page 911 – Grown Up Interests
Well, this page is good and late, though I can blame it on something good and concrete this time around: those bookshelves were a BEAST to get right. I don’t mean all the text on the books (that was tedious, yes, but fairly easy), I mean drawing the books and shelves themselves. It doesn’t LOOK that complicated, but angles and perspective have always been my worst enemy, and we definitely came to blows with each other over this page. I had to completely scrap what I’d drawn and totally start over SEVERAL times, and even now the perspective isn’t really “right”, it’s just not as distractingly bad as it was earlier.
Oh, and speaking of doing things over, the gag for this page got drastically changed at the last minute, and it’s a definite improvement. Originally, Alphonse was going to grab several very smart, sophisticated books that complimented each other very well, impressing Ichabod with his mature tastes… except there’s no go way of really getting that across to the reader if all the books are made up things you’re never heard of before. If this were the kind of comic where he could pull works of Shakespeare or whatever off the shelf, maybe the gag would work, but this is THE FUTURE where everything’s new and made up and… futurish. You’ve never actually read “Xargotip the Unrecallable’s Threefold Saga of the Nihilist Star Slugs” so seeing Alphonse take it off the shelf doesn’t really mean anything. Yes, Ichabod could SAY “Oh, I stand corrected, you are clearly a very well-read zombie child as demonstrated by these choices”… but that’s not really funny on its own. Thus, I tried to think of a new punchline where the titles of the books would be funny without any context, and that eventually led to something MUCH funnier. Because Farts. Ha ha ha ha. This is how comedy works.
Oh, and I should point out that there’s one or two references to events that haven’t happened yet lurking in those book titles. Happy hunting! 😀
EDIT: OH RIGHT! New Voting Incentive! Unlike the lateness of this main page, the Incentive actually was done around midnight… so of COURSE the internet went out for several hours right before I could post it. Dang it, the ONE thing I was (mostly) on time for…
(Historical Notes: You can tell Past Me was really sleepy and frazzled from how much complaining about the books is up there. “Xargotip the Unrecallable’s Threefold Saga of the Nihilist Star Slugs” would totally be funny because it’s big weird words that sound funny. And besides, Ichabod’s reaction could EASILY drop a random factoid about the work that’s both funny and provides enough context for the reader to understand what it’s about. Far Out There is BUILT on half-explained references like that! Have you even READ Far Out There, Past Me?)
@ Historical Notes: Of course Past You never read Far Out There. The amount of complaining and fixing that current you is doing while reading it as you reupload it makes that VERY apparent. Besides, you’re a content creator. You don’t typically go back and check on your previous work, I have heard that way often leads to being upset at how bad you used to be.
It depends. Going back and re-discovering something you’re not pleased with is definitely unpleasant, but going back and re-reading something you ARE pleased with is a lot of fun. Remember, half the reason I started Far Out There in the first place was so it could be the comic I WANTED to read but nobody else had made already.