Sally C. Robertson
Sally Cephalophoria Robertson is the daughter of Ian and Brenna Robertson, of the Harmless Free Radicals, and she is the namesake of this chapter of the comic! Her’s is going to be a difficult story. Tormented by circumstances and a world under the influence of strange imaginations, and the presence of an adopted brother with terrible habits, Sally must try to make the best of fifth grade. Go ahead, just ask her what she wants to be when she grows up! That’s a dare.
Marshall S. Musante
Marshall Sappho Musante is Sally’s best and oldest friend, son of Brian and Dakota Musante, also of the Harmless Free Radicals. Marshall is about half a year older than Sally, grew up with her due to their parents’ friendship, and often feels as if he is Porky Pig to Sally’s Daffy Duck. But he does have his own favorite things, and they will one day take him far.
Carl P. Robertson
Carl Projectorinski Robertson is Sally’s adopted brother, a refugee from someone else’s mythology. He was stolen at birth by the Fomorians, the ancient Irish demons of the sea, essentially a race of fairies. As part of their duty as the Harmless Free Radicals, Sally’s parents adventured to Fomoria and saved Carl from his fate. Since time works differently in the land of Fairy, where Fomoria is, Carl’s real parents are long gone. So Ian and Brenna have adopted him. Sally, of course, has mixed feelings about this. Carl just seems to take in it stride. And though he may have the manners of an undersea barbarian, he has great knowledge and wisdom gained from life with his former captors. Specifically, he knows things that fifth graders were not meant to know.
Ian W. Robertson
Ian Wilhelm Robertson is the son of a couple of printers, a fan of gourmet coffee beverages and the establishments that sell them, a freelance artist and graphic designer, husband of Brenna Quiloshe Robertson, and father of Sally. He’s also one of the founding members of the Harmless Free Radicals, and envoy to Fenmere, the Worm, Poet of the Dragon People. His work takes him to strange places, and to band rehearsal every Thursday night. Although, it is questionable if rehearsal involves anything resembling music. Which is good, because he’s not a musician. Ian is used to the story being about him, and typically in the most embarrassing of ways. However, these days he’s simply trying to enjoy fatherhood, and hoping that it can distract him from how bad business has been lately.
Brenna Q. Robertson
Brenna Quiloshe Robertson is the daughter of an optical engineer and an accountant who immigrated to the U.S. when she was 8. She is the singer of the Harmless Free Radicals, wife to Ian, and mother of Sally. It was also her idea to adopt Carl, though Ian claims it occurred to him as well. Brenna graduated from Fairport Community College with a concentration in painting, and works full time as a bartender for Flounder Sound Brewtech. She loves hanging out with people of all sorts, even when they’re really annoying. She also loves correcting people who are wrong, and asserting her authority. This works quite well in both her roles and mother and bartender! Her wages and tips largely pay for the mortgage and food. She’s generally been the grounding force in the family, even in the face of the strangest adversity, and it may be that Sally has inherited her brand of common sense.
Brian Musante
Brian Musante is the guitarist for the Harmless Free Radicals, the husband of Dakota Barnes Musante, and father of Marshall. Ian used to babysit him when he was a kid, and through Ian became acquainted with Fenmere and his bizarre world of half-aborted adventures and backyard deities. Brian still has the vestiges of style from his skateboarding youth, but he’s always been a closet nerd. His knowledge of the world and the way obscure things work is surprising even to Ian, who is no slouch himself. For some reason, this has lead him to take on a career as a garbage man. Perhaps it’s just the natural extension of his earlier jobs as a bagel delivery boy, and then a pizza deliverator. Brian is still a fan of the physical. He still has his skateboard, snowboard, basketball and martial arts paraphernalia, and uses them when no one is looking. But he usually hangs out with Ian on his days off.
Mrs. Berkeley
Like most elementary school teachers, Mrs. Berkeley does not seem to have a first name, though her title does suggest that she has a family, or at least a spouse. She is Sally’s fifth grade teacher and the faculty adviser for Bayview Elementary’s Science Club. Because of Sally’s interest in science, she and Sally have worked together in the Science Club since Sally joined it in third grade. They have a rapport, but Mrs. Berkeley is the kind of teacher who tends to have a rapport with most of her students. Maybe a little too honest, she seems to skirt by in this age of helicopter parenting and hair trigger school boards by simply being the coolest teacher in the school, or perhaps because Jam is a strange town, somewhat isolated from the prevailing cultures that dominate the rest of the country. Some of her students have a theory that Mrs. Berkeley runs entirely on coffee. They claim that no one has seen her eat the apple that is on her desk, let alone any other food.
Lisa
Lisa, like many social workers, does not seem to have a last name. She’s been assigned to Carl, to help him transition to life in Jam. It’s clear that she’s worked with children for some time, because she has the reflexes and resources of a mother of five, and blue hair. Her role in this story may be small, but she is included here because she is the source of Carl’s shirts during the school day.
Fenmere, the Worm
Some have implied, inaccurately, that Fenmere is the imaginary friend of Ian Robertson. He is, in fact, the Poet of the Dragon People, the oldest living being native to Earth (besides the Earth herself), the author of all these comics, and a cantankerous critic and admirer of all the people who seem to live around him. Although his Art (with a capital “A”) is poetry, he has taken up comics to further his goals, claiming that they are also a form of poem. He has hinted that he is embroiled in an ancient conflict of some sort, and that all of his schemes and comics are related to his attempts to resolve that conflict. He has also hinted that this may result in the end of the world as we currently know it, or correspond with it, or maybe just take that long to have an effect. It’s hard to tell, and he won’t specify. He also seems to have a cadre of speaking animals and strange creatures working for him as spies and distributors for his comics. The Harmless Free Radicals as a group was not really his creation, but he has certainly exploited them toward these ends! Finally, he claims that he goes by “the Worm” instead of “the Poet” as a reminder of his lowly origins (as a worm) and that he does not claim to see himself as any higher or more important than any other living creature. It may be coincidental that “worm” has also been used in the English language as a synonym for “dragon”, but it probably isn’t.
Jonathan, the ‘Hamster
A foot and a half tall rodent, often mistaken for a marmot or groundhog, Jonathan is actually a ‘Hamster. The apostrophe is important, apparently. No one is quite sure where he came from, but his title is Distribution Rep. for Harmless Free Radicals. As the head of sales, he’s also become Fenmere’s chief editor. Which is to say, he gives Fenmere a considerable amount of unsolicited advice regarding plot and presentation of the comic. He is not, however, a copy editor and won’t ever touch a red pen. He has been known, on occasion, to wallop Fenmere over the noggin with his own collection of comics in order to get his point across. And somehow, Fenmere still gets away with not listening to him most of the time. On his off time, Jonathan can occasionally be seen patronizing local establishments, where he is slightly irritated by enthusiastic wild life photographers.
Other major characters eventually re-appearing in the comic, and whose entries are pending, include: Dakota Barnes Musante, Jenifer Bakker, Ink, Gretch Mueller, Rachel and Boer Flannigan (perhaps), Bone Jackdaw, Jade Crow, Lloyd the Seagull, Boof, Gnargrim the Watchman, and Jay of the Outsiders.
The Cast & Crew of the Epic of Sally originally appeared on Drawing Contraption on 2013/08/01.