Ken Penders takes a lot of flak for his writing in the series (most of it deserving!), but I honestly felt like he had a pretty good handle on Sally most of the time. This is really where she makes the jump from dim-witted team leader (remember when she hatched that brilliant plan to get herself roboticized and then everyone else ruined it because she didn't tell any of them?) to full-fledged, fully competent tactician, and that's basically all Ken. Different writers have different takes on her character, and Ken's changed over time, but right now this is where she's at.
Yeah, the old Ken Penders was awesome. But he got too full of himself as time went on, and also somehow got this inane idea into his head that he had skill as an artist.
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SuperNiceDog is about 20% cooler then the other gurus.