcomics one will update with colors and detail until we get to the no clothes versions, then that will continue over at Patreon. Also there will be a comic or two in between each version to fill out the story.

I know it’s hard to tell from just the pencils, but this is Heatwave and Jiggawatt. The comics will explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. Although I feel like even saying that much makes it easy to guess, but hopefully the journey will still amuse.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.