VeeFriends Special Edition A is critical to all of VeeFriends Comics because it defines the structural mechanics upon which the VeeFriends Universe is built and operates. The issue opens with Balanced Beetle addressing the reader. This is fitting because Balanced Beetle is one of the most central and influential to the overarching narrative and world building being constructed throughout each standalone issue.
In this address, Balanced Beetle returns to a recurring theme and motif in the VeeFriends Universe which is, "Find Your True Self."
In the early VeeFriends webcomics and newspaper comics as well as in current VeeFriends Comic Issues, such as VeeFriends Issue 03, we see Balanced Beetle Tours flyers where readers are invited on a journey to find their true selves.
Each VeeFriends Issue is technically a standalone read, meaning you do not need to have read any other issues to enjoy or understand it. However, if you want to fully understand each issue, there is indeed a much larger context or archive of details and references that is required reading for the complete experience. Luckily, with KOWSKY The Undisputed VeeFriends Lore Master on the job, you don't have to be an OG or do all of this research yourself to have that complete context reader experience.
VeeFriends Special Edition A is a flashback from VeeFriends Issue 01. This is a spoiler if you haven't read VeeFriends Issue 01 so don't finish this sentence if you don't want to know that it focuses on Mikey's father Ed, who is already dead in VeeFriends first issue.
As Ed stares into his computer screen, he remarks that he has found or figured out where the VeeFriends come from. Before we can learn more about his discovery, we are interrupted by a young Mikey, who grows up to be the star of VeeFriends Issue 01. Mikey is approaching his dad Ed with a pack of VeeFriends Compete & Collect cards that he wants them to open together.
When they rip the pack, an Epic Balanced Beetle is revealed. They remark that only 25 were made which is true to the real-life version of the card. For Mikey, the VeeFriends are imaginary. A cartoon and a card game. But Ed poses the question, "What if the VeeFriends are real?"
The rest of the panels on this page are dense with information. When I first read this issue, I blazed past this page at regular reading speed. Wrong move. This is a point to slow down, take it all in, and read it a few times over before moving on.
This page lays out the entire foundational structure of how the VeeFriends Universe operates on a cosmic and multidimensional scale. This is why VeeFriends Special Edition A is irreplaceable and quintessential.
The starting point for this explanation is in "The Realm Of Imagination," which is the 4th layer of reality according to Ed. And, "Up until this point, we could only travel to this place through deep concentration, or in a dream or meditative state."
Mikey asks if those states of mind are comparable to "Remote Viewing" or "Astral Projection."
According to Grok:
Remote Viewing: a claimed extrasensory perception (ESP) practice where someone attempts to mentally perceive or describe distant people, places, objects, or events across space or time without ordinary senses. The U.S. government studied versions of it from the 1970s through the 1990s under programs like Stargate before those programs were declassified.
Astral projection: a claimed out-of-body experience where consciousness, or an astral body, separates from the physical body and travels through non-physical realms or dimensions without ordinary senses. It comes from esoteric, occult, and spiritual traditions, and practitioners sometimes claim it can reach distant places or hidden knowledge.
Then, Ed steps back to build his theory from the ground up...
The Layers of Reality:
1st Dimension: Your inner self. Just you. The "I am" that you are. The spark of consciousness and awareness that makes you a person.
2nd Dimension: You plus your thoughts as you open your eyes and begin to observe the world. Like words and pictures in your mind as you experience them.
3rd Dimension: Physical reality. Our thoughts become things. The material world that we live in every day. The IRL.
4th Dimension: The Imagination Realm. Where all ideas and dreams are stored across all time and space.
5th Dimension: VeeWorld.
Before we dismiss these as fantasy, take a moment. This may be similar or parallel to how the world actually works. D.J. Coffman is a fan of Thomas Campbell's Big Theory of Everything and the VeeFriends Universe mechanics bear striking similarities to his theory about our actual human world reality.
In the next panel we see that the audience Ed is giving this explanation to is the VeeFriends. After delivering his explanation of the five dimensions, Ed continues to talk physics by defining "The Zone" next. According to Ed, The Zone is like a high-speed lane from the 3rd dimension all the way to the 5th. In other words, it's a portal between our world and VeeWorld that only takes seconds to traverse. In modern physics, Ed is describing a wormhole. According to Grok...
