Thank you for your kind words.  We enjoyed putting this together.  I'm going to take some time off and turn my attention to other projects for a while.  (It's been quite a long haul)  Joe is continuing with the planning of the next adventure, and may work with me in the future, or do the next installment with another artist.  Stay tuned.

Sort of.  Large neo-cortex bearing animals tend to mature later.  Elephants, dolphins, and chimanzees all mature around 10 to 13 years old.  Humans generally mature around the same age, perhaps slightly later.  Current research has reavealed the neocortex goes through a lot of development over that amount of time.

You will also note that the morphs are a lot closer to each other in size than their corresponding animals are.  Though the reasoning is not rigorous, I'm following the supposition that the original geneticists working on the Morph project found that there was an optimum size for the transformed creatures to maximize the development of the neocortex and upright posture.  Big morphs were reduced in size, and small ones increased.

My take on it is that Morph lifecycles are somewhere in between that of human and native species.  Probably closer to human, as science is finding more and more evidence that neocortex maturity takes a certain amount of time.

I don't really know.  Human and Morph years are not quite the same.  In maturity, I'd guess he's equal to a human about 10 years old.

It is hard.  Especially right after her child has been missing for months.  And she's never met Tycho, and hasn't seen where he lives in relation to the sanctuary.  Any mother would be (at least initially) concerned.  It may take a little convincing.

In the computer game there were also references to tensions between the tribes of Morph.  There is much going on that this story arc has not had the time to cover.

Apparently, Sandy's mother considers his given name an honored one.  Perhaps it is old fashioned or stodgy.  Maybe the other wolf cubs made fun of it.  Maybe Sandy felt he wanted to have a new identity, or that the old name brought up painful memories associated with their exile.

I once had a friend named Raul, a very respected name in Latin American countries.  (And these days it's considered exotic and fashionable.)  When he was a kid, he was teased endlessly about it; so he changed his name to Ray.

I blame mine on a slight case of dyslexia.

Her name has always been Rhene.  Cairn Desktop used to refer to her as Rhea.  Not sure if that was an error, or a sly reference to the Greek Goddess.

This isn't the British Navy. ;-)     This ragtag group has not been trained up with any discipline; otherwise they would have been much quicker to obey the old captain and his officers when they barked out orders.  And it has been mere moments since they had no superior officers to answer to at all.

Since the boar stepped out of line and addressed the ram directly, the ram, not schooled in any protocol himself, answered directly back.

Hopefully, once Willis appoints his officers and lays down the articles of discipline, protocol will be adhered to.

They do want to gloss over things, don't you think?

And yes, perhaps black sails aren't the best color.  It will take time and effort to obtain new ones, though.  On the other hand, perhaps black isn't as ominous in morph culture.  Once they sail to new waters, they may not have a hostile reception.

Classic "It's not my fault!".  Maybe it's not only human nature.  Or maybe a few of our human behaviors got mixed in when we made the morphs.

I would love it if others would make comments.  I wonder if the new forum platform is preventing some people from participating?

Some of the mob are townspeople and some are Rams from the sheep village.  It is the townspeople who wear striped shirts. They provide them to the crew as well, as they are the chief suppliers. Pretty soon, striped shirts became the uniform of the crew as well.

Once the townspeople heard about the outrages committed by the crew, they became angry, as they were under the impression the pirates were, if not entirely lawful traders, at least not violent and destructive.  This kind of behavior would bring a bad reputation to the village and danger of retaliation.

The White Fox has indeed vanished.

Rif and Rhene witnessed two very different parts of the sheepstown story.  They haven't compared notes yet.  Even if Rif had full knowledge of the situation, the mob certainly wasn't giving him a chance to say anything.

We shall see how things work out with these former 'reluctant' pirates in the future....

Good thing the rules of perspective puts the pitchfork many feet in front, safe from poking anything. 

It is difficult to create more than one detailed strip each week on my very busy schedule.