Isn’t it nice to see old friends. Who then don’t recognize you. Even when you give them your name and the circumstances under which you met.
And then they throw a plot twist at you.
Yeah, it’s nice.
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Posts Tagged Ms. Wiggins-Ross
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It’s tough, filling a comic strip with characters that aren’t main cast. You gotta go look everyone up and get their eyebrows and skin tones right. Oh, the hours of toil I put in for you guys. And you’re worth it.
Ahhh. Getting back on schedule. If I gotta work, then everyone in the comic strip gets to work today… or at least take calls about work.
There you go. No Backsies!
Actually, for any of you guys who wonder about how this strip gets written, or at least plotted (IS there anyone like that?) The story when Mr. Smythe-Cholera first went rafting with his family and Hubris was supposed to be the precursor to today’s strip and the upcoming “Corporate Weekend.” Building all the weird circumstances in between seemed like it should only take me a couple of weeks or so, and I rolled along with it. Now here we are, heaven-knows-how-long down the road, finally touching on the first notes of that story I thought we’d be well into by now.
There you go.
You can’t win, you know. Your instincts and your forebrain and real life aren’t on the same page. They’re not even reading from the same book, no matter what anyone tries to tell you.
Want to hear one of my favorite theories? This is a fun one. Share it, but remember to tell everyone you heard it here.
You know how boys tend to do stupid stuff “to impress girls”? And everyone stands around going “Why’s that idiot riding his bike with no hands, standing up on the handlebars?” and “Why’s that kid mouthing off to his buddies about his sports abilities and injuries?” and “Doesn’t he realize that girls aren’t impressed by that macho crap?”
Well, they’re right. It doesn’t make sense that guys do dumb things in front of girls to impress them.
That’s not what they’re doing.
They’re doing stuff to intimidate and drive off the other males, thus having more opportunity with the females for themselves. Pure biology, but we insist on seeing it the wrong way ’round.
We need a Jane Goodall primatologist for people. Someone to sit around the mall and say, “The loud male I call ‘Zippy’ in the red shirt is posturing in front of his friends and bullying elderly humans in hopes of mating with the blonde cheerleader I have named “Ditzy”. I will follow their progress closely.”
I like writing cartoons this way. You have a group of people, and you throw the same general situation at them, but the reactions of the characters vary with their… y’know, character. It’s fun. I did this once with a Buckets cartoon. It was a Sunday, so I had lots of room to work with. The family decides they’ll go out to the park or someplace. Sarah goes to the door and pokes her head out. Larry rushes to the computer, Frank goes to the calendar, Toby goes to his closet, and Eddie plows into his dresser. When they all meet back up at the door, Sarah’s wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a hat. Larry’s got on a sleeveless shirt and sunglasses. Frank’s got on a rain slicker and boots. Toby’s wearing something ‘cool’, and Eddie’s wearing a halloween costume. The fun was throwing a simple task at some very different people to see how they’d handle it individually.
And so you get these last couple of cartoons here.