Wormhole: a hypothetical tunnel-like structure in spacetime that connects two distant points in the universe or different points in time, potentially allowing shortcuts through space and time. Predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, wormholes remain purely theoretical with no observational evidence.
But Ed isn't describing a theoretical wormhole. To the contrary, he is revealing the blueprints for a vehicle (called "The VeeHicle") that he has built. It allows humans and VeeFriends to physically travel through this wormhole that is called "The Zone" in the VeeFriends Universe. It camouflages itself as an ugly, normal truck and then transforms into a sleek, flying, hot rod.
Ed explains that the idea for the VeeHicle came to him while he was wearing his positive array helmet which we were first introduced to in VeeFriends Issue 01.
This helmet immediately makes me think of Professor Xavier using his Cerebro helmet in X-Men. In that universe, the Cerebro helmet is a device that amplifies Professor Xavier's psychic energy. He uses it so his mind can reach farther, locate other mutants, and access a larger field of consciousness. It is not the source of his power. It is only an extension of it.
Ed's positive energy array helm seems to work in that same way. It does not create energy out of nothing, nor does it choose whether the energy is negative or positive. It amplifies the user's existing energy.
This aligns with how the helmet functions in VeeFriends Issue 01 and on this page. The helmet is powerful because it magnifies intent, and Practical Peacock is the one who says it might be dangerous in the wrong hands. He even follows it up with the phrase "Those with bad intentions..." which is not a throwaway line if you have read Issue 02 or know the green bunny from your existing VeeFriends knowledge.
As the green bunny many of us already know as Bad Intentions takes a look through the window, he sees a group of Men in Black-looking agents outside. It seems Practical Peacock is not the only one worried about Ed's inventions. Somehow, they know enough about Ed and his work to appear in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to interfere. Bad Intentions is the first to verbalize the fear that the men are coming to steal Ed's plans. Positive Porcupine gives into the fear immediately and warns Ed to hide both the helmet and everything else. There is no consideration that these Men In Black-looking agents might be good guys.
Speaking of forgotten consideration, yes, me calling the green bunny Bad Intentions here before the issue does is technically a spoiler. However if you've read VeeFriends Issue 02 or are familiar with VeeFriends IP in general, it is no secret that the green bunny is named Bad Intentions, which is why I am using his name freely in this article.
In VeeFriends Issue 02, we learned the carrot Bad Intentions carries is actually an ancient relic called the "Fear Carrot." In this issue, Bad Intentions uses his Fear Carrot to open a wormhole out of the 3rd dimension so the VeeFriends can escape to VeeWorld fast and take Ed's work with them. Functionally, the Fear Carrot is doing a version of what the VeeHicle does. It creates a route out of our world and toward VeeWorld. But Bad Intentions tells Ed it is not safe for him to go through this way, which feels like a significant detail. The VeeHicle is Ed's engineered path through The Zone. The Fear Carrot portal is something else. Faster, stranger, and probably not meant for humans.
The next page confirms Ed is not the target. The agents are looking for the green rabbit and the unusual carrot. One might even say he was warned about a Bad Bunny.
As soon as the agent says, "We know what you do here at Meddleco, we're fine with it," the whole read shifts. These guys are not showing up because Ed discovered VeeWorld. They already know enough about what he is doing to tell him it is not crazy. They are showing up because Bad Intentions is there, because the Fear Carrot is there, and because whatever is happening in Ed's lab has crossed from invention into danger.
The agent does not say to avoid every VeeFriend or every strange creature. He says this creature tends to masquerade as a friend, that he is a diabolical trickster, and whatever Ed does, he should not touch the carrot.
Ed realizes that the character many of us know as Bad Intentions isn’t really named Roger. This is a reference to Roger Rabbit which is another famous cartoon IP. Bad Intentions has apparently been lying to and fooling Ed and the other VeeFriends the entire time. If you haven’t read VeeFriends Issue 01 and 02, this won’t seem so significant.
However, if you have read them, you should be as shocked and dumbfounded as I am, wondering how this could even be possible. In VeeFriends Issue 01 we see exactly how a VeeFriends team is selected for a given mission. At the risk of coming off as pretentious, I'm going to quote myself from VeeFriends Issue 01 Explained:
This is where the team selection starts to matter. The comic does not present Balanced Beetle as randomly calling whoever is around. The page literally says he is inputting the scenario into the Supercomputer-5000, and its algorithm will pick the “perfect” team of VeeFriends to help with that specific scenario. The way I read that is bigger than simple matchmaking. If this machine can observe possible timelines before they collapse into reality, then it is scanning all possible outcomes, finding the version where Mikey is saved, Lara stays on her path, and the larger future bends in the right direction, then selecting the VeeFriends most likely to make that timeline happen in real time.
