A quick cover idea I had for one of the issues of INVASION.  It still needs to be shaded and MAYBE colored. (Meaning I SUCK at coloring and occasionally I try to cheat using Paint Shop Pro and then people ask me later, "Ugh, why didn't you just do it yourself?")

   Anyway...introductions are at hand.

   Front and center, that's Polonius Forge.  Friends call him Polo.  Yeah, he's picked up a few bad hume habits in the years following The Invasion.  Seeing what they've done to his home, you would too.  Only one of the Mistress-class starships escaped the hume attack at The Farm, and that belonged to Polo's uncle, Marlenn:  the Mistress Mine.  Marlenn didn't make it, so Polo inherited her -- and the burden of being a hero.
   Cosca's on the left.  She joined the crew of the Mistress Mine just because she likes being on the losing side of a hot fight.  Put her behind a laser turret and there's nothing she can't hit.  There are no odds she doesn't think she can't beat.  Put a pistol in her paws and watch her go to work.
   Gnawer is the little mouse on the lower right.  He's the pilot, and a damned good one.  Polo has known him for years, so Gnawer is the only one he trusts at the stick of the Mistress Mine.
   The big guy in the top/middle is Karp.  How could you miss him?  He's an engineer so he knows how to fix stuff -- Polo needs him to keep the hard-fighting, constantly under-fire  Mistress Mine in working order while Polo catches up on the tech.  Karp also spent several years as a bounty hunter on his home world, so count on this guy for his tactical knowledge as well as his ability to bust some skulls.

   A splash page I had originally cobbled together for the first issue of "Invasion."
   The original premise was titled "The Captain's Nightmare," and introduced you to the crew of the Mistress Mine by having them all killed off -- except for Polo -- in the first installment.  This was supposed to occur during a brutal fight after the Mistress is boarded by hume constructs known as DEF Golums -- robots designed to function in dangerous environments in lieu of a human presence.
   DEF Golums.  Dangerous Enviroment Functions, get it?  Why they're also called Golums -- a bastardized version of the Jewish word golem -- I'm keeping that a secret for little while.
   Despite how much I loved the idea of "The Captain's Nightmare" as a jumping-off point, the story defied logic in a lot of ways, so it's currently condemned to the recycle bin.  But I guarantee that the DEF Golums will eventually show up in the pages of "Invasion."
   And in the nightmares of Captain Polonius Forge.