Archive for December, 2007
10 items.
This will be a short story line, probably just one more day, then I`ll do some one-shots. Thanks for indulging my story line desires. I want to do more landscapes — I really enjoyed drawing and coloring the fourth panel today.
I`ve noticed that my file sizes are creeping up. I have taken measures to reduce them. Please, in the name of all that is good and holy tell me if it doesn`t look right. There are far too many browsers / OSes /
et cetera
s for me to know. If it looks bad now, it`ll probably look bad forever. I`ll never know.
Besides, since I`m moving to three comics a week, and I provide everything for free, the least you can do is my visual legwork. Think of it as giving back. I guess I`m trying to say testing these things out is crap work, and I don`t feel like doing that. I`d rather YOU do it.
Yes, this is the same image from the 2007 Christmas card. I know it may not be a big deal for those of you who got the card, but I really like this one, especially since it was all done by hand (including the coloring, with colored pencil). To me, it totally earns the slot of 100th comic. I hope you enjoy it as well.
This also allows me to have some valuable extra time over this holiday season, which brings me to the surprise I promised in the News: I am going to attempt three days a week again! Expect a Tuesday / Thursday / Saturday schedule. If it doesn`t work out this week, then next week for sure, but I hope to have a new comic up in two days. Merry Christmas.
The lobster is classically flawed: Despite his best efforts and grand plans, he is quite simplistic and thus frustrates his own efforts. Here, he wanted to win at a video game, but he went over the top to put the main character to sleep. When things went off the reservation (I changed the story to point out the CIA`s foibles) the lobster panicked and set fire to the shredded documents. Apparently, the lobster spent a lot of time planning, and didn`t think about lighting a fire in the house. Every step along the way, things get worse and worse and the lobster continues to make poor choices. He is his own worst enemy.
Of course, perhaps I think too much about these things.
Oh, and not that I`ve been keeping track…But Christmas is comic 100. It was a little over a year ago I was excited to get to comic 10, and now we`re hitting the next large milestone. I`ll have to pick up the pace, but let`s see if we can`t make the next big milestone, 250, by next Christmas! You keep reading (and writing), I`ll keep drawing.
I had to re-write the story line to get those last two news-related strips in. I`m not quite sure how I`m going to tie this up now, but I have some ideas. It will be done before Christmas…Even if I have a poor (quality) ending.
Ahhh, finally. I`m starting to get the hang of this thing. Plus, I have some neat ink and blue-line super-sized originals to look at. And the Leslie Nielsen joke? Go watch Airplane again. But on to the rant.
I feel like it`s the late 60`s / early 70`s. The CIA is doing things that are generally agreed that it should not do, it`s taking turns between telling outright lies and downplaying it with a cavalier attitude, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is asleep at the wheel or worse. We all know that this tortue thing is going to either be swept under the rug (MK-ULTRA / MK-SEARCH, the Iran-Contra scandal) or blown open, turned in to a silent purging “of those responsible” and forgotten. Who`s going to take it in the neck? The new guys. You get them in, talk about moral gray areas and the call to a higher good, that it`s unpleasant but necessary and they`re going to be protected, and then when it hits the fan tell the public about the new guys being cowboys and how you`ll make sure the persons responsible (the new guys) are fired. A token older guy or two will resign, but they were probably going to retire soon anyway.
And the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence? Don`t get me started on THAT debacle (that`s the “Don`t get me started” in the comic, incidentally). It`s chaired by Senator Jay Rockefeller, West Virginia, a 70 year old senator who is also on the Subcommittees on Communication and Science, Technology and Space. Seriously. A guy who probably had to have someone use a
typewriter
for him. He`s nominally a Democrat, but it seems he is related to the Rockefellers (a staunchly Republican family, if anyone is not familiar with the oil tycoon) and a quick look at his sponsored bills (
at THOMAS
) paint a different picture. Plus, you know, seeing as he`s the chairman he must have known about the waterboarding for over FIVE YEARS.
So, you have an agency that will be hiring officers looking for scapegoats. If you`re not willing to do torture, you won`t have much of a career. If you are, you may have a very short career served with public humiliation. The CIA says they want America`s best and brightest to apply, and if we need an intelligence agency, I certainly want the best and brightest making those tough calls. However, if they are truly “best” and “brightest”, why would they want to put themselves in this position? Yeah, there`s always going to be tough calls and questionable or even outright illegal things going on. That`s the nature of espionage. But anyone who`s smart enough to look at this situation should see a lot more risk than usual. Any question about whether or not people are expendable should be answered by the 90`s downsizing after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Valerie Plame incident.
Am I being ridiculous? Probably. Do I know what I`m talking about? No: I`m a desk jockey who hacks together an amateur web comic twice a week on his good weeks. I`m not exactly qualified to speak on matters of national intelligence. But does anyone out there honestly see this as implausible?
Sorry it`s incomplete, I will color it in tomorrow. I`m in a rush tonight to jump from place to place. As far as the CIA thing goes, it`s true: Head over to your favorite news source to verify it. I`ll rant about it tomorrow, probably.
I`m going to leave my big brush for awhile to work with smaller width pens, especially around the borders surrounding text. Also, I have one more panel at the current original size, then I`m going to try drawing a little bigger. I like my brush-tipped pen, but the lines are so thick that I`m still not quite happy. So, expect to see line widths in general decrease over the next two strips.
Okay, big changes. First, notice my aspect ratio has changed. It`s a small thing, but I think it will help me use my space better. A bigger thing is that pretty much the only things I do digitally at this point are paint and the name/date at the bottom. Even my boxes are hand-drawn. This has changed a lot of things for me procedurally, but nothing should really be that different stylistically. The text is still taking some time to fine-tune, I`m doing my best.
I`m jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, jumping from one story line right to the next and almsot tying them together. Originally I was going to explicitly tie them together and have the lobster make dinner to make up for the file sharing trouble, but I couldn`t squeeze it in (stupid two comics a week). Instead, I left it implicit. That`s why he`s cooking.
Actually, truth be told, he`s cooking because I was in a bar one night doodling, and I drew a picture of him cooking on a bar napkin. Basically, it was
yesterday`s last panel
, and I said, “this is great!” I added the chef`s hat to seal the deal, and I knew I had to squeeze it in somehow.