It reminds me of Doctor Strange in the Avengers movies. Strange needs the Time Stone to look through 14,000,605 possible futures and find the one path where the Avengers ultimately beat Thanos. In the VeeFriends universe, Rare Robot and the Supercomputer-5000 appear to compress that entire function into the mission system itself. They do not need an Infinity Stone.
Do you understand what that means?
It means Bad Intentions being on this mission should bother us.
If you read VeeFriends Issue 02, you already know the green bunny is not just a cute little character named Roger. You know he is Bad Intentions. You know he has the Fear Carrot. You know Fearless Fairy knows what he is. Knowing Gnome knows what the Fear Carrot is. The Fairy King and Queen are tied directly into the chain of events that leads to him becoming Bad Intentions in the first place.
So how is he here? How does Balanced Beetle not know? How does the Supercomputer-5000 not know? How do Practical Peacock and Positive Porcupine end up on a mission with Bad Intentions and still seem completely clueless about who they are dealing with?
This is where the Doctor Strange comparison matters. If the Supercomputer-5000 really works the way Issue 01 shows us it works, then Bad Intentions being included on this mission is not an accident. It means the system already sees the possible futures, and for whatever reason, the best possible future requires Bad Intentions to be here. That is the mindfuck. The villain might be part of the "perfect" team because the villain creates the exact challenge needed to produce the right change.
Bad Intentions basically says this himself. Beetle says the challenge brings the change, and Bad Intentions immediately turns that into the bigger question: who do you think creates the challenges? Then he says, "None of this works without me!!" And as insane as it sounds, he might be right. Not morally right. Mechanically right.
No story exists without conflict. The good guys do not get to be good in opposition to nothing. If everything was already perfect, there would be no challenge, no change, and no story at all. Maybe that is heaven or nirvana or some eternal state of perfection, but it is not the human experience. The human experience is friction, choice, conflict, growth, and the possibility that even the thing we identify as bad might still be part of the path that bends reality toward the highest good.
In VeeFriends Issue 01, we learn that Ed, Mikey's father, is dead. Special Edition A now shows us the one-year gap between the Meddleco incident and that reality. One year later, Ed is in the hospital, still trying to reassure Mikey that everything might work out, but we as readers already know it doesn't. Meddleco mentioned that the Fear Carrot is poison. We don't see Ed touch it but we did see a mysterious and poisonous looking green smoke arise from the portal Bad Intentions uses the Fear Carrot to create right next to Ed.
Are we to infer that is why Ed is in the hospital? He breathed in the green smoke and it poisoned him or gave him cancer or something and that is why he is dying in a hospital one year later? There is no way his sickness and death could be unrelated to Bad Intentions green Fear Carrot smoke, right?
As we just watched Bad Intentions lie, manipulate, use the Fear Carrot, and escape with Ed's work, it becomes very hard not to read Ed's illness as connected to whatever happened in that lab. The comic does not spell it out, but the implication is sitting right there.
One year after his encounter with Bad Intentions, Ed is clearly dying. That makes this page hurt more than it first looks. Mikey thinks he is leaving his dad with Genuine Giraffe for one night. We know it is forever. We know that Giraffe will end up on the floor of Mikey's room for the first page of VeeFriends Issue 01.
The next page takes all of the cosmic theory and makes it human. Ed is not talking about dimensions or inventions anymore. He is lying in a dark room saying the simplest and scariest thing: "I don't want to die."
Fearless Fairy and Ambitious Angel being there matters. They are not solving the disease. They are not reversing death. They are witnessing him, comforting him, and possibly helping him cross into whatever comes next.
If VeeWorld is in a 5th dimension beyond space, time, and imagination, does that also make it the land of death? Or do only certain souls end up in VeeWorld?
Ed apparently dies and opens his eyes in VeeWorld with Fearless Fairy beside him. So yes, at least in this case, a human can die in our world and appear in VeeWorld. But the issue still leaves the bigger mechanics wide open. Is this because Ed helped the VeeFriends? Because Fearless Fairy was with him? Because Ambitious Angel helped guide him? Or because VeeWorld is where certain souls go when their story is not finished?
