Transcript

Update 2011-02-21: I just noticed I left out a word in the “networking” panel – he’s supposed to be saying the person’s comics are “overrated“, not “over”! I’ll fix it for the print version, at least.

Transcript

The End!

I’ve printed up 30 copies of Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus, half of which I’m giving to comrades from the Montpelier 24 Hour Comics Day event, and the rest of which I’m selling. I’ll post a purchase link soon.

Those last 2 panels are from the viewpoint of giant-size Griselda and Zedrik respectively, looking down at the other 2 characters (this was unclear to some who read the originals).

Thus concludes our sojourn in Headville’s vernal season.

Recommended Election Day activities:

1. Pledge allegiance to Frank Zappa.

2. Vote.

3. Purchase & read Mark Sahagian’s musical minicomic about presidents and other political creatures.

I drew this page at 4:25 PM when I started feeling stuck. I knew I wanted this scene in the story and that it would be fun to draw, so I skipped ahead to here. When I got stuck advancing this part of the story, I went back to the other part, and vice versa.

Despite looking at the comic multiple times, I didn’t notice I’d forgotten to draw the Belt of Gigantous in the last two panels here until days later. Annoying!

Finished at 7:23 AM. Yep, a 23-minute page. I don’t think I did anything different when I scanned this one, so I don’t know why it looks more pixelated than the others.

Completed at 7:00 AM.

Finished at 5:59 AM.

An abdominal cruncher isn’t a real wrestling move! Sam may be doomed.

Finished this one at 1:34 AM, exactly an hour after the previous page.

My roommates at SPX this year liked to have the TV on, and at some point they turned to wrestling, which I hadn’t seen in years. It, uh…made quite an impression.

Finished this one at 12:34 pm, after working on the other section for a while, walking around the library, and going out for some food. After that I set up shop on the main floor instead of the basement, where I’d started.

I’d originally wanted to show the characters going after these items as a group, but realized I didn’t have enough space and condensed it down to what you see here (not that I had it planned out in any detail).

I completed this page at 8:30 PM. Most pages probably took me around 45 minutes to actually draw, but then there was planning, deciding, eating, taking breaks, and just plain goofing off, which is where some of the longer spans between page completions came from.

I completed this page at 6:54 PM, which sounds like I was falling way behind, but that’s because I started drawing pages out of sequence. Thanks to that bit of planning I did up front, when I started feeling bogged down I could skip around. This also helped me make sure the most important parts of the story made it in, since I didn’t have the best sense of how much space things would take up. I basically ended up bouncing between two moving points in the story until they met up, then drew the end pages.

Anyway, after the last page, I finished the next one I drew at 4:25 PM, which means I was actually closing the gap between where I was and where I needed to be.

Finished at 3:39 PM.

On Monday I’ll post the next page of “Spring in Headville”, then Tuesday we’ll get back to this story and maybe see what Sam’s destiny looks like.

Page 3, finished at 2:51 PM. I wanted the main character to look a little like Harry Potter, but unfortunately he looks like Young Cartoon Me. The glasses and haircut are different from mine, but I guess people with glasses all look alike – especially when you draw them in a simple cartooning style.

I finished page 2 at 2:11 PM. As you’ve probably guessed already, I completed the whole comic without any penciling.

*Gasp* – cliffhanger!

Well, now you know how that works!

Hey, I’m tabling for myself and Trees & Hills and Offshore Comix at SPX this weekend! Come see me if you’re around Bethesda, won’t you?

My next scheduled appearance after that is at MICE in Boston Sep. 25.

I’ve been wanting to establish a routine of doing comics in the morning, but have been getting up too late. I also want to do at least a half-page of finished comics every weekday, and decided I would get serious about it this month, then didn’t.  That’s probably because I was so busy procrastinating 2 different strips plus editing duties on TIME (the about-to-be-released Trees & Hills anthology). Anyway, although the goal is to work everyday, in the last day or three I’ve drawn 9.5 pages, which numerically is like I did double my daily half-page this month, and then some. And now I hurt. Little to no sleep + lotsa drawing = ouch.

I aim to get in the groove after SPX.  Look out!

It’s time once more for my family to convince me to stay on planet Earth another year with a bribe of cake and song.

