Interesting Times Friday Mailbag: "When You See It"

Posted on April 25, 2008 by

HAIKU:
Question for me, huh?
Send it to journalcomic
at gmail dot com

BEGIN COMMENTARY: That picture was, as you’ve probably guessed, my usual habitat whilst living at my parents’ house. The Playstation cabinet was an actual retail fixture in its former life, but the Canadian Tire store it lived in stopped selling video games and was getting rid of it. A friend rescued it and gave it to me. It had a happy life at my parents’ house, then came with me for the year I lived at my brother’s. It was a huge pain getting it down his stairs, however, and he declared it permanently installed when we were done (which I was fine with). It now houses an enormous collection of fantasy novels. [February 13, 2012]

the best plans always have phases

Posted on April 23, 2008 by

Hindsight is a pretty interesting thing, isn’t it? The guy writing this comic doesn’t know that he’s in for some of the most stressful times in his life, but the guy in those stressful times also didn’t know he’d come out the other side in fine shape. And the guy writing this commentary right now has no idea what’s in store just around the corner, etc. etc.

The boss list in the 2nd panel is my actual boss order for Mega Man 2. (If you’re having trouble, it goes Air, Flash, Quick, Crash, Metal, Bubble, Heat, Wood which is also fun to say.) It is a bit unusual but I learned it from a master of the game. I think that the main reason for this particular order is to get Item-2 (the flying platform) as soon as possible, which makes a lot of later sections much easier. [February 13, 2012]

Interesting Times Friday Mailbag: "He Did, In Fact, ‘Do That’"

Posted on April 18, 2008 by

The “321-123” tag, only seen applied to this comic, is a fairly obvious reference for “Family Matters” fans and utterly meaningless to anyone else. Anyway it’s a thing that Carl Winslow says when he’s trying not to get mad at Steve in one episode. (The full saying is “Three two one, one two three! What the heck is bothering me?”) I hope that’s fascinating! [February 9, 2012]

I’m takin’ a stand!

Posted on April 17, 2008 by

There’s a tiny logo in the lower right of the 2nd panel artwork which is supposed to be that of Walking Time Bomb. It’s a little alarm clock with legs and dynamite strapped to its back. WTB was a company that specialized in the kinds of sarcastic, wacky nonsense that this comic is talking about. Loads of places carried WTB shirts when I was in high school, and loads of people wore them too. Ridiculous things that tricked you into looking at them and often made fun of you for doing so.

I myself owned two; one which said “Slacker” and was designed to resemble the Snickers candy bar logo, which I actually quite liked, and another (the disowned) one which said “YES, it DOES hurt when I smile.” In my defense, neither of these was particularly confrontational. [February 9, 2012]

Special DHS Reminder: "We’ve always been at war with Eastasia!"

Posted on March 31, 2008 by

When reading over this comic again I suddenly got curious about something. I actually did write sentences that made sense behind the wall of redaction, but since I didn’t do the censorship on a separate layer I no longer remember what I wrote. [January 27, 2012]

comics of reconciliation

Posted on March 27, 2008 by

I have often regretted — lamented, really — the fact that I did not just copy/paste the face from panel 1 into the rest of the panels. Why? I repeat, over and over, as I toss and turn at night. Why wasn’t I just lazy?!

In all seriousness it does look a bit odd. On the other hand it’s one of the first comics that I know of which somebody, of their own free will, actually printed and posted on a surface. [January 27, 2012]

today: a tribute to potentially Indonesian stickman comics

Posted on March 26, 2008 by

inspired by those comics I found yesterday,

which in turn, as near as I can tell,

are inspired by my comics.

It’s all a bit confusing.

Begin Commentary: Eventually I got an email that cleared everything up, although for the life of me I can of course no longer find it. “Unit 076” was a Malaysian teen named Sidharta who somehow came across my site and was inspired to start a comic of his own. His English, he explained, was pretty basic so he’d had his older brother compose the email.

I came across his site when encouraged by a friend to to poke around the referral logs for my own site — these, if you don’t know, are logs in which I can see all the sites that have recently linked to mine. My friend Andrew suggested that I re-draw his first comic as a sort of homage, which I thought was a delightful idea and which is what prompted Sidharta to email me and thank me.

The whole thing was very positive and fun and a bit baffling. It taught a small lesson about the way things get around when they’re online, and poked a tiny hole in my theory that Nobody Reads This Anyway.

Incidentally this is the only comic to use the “Ouroboros” tag. My site inspired a comic, which I copied and put on my site. The snake eats its own tail. [January 18, 2012]

Interesting Times Friday Mailbag: "The Man They Call Peanuts / Wordiest Comic Ever"

Posted on March 14, 2008 by

got a question for the Mailbag?

send it to journalcomic at gmail dot com

already sent one? send another, I don’t care!

gmail is huuuuuuuuuuge!!

Begin Commentary: I’m still not going to write out the story of how he got his nickname, but I can tell you another story about this man. Peanuts generally smelled terrible, like extremely strong body odour tinged with regret. Thankfully I did not often have to work right next to him, but getting anywhere near his person was usually enough to make my eyes water.

Except for one day, when he smelled nothing like his usual horrible self. He smelled strongly of something else. It wasn’t a pleasant smell really, but it wasn’t offensive either. Something about that smell was also plucking at my memory, and it took most of a shift to realize what it was — floor cleaner! At a previous job I’d worked with industrial floor cleaners and he smelled exactly of those.

My first reaction was “Yay, it’s not B.O.!” My second reaction was “…but why floor cleaner?” [January 17, 2012]

Interesting Times Friday Mailbag: "Thompson Twins"

Posted on March 7, 2008 by

One thing I was pretty inconsistent on was with representing recognizable (e.g. celebrity) faces. Sometimes I used actual pictures, as in this comic. Sometimes I redrew but attempted realism, like in the one with Ernie Coombs. I forget the number. That method actually turns out to be the most work, which is not what I’m about.

The correct answer, and the one I go with nowadays, is to draw them in my own style. The reason I would just paste a face in would be about a 90/10 split between laziness and lack of self-confidence that the person I’d attempting to draw would look anything like reality. Over the years I’ve gained in self-confidence and become slightly less lazy, and therefore drawing them myself, as stickpeople, is the way to go. [January 18, 2012]