Spoiler for VeeFriends Issue 03, but this is where the hot air balloon in the distance starts bothering me in a new way. In Issue 03, Anna ends up in VeeWorld right after the VeeFriends intervene at the exact moment it seems like she is about to commit suicide. In that article, I wrote that the story presents it as her life being saved. Fearless Fairy even reassures Anna that she is more alive than ever. But now that Special Edition A shows Ed dying in our world and waking up in VeeWorld, I do not think we can leave Anna's trip alone as a simple rescue portal anymore. Did Anna actually die and the issue softens that truth? Can humans enter VeeWorld and return to the regular world freely? Was Anna given a one-time round trip because the VeeFriends intervened before her timeline collapsed? I do not know yet, but Ed's death makes the Anna question feel much bigger than it did before.
That is why the ending is doing two things at once. On the lore side, it forces us to question what VeeWorld actually is for humans. A place you can visit? A place you can be sent? A place you can return from? A place you wake up after death? On the emotional side, Mikey is still back on Earth with the cards and Genuine Giraffe, holding the exact objects that will later pull him into Issue 01. Ed is not just gone. He has moved into the world Mikey is about to be introduced to in VeeFriends Issue 01.
In Closing
VeeFriends Special Edition A works because it turns the whole comic universe from a character world into a system. Before this issue, VeeWorld could still be read as the place the VeeFriends come from. After this issue, it becomes a dimension with a route, a theory, a machine, a danger, and a human witness who understands enough to change the story.
That human witness is Ed Pinsky. That matters more now that the issue itself gives him a last name. Ed is not just Mikey's dead dad from Issue 01, and he is not just the inventor of the VeeHicle. He is the person standing between ordinary human life and the hidden mechanics underneath VeeFriends. He figures out the dimensions, builds a way through The Zone, helps the VeeFriends move faster, gets pulled into the danger around Bad Intentions, and then somehow wakes up in VeeWorld after death.
That is the mechanism underneath Special Edition A. Imagination is not just imagination. Traits are not just mascots. The Zone is not just a cool portal. The VeeHicle is not just a vehicle. Bad Intentions is not just a villain who happened to be there. Each piece starts acting like part of the same operating system. Ed discovers it from the human side. Bad Intentions weaponizes it. Fearless Fairy appears at the edge of death. Mikey inherits the cards, the grief, and the unfinished question of what his father actually touched.
So I do not read Special Edition A as a side story anymore. I read it as the hinge between Issue 01, Issue 02, Issue 03, The Zone, VeeWorld, the Fear Carrot, the Supercomputer-5000, and the Pinsky family. It does not answer every question, but it changes the questions. If Ed can die here and wake up there, if Bad Intentions can be part of the mission that creates the future, and if Mikey begins Issue 01 holding objects tied directly to his father's discovery, then VeeFriends is not only telling adventure stories. It is building a universe where traits, choices, fear, grief, imagination, and death all behave like forces inside the same machine.
After The Issue
If what resonated here wasn't just the review, but the way identity, intent, and character traits were treated as forces that shape reality, that same line of thinking didn't stop with this article.
Inspired by how VeeFriends treats character traits as forces that shape reality, I created Alien Traits: a 1-of-1 NFT series interpreting each of the 251 core traits. No repeats. Each visual piece also includes a written definition of the trait it represents in OpenSea's "About" section.
It isn't VeeFriends art. It's a parallel conversation with the ideas underneath it.
Explore the full Alien Traits collection here: https://opensea.io/collection/alien-traits
Easter Eggs
1. The opening of VeeFriends Special Edition A visually parallels the opening of its predecessor, VeeFriends Issue 01.
VeeFriends Special Edition A:
VeeFriends Issue 01:
2. The Madonna song is “Material Girl,” not “Material World.”
3. Special Edition A quietly gives Ed's family a last name: Pinsky. When the agent tells Ed he is not in trouble and calls him Mr. Pinsky, Special Edition A appears to give us Ed's last name on the page. That makes Ed Pinsky explicit, and it strongly suggests Mikey and his mom share the Pinsky family name unless later canon gives us a reason to read it differently.
Up Next
If you enjoyed VeeFriends Special Edition A Explained, next up is VeeFriends Issue 01 Explained!
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