Setting and background are two important aspects of any story. In this, comics have an inherent superiority over prose literature due to the visual nature of the medium. However, even comics have some limitations as to how to reveal background story. Traditionally, stories often rely on the “uninformed innocent” who needs to be told what is going on; this can be done humorously (such as with the forgetful dufus Gourrey from Slayers) or more seriously as is found in numerous epic fantasies (to the point that any Evil Overlord worth his grain should enforce manditory unbiased education of all rural children to ensure some dumb kid doesn’t end up on the path to destroying the Overlord’s plans).

The recent Dresden Codak took another approach, in utilizing a flashback of a very young Kimiko pretending to be an alien astronaut in search of cookies. The scene is tremendously touching, and gives us not only a glimpse of Kimiko’s mother and of the child that grew up to be a favorite among so many philosophy geeks and science nerds. One thing of interest to me was that her father, whom adult-Kimiko detests, was a roboticist, much like herself, while her mother was a biologist (and studying cloning). Previous comics suggest that Kimiko blames her father for her mother’s death. The fact that his experiments were more vital than being at his daughter’s side on her birthday is especially telling… suggesting that Kimiko is far more her father’s daughter than she might care to admit.

More curious, however, is Kimiko’s pursuit of roboticism over biology. Why not follow in her mother’s footsteps? Why pursue robotics to the extent she did? Part of this might be the temporary nature of biological life; all life eventually ends. Might Kimiko see the path of robotics as a path into some form of immortality, an immortality that her mother (the parent who seemed to truly love her, compared to a cold and distant father) was denied? Indeed, might she not be looking to find a way to bring her mother back with the cold hard science of robotics? What is clear is that these glimpses into Kimiko’s past help to explain her present self to a greater extent. I suspect that it is how her mother died that shaped Kimiko into the woman she is today… and the future she is destined to bring to humanity.