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For the uninitiated, the crucible in Mass Effect 3 is supposed to save the universe from the Reaper invasion. Get it?

There’s also a fairly prominent gameplay mechanic where you can romance a crew member “to completion.”

This is what the comic would look like if I were drawing it. And there would probably be only one comic. Well maybe two. Three would really be pushing it. I’ve been working on this for longer than I care to admit. It’s in pencil because I never learned how to draw digitally (I’ve never used a tablet before). And it’s not coloured because I don’t know how to do that either.

I sincerely hope you like it.

I haven’t drawn for about 10 years, but back when Sopes and I were kids we used to draw all the time. I think … that was a Sopes’s influence. I had drawn a few things, but I didn’t take it very seriously. Sopes did. He sketched and practised all the time.

It was obvious, even back then, how much talent Sopes had. One time, a few years into our drawing careers I got these animation flip books. I drew fifteen similar ones: Stick figures fighting with bo staves and knives, rocks rolling off cliffs, rocks rolling off cliffs onto stick figures. I excitedly showed Sopes this new outlet I’d discovered. On his very first animation pad he drew a fluid stick figure of Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. Michael slid his stickman feet smoothly backward, then he took off his hat, swirled it around his body and threw it out into space.

There’s an infectious quality about talented people. They raise you up.

I remember writing this script with automaton. We’d recently been talking about limits in scripts and things we “couldn’t do” or “couldn’t say.” I said something like, “I’m sorry, but Commander Keen’s character is filthy. Let’s run with that.”

Enter the rapers. Then the stern letters, and a few riffs later, “suck my pogo.”

You might look at this and think it’s too far, but in my mind is just far enough. I laugh at all its parts of it with ebullience.

Thank you guys.