I suppose I never did mention that all the creepy demands in the title and alt-text are from a song called “We Want Your Soul” by Freeland. The song is also creepy. [January 17, 2012]
Category: Commentary
now it just sits on the shelf next to my copy of Ringtales for the SNES
Got a question to throw in the mailbag?
send it to journalcomic at gmail dot com
Begin Commentary – Regarding “Ringtales” — no it is not real, although nobody ever asked me anyway. It is an obscure reference to a game that the popular comic Penny Arcade made up. They didn’t just reference it, they drew box art and wrote a glowing description that compelled me to write in and ask why I couldn’t find it. (They let me down quickly and apologized, very sarcastically, for tricking me).
It’s described as “StarFox” with platform and RPG elements, which sounds amazing. But just now I realized that we actually have that game in the form of “StarFox Adventures”, which is not amazing. [January 17, 2012]
like some kind of cruel game
Most of the time, employees do not remember to do this. When they do remember, it’s often a quick, perfunctory ‘down-up’ before handing the blizzard over. This comic was inspired by a particular DQ employee that no longer works there, but who would hold the blizzard upside-down and just stare at you. I mean he was a cool kid and everything (I’d dealt with him elsewhere) but he got kinda intense about the Upside-Down-Thick philosophy. The staring did not help. [January 17, 2012]
yay! forced memes!
When I came back to this comic today the alt-text just said “Interesting Times 324”, and on further inspection I found that I’d actually written something that had gotten buried in the wrong field. The alt-text is hereby restored for all to see! [January 16, 2012]
oh man, he/I won’t know what to DO with him/myself
What are those round things on the time machine? I drew it, and I’m asking. [January 11, 2012]
be careful out there today, everybody
There’s this joke I like to do while I’m talking to people, which is that I tell them something I’m not going to say (and thereby say it anyway). For instance, if a friend of mine does something silly, I’ll say “A lesser person than me might say that you just did something incredibly stupid, but I’m not judgmental like that.” The last panel of this comic is a nice visual example of that same style of humour. The best part is that I can just stick to the “high road” and say “yes, but you see, I didn’t go there! I even crossed it out!” [January 11, 2012]
this is what I get for actually spending money
This ‘justification’ lasted for a further three comics before I switched over to The GIMP and didn’t look back. As it turned out I did not much care to work with vectors again, both for reasons to do with ease of drawing and visual style. In the end, the purchase of this program was a big ol’ waste of money. [January 11, 2012]
you want to think you’ll improve a little each time you try, but no
This comic was likely inspired, at least in part, by my Mom. Over six years ago I introduced her to the computer game “Bookworm” and she has been playing it ever since. Oh sure, there have been other things in the meantime (“Peggle”, and more recently some hidden object games) but Bookworm was her first big gaming fixation.
If she’s ever not playing it regularly, it’s because of the issue brought up by this comic; one day the pieces will fall into place and she’ll get a higher score than she’s ever gotten. Too high, she thinks. Impossibly high. And then in subsequent games she won’t even be able to get close. It’s funny and a bit sad to watch, because I’ve been in that place so many times — if you set the bar too high and aren’t even sure what you did to get there, what hope do you have of ever getting there again? [January 3, 2012]
also, their horoscopes are somewhat inaccurate at BEST
Panel two of this comic depicts what I imagine to be the funniest way a person can type, which is to hold your elbows outward in a ludicrous fashion and type with only your index fingers. I’m not sure where this image comes from originally. [December 14, 2011]
300th Comic Spectacular!
Big thanks to everyone who submitted questions, and bigger thanks to everyone who’s stopped in and said a kind word. (Now, where’s my Wikipedia article and book deal?)
Begin Commentary: First of all, if I may toot my own horn, I nailed the “300” logo. Still feel really good about that.
And this is the very first “mailbag”-style comic! I very much enjoyed doing mailbag comics (when the questions were good, or at least usable) because the topic focus provided some challenge. It’s often said that if you put a piece of blank paper in front of someone and say “draw anything” they’ll have no idea what to do at all, and that’s how my comic can feel sometimes. This is also why the “journal” focus is useful in general, because at the very least I have a place to start from.
Anyway, we were talking about the mailbag. I probably was most influenced by Homestar Runner, in particular the Strong Bad emails, but after a while the emails sort of petered out and it was time to move on. Since the end of the mailbag I have to admit I’ve never found a feature that was as much fun as these could be, and I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t try and bring it back. [December 14, 2011]