ACE NITETIME & JACK STATIC
THE GOPHER HOLE

SUNDAY COMIC SCRIPT — ISSUE-002

PAGE DESIGN
One landscape Sunday page with eight numbered panels: wide opening panel,
three panels, three panels, and a wide final panel. Clear left-to-right,
top-to-bottom flow.

CONTINUITY
Match ISSUE-001. Ace: lean, dark hair, rust-red rolled-sleeve shirt, dark
vest, jeans, silver radio headphones. Jack: stockier, sandy hair, short
mustache, square glasses, olive work jacket, cream shirt, jeans, tool belt.

PANEL 1
Visual: Ace and Jack emerge from the recursive CRT room into a canyon of
beige server cabinets. Jack follows a thick network cable along the floor.
A sign reads NITETIME.NET FILE SERVER.
Dialogue:
JACK: This is the file server.
ACE: From the inside.

PANEL 2
Visual: Jack points to file drawers that connect directly to blinking drive
bays. Ace sees that opening a drawer lights a disk-access lamp.
Dialogue:
JACK: Cabinets are directories.
ACE: And the files are files.

PANEL 3
Visual: The thick cable disappears into a small round burrow-like doorway at
the base of a rack. A brass sign over it reads GOPHER. Warm green light comes
from within. A tiny carved gopher mascot holds a network plug.
Dialogue:
ACE: What's down there?
JACK: Older Internet.

PANEL 4
Visual: They duck through a tunnel lined with telephone wire, index cards,
and green terminal screens. Simple menu numbers hang like trail markers.
Dialogue:
ACE: Does it have a map?
JACK: It has a menu.

PANEL 5
Visual: They enter a cozy underground reading room: wooden card catalogs,
beige terminals, pneumatic tubes, and shelves. A large display reads
NITETIME GOPHER with clean menu items COMICS, RADIO, COMMODORE, FILES.
Dialogue:
ACE: I like it down here.
JACK: Low bandwidth. High ceilings.

PANEL 6
Visual: At a terminal Jack selects COMICS. A mechanical card catalog rapidly
clacks through cards while Ace waits. Screen text: SEARCHING COMICS...
Dialogue:
ACE: Look for us.
JACK: Already did.
SFX: CLACK CLACK CLACK

PANEL 7
Visual: The results drawer is open and conspicuously empty. The CRT clearly
reads NO ACE-AND-JACK. Ace looks disappointed; Jack checks the cable as if
diagnosing an engine.
Dialogue:
ACE: We're not on Gopher.
JACK: Not yet.

PANEL 8
Visual: Wide final panel. Ace and Jack walk away through the Gopher reading
room, debating. Behind them, unnoticed, the terminal cursor blinks beside a
new blank menu line. A label-making machine slowly feeds out a strip reading
ACE-AND-JACK? while a small status lamp reads INDEXING. A carved gopher mascot
watches the paper emerge.
Dialogue:
ACE: Think we're going to show up?
JACK: You said “going to.” That's encouraging.
Caption:
REQUEST PENDING.

LETTERING
Keep dialogue exact, short, and readable. Essential labels: NITETIME.NET
FILE SERVER, GOPHER, NITETIME GOPHER, COMICS, NO ACE-AND-JACK, INDEXING,
REQUEST PENDING. No nonsense background text.