At some point... we'll get into the Major's backstory a little more.
So much I wanna cover - so many pages to do up! Hahaha

Least it'll be a while before I run out of things to draw!

This is an interesting comment...
Have you ever read any of the culture novels by Iain M. Banks?
One of the takeaways is that in order to achieve a liberal paradise (i.e. a society with full freedom, security, and equality), governance must be removed from human hands, in this case, handed over to benevolent AIs.

I have not, I shall add it to my to do list. However, the concern I have is, in order for the AI to be capable of handling the variety of human nature it must be capable of learning/adapting, and once it can learn, how do you maintain the benevolence. The movie "I, Robot" illustrates one problem that could arise. Forget her name, but the AI thought she was being benevolent, humanity obviously disagreed.

In "I, Robot" I really liked the question they posed about saving the child or the adult.
The child had less chance to live, but as Will Smith's character says, "A human would have made the call to save him"
Or something to that effect.

Anyways, it highlights how sometimes humans choose to follow the illogical (or emotional) path, and even when presented with mathematical proof or other evidence that it is 'logically unsound' or a lesser path, we still choose that path.

I think: Human's aren't machines, and we shouldn't suppress emotion, desire, all that stuff that makes us... us... to simply have an efficient, or utterly logical by-the-numbers society.

Hence Jay's argument above, which is essentially "If you take the humanity out of humanity, what's the point in it at all" sort of deal :P

If that makes any sense at all, haha.

I have an inlaw in the USAF and the subject of Edward Snowden/NSA came up one day.
I take the side that he is more of a hero than a villain, and he took the other side,not surprisingly since he is in the military.
His argument being "freedom isn't free", or some variation thereof. But I, like you, say that if the cost of freedom is freedom, then what the hell is the point.

I happen to be in the USMC and my view on Snowden was that he did what was necessary. Your inlaw is correct in his basic premise, that Freedom is not Free, and that is why we have a military, to bleed and die for it. It is why we have Police Officers, to patrol the streets and protect against those inside our own borders that would abuse it.
That being said, a quote from Benjamin Franklin sums up the necessity of Snowden's actions: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." The NSA was taking away freedom in order to gain security and Snowden when he became aware of it had the Honor and Courage to recognize the illegitimacy of the acts and out them, and the Commitment to his course of action to take it as far as was necessary, even violating U.S. law to do so. The reason I capitalized those three words is that the U.S. Marine Corps considers them our core values, values I believe Snowden demonstrated.
It is easy to say someone violated the law and thus is guilty, but the law is created to protect, and when it is necessary to break the law to fulfill that protection then the law is demonstrated to have become faulty or have not been complete enough to begin with. Unfortunately in the case of Snowden, the only means he had to bring this to our attention without being pre-emptively stuck in a hole somewhere (and yes, I believe some factions within my government do that far too regularly) was to go outside the law. In a perfect world he would not have had to take such drastic action, but in a perfect world, such action would never have been required.

Hm, I think my idealism just sparked against my pessimism there. Hope you enjoy reading my thoughts.

I am 100% for Idealism vs pessimism :)

You've really hit the nail on the head with everything you've said here - it's everything, really, that i'm trying to shoehorn into the comic (between the sci fi nonsense and rayguns, haha)
Freedom vs security is the big issue in the modern world - and I think it goes a lot deeper than people usually think. It's a tricky balancing act... and there's not always a right or wrong answer.

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices of one to maintain the other - so it comes down to what you believe in more, really.

Major Hart (and, not coincidentally, myself in real life) believes that freedom should come first... and damn the consequences. He'll fight tooth and nail to resist those consequences, but he won't make concessions along the way to do it... even if it means losing the fight in the first place.
Which again, is good or bad, depending on your beliefs.

Which is what the comic is trying to be about, anyways :)

But nevertheless, I really appreciate your lengthy response here - and everyone else's, really! I'm happy that my little story can provoke some thought! ^_^

So thanks so much again everyone for being such awesome readers :) keep on being as awesome as you all are!

That's the rub, isn't it?
Relenquish humanity's hold over it's own future, or forget your utopia.

Almost missed this comment haha

By all means, call out the mistakes as you see em'!
I hate spelling mistakes too... so if anyone catches any - let me know so I can change em :D

Glad you're enjoying the comic ^_^