Are you ready for Super Bonus Behind-The-Scenes Notes?

General context: When I moved in, I was told that the landlord was crazy but basically hands-off, showing up every 8 months or so to blow off steam. Shortly after I moved in, his insurance company refused to renew until he made a number of repairs to the house. As a result of this, he started visiting much more frequently, causing stress for the household.

Drunk: Landlord has visited here visibly inebriated more than once. This panel, though compressed, is unfortunately pretty true to life. On the day the chimney repairs (which he never warned us about, so workers just showed up early in the morning) ended, he hung out drinking on the property with the workers, and eventually decided to give them a tour of the house. He pounded on the doors and didn’t wait before trying to open them (some of the doors don’t have doorknobs and so thankfully are kept locked from the inside), and periodically lost his balance while standing still. Afterward the workers came back in and apologized profusely, saying, “Your landlord is crazy!” While working they also disparaged his maintenance of the house, describing it as typical of a slumlord. The only reason he ordered repairs was because his insurance company refused to renew his policy until he made them.

Oblivious: By Landlord’s request, all communication to him goes through one designated tenant. Despite that, he will talk to whoever he runs into at the house, and seems not to have a clear sense of who actually lives here. The action in this panel is compressed and partially fictional; while he hasn’t accosted anyone’s sister-in-law (that I know of), the first person he spoke to about the compost pile was the boyfriend of a tenant who was still moving in, and it’s not the only time he’s had such confusion. His dialogue is taken from the first time I met him (when, of course, he dropped by unannounced). I would certainly not describe the house as a “shithole”, and as I understand it we’ve kept the house neater than any prior tenants. If one were to use such a term, I’d assume one were referring to the obvious lack of maintenance on the landlord’s part. Luckily for me I didn’t have the presence of mind to say, “Great, I’m renting a shithole from an asshole!”

Outlaw: As mentioned already, Landlord failed to give us proper notice before visits, as he is required by law to do. We sent him a stern letter after the drunken tour, and he did better, but I had to point out to him that he has to do that even if he’s not entering the house, since we rent the house and land. This panel is of course compressed; no one talked to him while he tractored. Later a housemate discovered he’d illegally dumped our compost in the neighboring forest. He followed up with a letter forbidding all composting (and always putting “compost” in quotes) and threatening to sic the Dept. of Health on us if we did. Interestingly, while that Dept. has nothing to say about compost, they are one of the agencies to which one reports landlords who fail to provide safe & habitable housing – which, as defined by law, includes Dr. Cranky. Somewhat later, when our long-suffering house liaison was trying to negotiate some of his unreasonable “requests”, compost came up again, and when he started gibbering, she mentioned the illegality of his dumping. He shouted, “That’s it – pack your bags!” (which was funny since she’d already announced she was moving out for grad school) and hung up, then sent a letter terminating our month-to-month lease.  This was all especially absurd in light of how patient and responsible our liaison was, and how much she cared about the house.

Tenant-less: Fort Awesome (the house’s long-standing name) has essentially had 20 years of word-of-mouth tenants. Good luck with that now! I’m sure he’ll be able to get at least some tenants if he advertises and keeps the rent cheap; I have no idea what he actually plans to do. As for the repairs, I don’t think he plans to deviate at all from the insurance company’s list. He fixed a single step that they mentioned, but not the entire sagging rotting landing that they somehow failed to report (and which he’s walked on numerous times, so must have noticed).

Having to leave is inconvenient, but the big silver lining is not having to deal with this nut anymore. I’d already decided to look for a new place so as to not have to deal with him anymore, even by proxy. Which is ridiculous, because everything else about the place – housemates, yard, location – was pretty great. I don’t know what makes him so unhappy, but I hope he finds a way to cope with it better, for his sake and that of anyone who ever has to interact with him. He is quite an example of wealth not guaranteeing happiness.

Hi all, please excuse any excess wonkiness while I reconfigure my website to increase its fabulosity.

EDIT: The new setup required me to move my comic images around, so the main thing left to do (besides stray tweaks) is re-associate those files with their posts (and create posts for some of the older ones that used pages). This is fairly tedious, but I hope to finish by week’s end.