I actually have a sketch from the days when I was developing Whiplash where three important things happened: A) It solidified the outfits of Miles and Steve. You're going to be seeing them in suit and trenchcoat (respectively) a lot. B) It was the first drawing of the cryptic paper hat symbol. C) It gave them a group name. Sort of, anyway.

A couple months after this, a new Sonic game came out for the Nintendo DS. It will eternally bug me that the name of the game basically coincides with Miles and Steve's group.

Oddly enough, I changed Petra's eye color to a more pure green. I think it actually looks better with a hint of blue, so I'm just gonna say that the fourth wall cameraman was fooling around with some settings. Yeah. Because that totally happens.

Incidentally, Petra's name is the only one that survived a period of serious revamping I did on Whiplash before it reached its current form. It's the only one which is still a real "gag." And it's a redo at that. Why? When I was just starting to sketch the first ideas of what would eventually evolve into Whiplash, I really had no idea what to do. So, ideas got pulled in from everywhere. I have sketches of an angel, a guy who thinks he's a secret agent, and some other things. Petra's concept was originally these three words: "female pyro dwarf."

So, I loosely sketched her, and dubbed her "Petra Yolanda Rachel Ortega" or something similar. The point: her initials spelled "pyro." Inspiring, no? (Then again, the character who is now Julia was originally "Xandra Keira Charlotte Dubois," which is even worse.) A couple months later, I started erasing stuff I'd written in which looked like a bad idea in retrospect, I dropped two of Petra's original three characteristics and gave her a new name. Only thing is, it's the only name of a major character which is actually a joke, or at least an intentinal one. After all, Nick's full name is "Nicholas Drew Witt." I really didn't mean that to be funny said aloud.

I was looking at Petra's name while holding a Rubik's cube, and the thought struck me: Petrus and Ortega were actually two Rubik's cube methods. So, to compound the joke, I renamed her "Petra Lauren Lars," with the extra joke of having her initials be "PLL." (Permute Last Layer. If you didn't get that, you really should look up the Petrus Method).

One last note? Petra shares one more trait with Miles: her physical appearance was based off of a real life person. So, I should probably say this: if there are any Petra-Miles shippers in the house, it ain't gonna happen. Ever. The world will end before it happens in-canon. The connections to real-life people would just break my brain, plus get me hammered by one (or both) of Miles' and Petra's sketchies.