Confessions of a webcomicker: In the previous version of this story I had the characters holding little flashlights, but when I rewrote it for the web I thought it would be a good idea to switch to something hands-free. But after I finished penciling this set of pages I almost ditched the headlamps idea. I worried that the characters looked a little, well, undignified wearing the things, and General Nelson is not someone I felt should look undignified. In the end, though, I decided to keep the headlamps, and it was entirely due to that final panel on this page. Zan just looks so charmingly ridiculous with his hair pushed back like that!

And now! What you’ve all been waiting for! I promised the answers to the Halloween costume puzzler! I decided to keep my mouth shut about the various guesses posted, but most of the costumes were correctly guessed in one comment section or another (the Girlamatic site and the LiveJournal entry were the popular places to comment, even though the galaxion.com site gets more visitors). Anyway, here are the official answers, apologies for the bad puns:

Zan: he makes a good solar system, but what I had in mind was “Egocentric”. Get it? Everything revolves around him? Ha ha ha. I think the solar system idea threw off a lot of people, because no one got it quite right.
Aria: she’s “Under Lock and Key”. I didn’t think of “Behind Bars” as part of it, but 10 points to Charlotte for guessing it.
Fusella: I almost thought her costume would remain unguessed, but it was got in the end by Werner (and unofficially by Robert ^_^). She’s dressed as a tree, and between the garishly bubbling test tube in her hand and the formula for hydrochloric acid carved in the bark, she’s a chemist-tree. “Chemistry.” Ahahaha. This was my favourite pun of the bunch because I thought it up all by myself.
Darvin: my husband David wore this costume this year. The red and white emblem on his shirt is supposed to be a postage stamp, and he’s wearing all black, so you get “Blackmail.” We found this idea on one of those Help-I-Need-A-Quick-Costume websites!
Scavina: I stole this one from one of my old Games magazines. The word “mice” written three times, each one missing its “i” gets you… “Three Blind Mice.”