Christmas in the Far Out There Universe – page 25
…and there we have it! Another successfully executed twenty-five days of Christmas Comics! Hope you all enjoyed this festive little detour into Far Out There’s various side characters and backstories as much as I enjoyed doing it… and now I’ve got, what? 48 hours before I have to actually start resolving all the stuff left hanging in November? Wheee…
Anyway, I’d HOPED to have this last page finished and up at midnight, but I think I might have literally the most criticism-proof excuse for a late page every: I was up all Christmas Eve night and straight into Christmas Morning printing out a coloring book for my two-year-old nephew. Cool Uncle achievement unlocked.
Oh, and speaking of presents, I was actually scrambling to finish ANOTHER project for today on top of the official Christmas stuff. Remember Becky & Gilb? That old deviantArt comic I left hanging years ago but keep making little references too every so often around here? Well, I FINALLY made a new chapter! It goes up on Patreon today! …eventually. Yeah, as I write this post, none of it is actually on Patreon YET. I mean, it’s all drawn and ready, I just kind of need to get a LITTLE rest before trying to put that many pages, with that many commentaries and links, all up at once. And make no mistake, it’s a LOT. This bad boy is a whopping SEVENTEEN PAGES. That’s the most material I’ve EVER tried to put up on Patreon at once, so you can understand why I kind of want to have a more clear head before trying. But it should all be up by tonight, and it’ll all be available to ALL Patrons, even if they’re just donating a single dollar a month. So, you know, if you want to throw a buck or two my way and see it all for yourself, it’d be a very Merry Christmas indeed!
But hey, Merry Christmas either way!
12/17 EDIT: To the surprise of absolutely no one, posting all the Becky & Bilp comics took longer than expected, and now I’m running behind on new Far Out There stuff. There WILL be a new page at some point today, though, so just bear with me. There IS a fresh Voting Incentive already up, though!
(Historical Notes: The best part about all that Becky & Gilb stuff is that the comic I posted that Christmas is actually only HALF of the planned comic. I had to cut it in half if there was to be any chance of getting something done by Christmas… and all these years later I STILL haven’t inked up the rough draft of the second half. It’ll happen one day, though! Really! if I say it long enough, it’ll just HAPPEN, right?)
“Becky & Bilp comics”? Gasp! Who is this Bilp?! Has Becky been running around with another different Alien behind Gilb’s back?! Scandalous! 😮
😉
WHOOPS!
Today’s strip: In the Distant Future, a cautionary Fable is told of a girl named Layla, who was very greedy and wished that for Christmas, that everything she touched turned into gold, but in the end all of her friends and acquaintances and adorable zombie kids and even herself ended up turned into gold statues! The End.
(and the moral of this story is, of course, “only turn things into gold the proper way, using Alchemy!!” –from Mr. Caligiari’s Big Book of Fables)
If Dr. Caligari had his own storybook, it’d be total nonsense that changed every time you read it… which is actually a concept worth exploring further!
So sort of a mad, freakish conceptual hybrid between a Mad Libs and a Choose-your-own-Adventure book, except the book fills in the Madlibs and chooses the adventure paths on its own, randomly.
That actually seems like something that might be possible to code.
If Seros Senric ever returns from the Alternate Dimension, we need to get him working on that!
Dr. Caligari would insist that it’s some kind of eltrich tome of ghastly antiquity, while Tabitha insists it’s just a malfunctioning e-book.
And the truth is that it’s a perfectly functioning e-book made purely to mess with people for shits and giggles, supposedly with the entire target audience in on the joke, while the Caligari’s are NOT a part of that target audience.
I assumed it was like Dr. C’s other “inventions” – it was something he created for some legitimate scientific purpose back when he was relatively more sane, and he later “discovered” it (forgetting that he was the one who made it, despite discovering it in his own house) and tinkered with it with his current Alchemy/half-remembered-science knowledge, causing it to (mal)function in its current “Mystical” state.