This is the Synthetic Reality Storybook comic books gallery.
Each card represents a comic book or document. Click the cover image to view the item.
Open
CowboyBob
This is a cowboy story about a specific cowboy and his sidekick. These cowboys, Cowboy Bob and his sidekick Chico, are on planet far removed in galactic space.
Yet it is possible that the tale may still be relevant.
Open
The Coprolite Incident
Somewhere out in the interstellar void aboard a star craft light years removed from the Solar System, yet still nearby on a galactic scale, a passenger was being awakened from stasis to participate in a periodic activity cycle.
The passenger is a Sensei, a teacher, and he is a teller of tales. Indeed, he is a proselyte, a missionary. Perhaps one day he would have disciples, witnesses to the stories he has to share.
But for now he will relate his tales to his fellow passengers and assistants, the Acolytes.
Open The Missionary
The Missionary is a slender, maybe even skinny short coiffed blond female given to turtlenecks and jeans.
The Missionary is an operative, an end effector unit, for a BioMechaGenics product reclaim and recycle team. As such her basic function is to assist in the location and subsequent removal of designated BMG Enhanced units from service, BMG's premier product.
The motivation for these removals and who makes those determinations is of less concern than the desire for efficacy and certainty in the accomplishment of that task. The complete and certain termination of the designated unit's operation is the end game goal. The Missionary was very good at her job, after all, she had been designed to purpose.
Open
The Rainbow Bridge
When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.
All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.
Open
Jingo Jango
Jingo Jango is a Space Ranger in the military branch of The Alliance.
He appears here in a Recruitment Advertisement for his employer.
Open
AVPlayer
This is a demo of the Elegant Three Button JavaScript Audio Animation Player
Open SOS Message
From time to time I may add some short subject comics like this CSS animation that will be one of the kind. This is an example of that sort of concept piece.
Open Disappearing Act
The 24th Chapter of the Gospel of Luke tells one of the most popular New Testament Bible Stories. The core of the chapter is frequently called the story of "The Road to Emmaus" and "The Meal at Emmaus". The story involves two disciples of the recently crucified Jesus who encounter him as they travel along that road. Initially the two do not recognize him as he joins them on their walk, and their eventual recognition of him as being the risen Jesus is the crux of the story.This comic tells the story from a perhaps unusual angle as it introduces us to Sensei and the Acolytes. It also attempts to offer some interpretation of the events.
Open Uncle Pervy's Roadhouse #1
Uncle Pervy's Roadhouse is a bar and grill motel operation on an asteroid named Factory. This first episode introduces us to Factory and to our protagonist, Farley.
Open BMG Enhanced
By 1980 the levels of greenhouse gases had climbed far higher than anything seen for many millions of years, and by the start of the 21st century, it was clear that there was a major connection between global temperature and greenhouse gas levels.
Now the computer models, with wholly independent methods and data, were predicting processes that would bring a rapid and severe global warming a disruption of climate exceeding anything seen since the emergence of the human species. The models said the threshold for dangerous global warming would be crossed between 2027 and 2042.
This was the milieu that would see the advent of BioMechaGenics (BMG) Enhanced.
Open
Max Simian 2
Max has ended up on the desert planet Shanzi in the service of The Alliance. Life can be brutal, and no less so on Shanzi. Max follows the Alliance precept that the end can justify the means, the death of morality can simply be collateral damage.
Open
Ice World
Jian Xi is a researcher in stasis biology, i.e. suspended animation. He serves The Alliance at the station on Thoth, known as the "Ice World" for its stable sub-arctic cold conditions.
Open
Hyenas
In this first episode we meet some of the ladies, "the girls", who are members of an urban social club aptly named "The Catty Chatters".
One of the girls, the lovely Mary Jane, is lamenting the difficulties inherent in locating a suitable boyfriend. She is greeted with both sympathy and disdain, such response being reflective of the group. Let's see how this plays out then, shall we?
Open
Hyenas2
In this episode we meet one of "the girls", SheLa, who is a member of an urban social club aptly named "The Catty Chatters".
SheLa is telling the ladies about her just completed jump through the Nanzinger Gate Wormhole and her adventures beyond. She is greeted with interest, such response being reflective of the group. Let's see how this plays out then.
Open
Max Simian 1
Max Simian's birth planet, Tan Aerith, was a jungle rainforest world with huge expanses of verdant growth and great rivers.Max is possessed of a high intelligence which has served him well in his ascent in society. He has always been a motivated individual, a driven achiever, ever confident in his eventual success.
Open Terse Tales
This is a collection of a few single page comics with various image sizes. Each comic has an accompanying text panel with the story for that comic.
This example also adds panels that provide some detailed information about each image and the viewport or display dimensions.
Open
The David And Goliath Story
This is the familiar David and Goliath story from chapter 1 Samuel 17 in the Bible.
The Sensei and the Acolytes are missionaries aboard a hollowed out asteroid starcraft. The Sensei spends a lot of his time in stasis, but every so often the Acolytes awaken him to relate some Bible story or another. This is one of those times.
The text is the NIV version. The Bible story page or panel illustrations were generated based upon the Bible verses as generative prompts to the Deep Dream AI image generator tool (https://deepdreamgenerator.com/)
Open Bird of Prey
This is a story about a near-future dystopia. In that future, society has collapsed. This tale presents a vignette of the resulting order of things. The story is part of a larger overarching tale, and the idea of telling the tale was the impetus for making Storybook.
The comic was created by Storybook using uploaded content.
Open
Hyenas 4
In this episode of Hyenas our heroine SheLa and her boss, the Leon, are bound for a pleasant fishing trip on The Swamp, a planet most appropriately named.
As usual there is more beneath the surface than is immediately obvious as she tells her pals in the Catty Chatters about her latest adventure. But luckily on this trip business doesn't interfere with a good time.
Open Hot Metal
This is geek humor, if indeed humor it be.
It is also a demo of a simple single panel per device screen comic. In this example the dialog is contained on each panel using traditional "balloons". The last panel in this comic adds a single "play on click" animation with audio.
Audio or animations may also be used independently of one another.
Open
Hyenas 3
SheLa Nouveau accompanies the Leon on a mission of some import to a planet named The Valley. The Valley hadn't always been called that, its former designation was an alphanumeric string that gave no indication about the place, which had been a weapons lab for the Ishtar.
In contemporary times it had become a development site for biomorphic organisms, mostly cyborgs that were euphemistically called entertainment units.
The Leon and SheLa are tourists who are actually off to investigate reports of strange events and displays of seemingly modern technology appearing among the nomads and village dwellers of the high desert plains.