 the staggering advances of time
Hi there! I am back and pretty much recovered from whatever and have shit to tell you, so ears up, citizens:
PROMISES, PROMISES
I think at some point I said I would go a bit further into the epic tale of Prom Coup and I never did because I am a traitor at heart. But I’m a traitor with a heart, it turns out, stupid organ, so here I am with Lessons We Can Learn From Prom Coup. Lesson One is that Sara was a nerd in school: established previously, but since there is no particular continuity and no general requirement that one reads all the long, long episodes of this here comic to achieve basic literacy in the Nobodyscoresiverse I can forgive you if you missed it. This time. Lesson Two is that Jane has, in fact, mellowed over the years, or at least grown lazier, and Lesson Three is derived from the first two: while now Sara and Jane have achieved a sort of balance of power wherein Sara controls the resources and Jane unleashes the madcap whims, in high school, Jane was clearly dominant. Lesson Four is that, considering that Sara and Jane are both about 24 years old, that would place the events of the Prom Coup at roughly April of 2002, which turns out to be the absolute worst historical moment to stage a prom coup in the continental U.S., second possibly to the day after Columbine. Lesson Five is that Sara, Jane, or someone in the group must have been fairly resourceful: squirt-gun replicas of real weapons were all over the place in the early ‘90’s, but had quickly gone off the shelves by around 1995 I think, result of a few police shootings of kids wielding realistic-styled squirt guns. They musta really hit the garage sales. One more: Lesson Six. Jane Doe was not named Jane Doe at the time of the events of this comic. Presumably this is about the start of her name-changing spree. What was her real name? I dunno. Frankly, it’d just be kind of confusing, so unless I can make a joke about it you will never find out.
INCIPIENT CAPITALISM
Waiting on poster proofs, the lineup is decided, working on the store site, coming coming coming. Update update update I have proofs. In related news, the key word for today is “tightness.”
BLEG
How the fuck do I do anything with an XML file, say from Ohnorobot.com, and have it work with Textpattern? I really tried here but my eyes glazed over. I’d like to make a number of people’s hard work at data entry sorta worthwhile here.
INSIDE BASEBALL
is something I still pretty much just hear about, but I managed to stagger to the Stumptown Comics Fest last Sunday. Sorry I didn’t plan anything this time for my few fans that coulda taken advantage but I was a) sick and b) merchandiseless. Nevertheless I was showered with loot by the few webcomics people I have an “in” with, by which I mean “ever spoken to.” Such appears to be my game. I also managed to score a print and an awkward conversational interlude with Larry Marder, author of the amazing, strange ‘90’s comic Beanworld, which I greatly recommend to the conceptually minded amongst you. Also, basically everybody I talked to there had something worthwhile to follow up on, which is especially amazing since the juxtaposition of words and images achieved a Clockwork Orange effect about five minutes into my brief attendance, concluding in a swirling vortex with Scott McCloud in the middle, and I’m not even fuckin’ making that part up. But yeah, worthwhile stuff, which brings me to
HOT GREASY LINKS
First of all I have updated my link bar with new stuff and a more efficient card catalog system which I am sure you’ll enjoy, I mean ignore. “Magical inspirations” are strictly people I read before starting Nobody Scores! The comics you may also like have some sort of common thread with Nobody Scores! – format, theme, sense of humor. The other comics you may not also like do not, in particular, share a lot of elements with my cartoon: and yet I still read them, because I am eclectic and whatever.
You ever read short fiction on the web? Little, funny, weird stories? The two examples I’d heard of being Girls Are Pretty and Hitherby Dragons, and also this obscure little site? Ran into a guy at Stumptown who has a similar site, fulla strange, dark, humorous little story-experiments, each 101 words long, called Ommatidia. Check it out.
If you feel like you’ve landed on the totally wrong corner of the online comics universe, or are just about to be crushed by the fearsome angst, gravitas, pathos – you know, shit you have to import words into English to describe – of the world of Nobody Scores!, hie thee over to a comic called Wasted Talent, a breezy marker-colored journal cartoon detailing the trials and tribulations of an apparently pretty happy couple in the area of Vancouver BC. Totally different wavelength than around here but it’s appealing and the author knows what she’s doing. Also from Stumptown.
