Colbert and his staff were very involved in guiding the style of both the writing and the artwork. Artist Scott Chantler recalls that it was assumed the comics would follow the "animated" look of the cartoons, however Colbert wanted a more serious dramatic tone "that played it as straight as he does on the show", and the artwork was toned down to suit this theme. Chantler describes the style as similar to that of a space adventure comic from the early 1960s: "heroic and dramatic, but still appealing and fun, and funny in spite of itself. The theory I'm going on is that this is a cool old comic of which the animated segments are silly Saturday morning versions (even though the reverse is actually true)". Writers John Layman and Tom Peyer also recall having to tone down Jansen's character, whom they initially wrote as "Stephen Colbert in space", with "a robot eagle sidekick and he was going after alien bears". Of Colbert's contributions, Jim Massey says the most influential was his desire that the comics not contain any reference to present-day Earth.