Category: gimme your lunch money you nerd

Interesting Times Friday Mailbag: "Get to the choppah!"

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keep sending those questions,
(to journalcomic at gmail dot com don’tcha know)
and also keep sending those guest comics!
got some good ones so far, stranger!

BEGIN COMMENTARY: Sometimes, what I like to do is lie to readers. Of course there was never any Predator hidden in the specific comic I refer to nor any other. Okay, “lie” is a very strong term. I like to play small practical jokes in which I make up things that are totally untrue about the comic. (I exaggerate about myself all the time — why wouldn’t I exaggerate about the site itself a little?) I suppose my hope is that one day I will get an irritated email from somebody who says “You know I actually went back and checked out all those comics and there are no Predators anywhere! >:(”

Anyway the tendency to lie about past comics is a running joke of mine, for myself. I guess I really am a jerk sometimes?

P.S. I really like panel 2, and I did a surprising amount of research on how to do the Predator cloaking effect for panel 3 before giving up and faking it myself. I don’t remember what I ended up doing (all the guides are for Photoshop, which I wasn’t using) but I think it turned out nicely! [March 13, 2012]

Interesting Times presents "Second Birthday"!

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Hooray!

Yes, it’s true!
Two years since the first comic went up.
We’ve had some good fun, haven’t we?

Many thanks to all who have taken
the time to read,
and enjoy, and comment
(both positive and negative!)

Special thanks to Tom
at Southland Cinemas,
because I promised him a credit in the video
and completely forgot afterward.

Here’s to another year!
Let’s go!

300th Comic Spectacular!

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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]