Far Out There

Ugh, this is gonna be a thing now, isn’t it? The worst part is, I really did bring part of this one on myself be wasting WAAAAAAAY too much time on a botched version of the first panel. The original plan was to actually show Sandy and Maureen beating the crud out of each other with the ornaments. Like, maybe have Sandy choking Maureen with a strand of lights and have it be a reference to the whole Daniel Bryan/Justin Roberts tie thing… but it just wasn’t working. And by the time I finally realized I needed a new approach, it was already too late and I was fading fast. And you know what the weirdest part is? I think this version where you just seen their arms is WAY more disturbing than any actual onscreen violence would have been (well, any onscreen violence I’m capable of doing, anyway). But yeah, this was already waaaay too late, so I’m putting out the rough draft now. I’ll have the colored version up… SOMETIME before it’s technically tomorrow. The good news is, Wednesday’s scheduled page is a LOT simpler than this, so the odds of me blowing hours on a complicated panel no one will ever see are slim.

Also, as an aside: I always feel bad for wrestling fans who complain about bad officiating, because you just KNOW some smartwatch will immediately respond “Dude, you know none of this is real, right? The rules don’t even matter, so who cares if they’re not being enforced right?” See, the reason I feel bad is because it’s basically the same thing as when I’m watching Star Trek and someone tells me “Dude, you know none of this technology actually exists, right? Who even cares if they beam someone through the ship’s shields after spending an episode saying that transporters can’t beam through shields?” The answer is I CARE, because whether those are real things doesn’t change the fact that how they “work” is part of the STORY. If one part of the story contradicts another part, that’s bad storytelling, and bad storytelling deserves to be complained about! The same with wrestling. Yeah, everybody knows that this isn’t actually a competitive sporting event and the referee isn’t actually enforcing rules to ensure that the competitors don’t do anything to gain an unfair advantage over each other… but the STORY being told says that’s what’s happening. If a ref ignores something happening right in front of him or a match ends in a way that a match isn’t supposed to end or something like that, it’s as much a break in storytelling as when Start Trek’s tech of the week does something the plot says it shouldn’t. The fact that it’s “not real” doesn’t make it matter any less. Blah blah blah complaining on the Internet.

Oh, and as late as this page may be, the new Voting Incentive actually did go up more or less on time, so at least I’ve got THAT going for me.

EDIT: YES!!! The finished draft is up and it’s still technically Tuesday for another 30 minutes! Now… time to work on Wednesday’s page…

(Historical Notes: I wish we saw more of May’s steampunk computer, that thing was cool.  I’m sure it was too hard to draw right on such a tight schedule, but it still looked cool.)