Lights — A Heavy Metal Inspired Sci-fi Short by Rick Hughes

Cover page for Lights — features Yeag with his modified helmet.

If you’ve been keeping up with my previous posts regarding Winter Suns, you know that the man behind the comic is my good friend Rick K. Hughes. I first met Rick in a community college art class in Arizona. He was the “older man” amongst all the 20-somethings in our drawing class. I mostly kept to myself and only talked to my desk partner (and crush), Tessa. Tessa was a social butterfly and made friends with everyone in our class. She struck up a conversation with Rick and learned all about his web comic Winter Suns. She read it and told me I should read it. Given I had a crush on Tessa, I read Rick’s web comic because I wanted to impress her and show my interest…but, I ended up loving it! The funny thing is, being the macho guy I was, I tried to find a way not to like Rick and potentially knock him down a notch because I was trying to impress Tessa; “who does this guy think he is swooping in with his cool ass web comic!?”

A few weeks later, I came to class and found my usual seat next to Tessa taken. The only place to sit was next to Rick. I’m so glad that happened because had it not, we might not have struck up a conversation, and an excellent friendship might have never been forged. We have so much in common, and our creative interests have allowed us to collaborate on passion projects like Winter Suns.