This is a take-off on some Delta ads I saw on their in-flight entertainment on the way back from the conference.

First off, what? Advertisements for Delta on one of their airplanes? I`ve already paid my fare…What? There`s something to be said for a captive audience, but they already had my money! Sure, I guess it didn`t cost them anything to put it there, but if the practice of advertising to customers who have already purchased your product wasn`t so prevalent I`d lose a lot of respect for them.

Second, shouldn`t those kinds of ads be, oh, I don`t know, anywhere but on the airplane on which you are currently flying? I`m in the seat, for crying out loud, I know the quality of the ride. That made-up dude who`s all comfy and chillaxin`*, yeah, not happening. At least not in coach. Perhaps they got their fare classes mixed up when they set their in-flight ads. Perhaps such words as “cramp” and “stench” and “commiserate” would be more appropriate.

To be fair, the flight attendants both ways were very nice. However, who are they kidding with these ads? I`m sure they`ll really piss you off if you get a chance to see them. In your cramped seat. With 4 ounces of tap water in a plastic bottle. And no leg room. And whatever that smell is, which you are sure you`ve smelled before but you can`t quite place.

Oh, and about the comic, since this is why I put a commentary block in here to begin with: I played with a lot of things. Lots of fancy effects in the first panel, including transparencies, highlighting and gradations in color. That`s where I spent most of my time. You may not be able to tell, but I also put a haze in the second panel. The seats are actually the same color, so you may be able to tell there. I tried to make it look that much more dreary. In the ad, the colors hopefully “pop” more, and the highlights add volume and brightness. The haze skewed the “normal” results to an even more bleak version. I like the effects, but I wish I were better at usign them and had the time to use those highlights in more comics.

* — Do the kids still say that? Chillaxin`? Back in my day we just started to invent language, so we were kind of stuck with grunts, crude gestures and cave paintings to confer “coolness”, or “graaaugh” as it were.