FUTUREMAN IV: A New Hope(oh wait, is this part three...?)

(Hey, Chris! The story starts here.)



(to previous strip---to next strip)

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to The Future is so Futuristical.

Or The Sort-of-Continuing, Not-so-Adventurous Adventures of Futureman, or whoever.

I'm almost done with this.

Music for today's strip? The soft whirr of refrigerated vending machines and the harsh buzz of fluorescent lights 'cause I inked up the thing in the breakroom at work. Funfunfun.

Hey! I also have a guest strip up at Fabricari.com today. Fabricari is a thrice-weekly cyberpunk webcomic By Steve Harrison and Adam White. Steve is an excellent artist who gets a great clean line that I am absolutely envious of. He's also an all-around good guy, in my experience. I've never met Adam (of course, I've never really met Steve either.) Go check 'em out.

The Future is so Futuristical:The Special FUTUREMAN Origin Special

(Hey, Chris! The story starts here.)




You guessed it. A continuation of the last strip. The music for this one is Sonic Youth's Sister, for the mildly Phil-Dickian vibe.

(to previous strip---to next strip)

FUTUREMAN!

Another Future is so Futuristical post, loosely following my last one.

(to previous strip --- to next strip)

Music for this strip? Yo La Tengo's ELECTR-O-PURA 'cause it's got that kind of wistfully sad, futuristic vibe with just the right hint of anarchy to it. Tom Courtenay and Blue Line Swinger are especially excellent tracks off that one.

In the Future, Dinosaurs are the new black.

(to next strip)

Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame graciously granted me permission for this The Future is so Futuristical strip. For those of you who don't know, Ryan uses this very same comic-template with a new script (almost) everyday for his Dinosaur Comics webcomic. He's been doing it for going on four years now. It's amazing the narrative variety he gets out of the same six panels every time. For his efforts he's received many accolades including the recent Web Cartoonist's Choice Award for outstanding writing. Go read his comic and if you like it you can buy the book.

Thanks, Ryan, for letting me rip off your comic for a one-note gag!

And this strip follows ideas from this one by Jessica McLeod.

Junior High Redux

This cartoon was supposed to have gone up yesterday but the server where I host my images was down (or some other unfortunate instance out of my control). So it's up today. Whoopie.

The future is still obsessed with the past

Another one from the future. This one takes place immediately following the last strip. So, really it's even more in the future. And still totally futuristical.

Behold... THE FUTURE!

So this is an installment in a little group-jam called "The Future is so Futuristical" started on LiveJournal by a mister TedPrior.
The deal is you draw a comic about the future and post it (anywhere, according to Ryan Estrada). That's it. Easy as pie.

Mine is a continuation of this entry and then this one too.

Mister TedPrior has a good chunk of 'em archived here. Now go do your own!

Not in my backyard...

The other day-a true story

So take a close look at this comic and then tell me again that space=time. Sure the first and last tiers of panels are fairly conventional comic narrative, but the middle three tiers each represent simultaneous events. Reading right to left, here, is the same as left to right or reading the panels in a random order. All the panels are necessary for a completion of the main theme but sequence (within the tier) is arbitrary. There is some space/time relation only between the separate tiers as the sequence does go top/middle/bottom. But space=time seems to be too limiting an equation for describing the process of reading comics narrative. Why is that still so commonly used as shorthand?

But seriously, though. Cloud Cult really does KICK ASS!!!! Get yourself a copy of Advice From the Happy Hippopotamus. I cannot recommend this album enough!

The Last Few Weeks: Birthdays, Parties, and Rain

Yay! Calamity!

Go read What Happened?, my CALAMITY! story.

And then read the rest of them too. I particularly enjoyed The Inevitable Fore-Knowledge of Death by Jon Morris, End of the Scone Age by Brodie Brockie, and Turpentine by my buddy Neal von Flue (who has a song to go with his comic).

Long Weekend

Here're some pictures of the damage from all over town, courtesy of my fearless wife, Rachelle, and her intrepid friend, Shannon:


Lotsa trees down:



Check out this camper:




More trees




And flooding too , WHEEEE!


This scary scene was on my way to work.


These kind of things were all over town. Pretty scary. We can consider ourselves pretty lucky that we got through all of this relatively unscathed.

Got a lot on my mind and I'm tired is all

Hey, though...

If you haven't yet, then check out Joe Zabel's mammoth interview with Scott McCloud over at the Webcomics Examiner. It's a wide ranging interview that covers most of Scott's career including ZOT, Understanding/Reinventing Comics, and the forthcoming Making Comics. Joe did a great job with a big interview here.

McCloud's actual presence in webcomics circles has waned in the past few years but his influence is still strong (in my own comics, for a small example).

Good reads...

Because I'm sure you'd want to know...

Sophie's Famous!!! (parts one and two)

Yes it's true. Third row down, first picture.

Part Two:
Sophie and her friend Lauren (and Lauren's mom, our friend Shannon) are in todays Daily Record.

(Rachelle made me black out Shannon's last name to stave off all you internet stalkers)

Fun fact: Sophie and Lauren share a birthday and will both be one year old in a little over a week! Wheee-Haw!!


Happy Father's day, dad. And all you other dads too.

Pan-Global Elves*?

Lookit Me!!! I'm just like Jimmy Kolchaka! WOO-HOOO!

And speaking of elves, you know who hates 'em? William G's Bang Barstal, that's who! That's a joke that all of the guest artists he's lined up for filler have been running into the ground over there. Well, not to be outdone in the banal and insipidly unoriginal gag department, yours truly has taken up the cause with his own subtly unfunny Bang Barstal Guest Strip (note: it's front-paged for Wednesday only. If you're reading this on Thursday or later click here and scroll to the bottom.) Check it out, if you dare.




*- explanation on the heading today, if you're not in "the know":

This strip is done in the style of James Kochalka's popular sketchbook-diary American Elf.
William G's Bang Barstal goes out hunting elves in his first installment, Pointy Eared Bastards (currently being reserialized on Graphic Smash) and my guest strip makes reference to that. So there's the "elf" connection.

And William G is from Canada and lives in South Korea.
American Elf... Canada... South Korea...

Thus the "Pan-Global."



I'm all full of bad jokes today...

Yet, I still cannot bring you here.

Quick study of what will be a new comic, eventually. The living room is just a stand in, I think, and I've got some other ideas for expanding the concept. But the basics are all there.

Oh, did I tell you we have a digital camera now?

The world according to Sophie

So Blogger almost didn't let me post again today. Down again!!!
This place is really starting to suck.

Do You Remember Rock N' Roll Radio?

So I drew and scanned this yesterday but stupid Blogger was down and I couldn't post it. I drew another one today that kind of builds off of this one. I posted that before this one so with any luck you'll read this first and scroll down for the rest. If not then sorry. Just pretend that you read them in order in the first place. Come on it's not so hard...


stupid Blogger...

Rock N' Roll Radio - part two