Am meaning to sit down and watch this movie. Note to self.
Do you watch Saturday Night Live? I don’t watch Saturday Night Live. But apparently this is what happens when they write a whole entire skit. I know, I’ve never seen it happen either.
A delicious tale of war.
YOU CAN’T JUST BANDWIDTH YOUR WAY TO MY HEART
Well, you sort of can, but this awesome little graphical presentation is going to contain my very favorite outside link to my comic for the foreseeable future, unless, like, I make a fan out of Miranda July or something. Hey! I CAN DREAM!
[15] schedules, my most direst foe
Ok, honestly, I am really, really, really tired and I need to take a break from drawing the comic. Just a short one! Short. SHORT. This is how the schedule is going to work:
Beyond All Rational Thought goes up late late Thursday. Check. It is pretty short. I have another pretty short one written up and it will go up Friday or Saturday. Then I will come back on the usual Tuesday/Wednesday border with an epic, and it turns out kind of time-sensitive, tale of courage and betrayal suitable for Nobody Scores! installment #250. Then I take my little break until the following week.
I am about halfway through prepping posters. I need to send myself a couple for quality control purposes, and to see how much of a production (and how expensive) to make them – that is where my ad money is going, because it is so very big. This may take a couple weeks, I’m not sure. Then I’ll try to get a little store section set up for those of you who want to buy posters. Each comic is reworked, rearranged, and has some additional art in it to fill out some of the compositional spaces – the hope is to make them really worth the money.
[15] turbulence
Ugh. Inside-the-head space here at Nobody Scores! has been unusually turbulent of late. It happens. The last week or so has been the only time I’ve been utterly exhausted with the comic that I can remember. Part of it, at least as regards to the comic, is that I’m transitioning from one writing journal to the other. (Which matters why? Because if you haven’t ever filled out a whole writing journal with thoughts, as I hadn’t before this comic, you don’t realize that after the writing reaches a critical mass, then it starts to react and you can get interesting things from it. It’s weird but that’s how it works.) The other issue is that I was just tired from doing two long comics a week. So I’m trying to write shorter, which does not come very easy for me usually. That’s what this week is about.
Afterwards, I’m planning on doing one short and one long comic each week. You may notice that this Thursday’s comic actually did come out on Thursday. Crazy! By adhering to this setup I plan to be on time in at least a few time zones, and reap the rich, rich benefits. I hear there are benefits. Are there benefits?
Anyway so the week’s previous comic, Raring To Go, may have made rather less sense than is usual hereabouts on first reading. Can I say in my defense that I had stayed up the whole entire night the night before in an attempt to reset my ridiculous sleep schedule? Can I say against my defense that said attempt completely failed to work? Of course I can it’s my website. Anyway the comic has been retconned with a couple panels of apparently necessary exposition to make sense, at least if you don’t think about it very much, so now it is just like all my other comics.
Ok, now to merch plans. I am planning on starting out by having ten or twenty comics available in poster form. They will be in poster form because that’s the only way I can see them fitting on the printed page at the moment; a book will be much more complicated. Two that will be available are There’s Gotta Be A Nail (because it’s already done) and Feel-Good Romantic Comedy of the Year. I am taking requests to fill out the initial list. I’ve compiled some other candidates:
Ironic Distance ; Frozen Fresh Bonus Pack ; Wally Rogers The Rescue Dog ; The Paste That Binds ; You Just Had To Ask ; Coffee Break ; A Fine Night For Revelry ; The Maagic Portal Of Time ; Born To Roll ; Convergence ; Exasperation St. ; Guaranteed Scrumptious ; The Cute Singularity ; Facelessbook ; The Dream of Millions ; What Happens Now.
Don’t see your favorite Nobody Scores! that you would want an actual poster of there? Let me know!
I am not doing Barack Obama Overdrive yet. That would be jinxy.
[16] your new study guide
I created this handy guide to the bit characters of Nobody Scores! for your reference. Bone up, peoples.
Life is boring lately. The internet doubly so. At least there’s this: comedy stylings, adherence to the studying spirit that makes us great, plus it makes the reader feel like less of a dork. How often do you find that on a computer? I submit, never.
There is also this quirky little foam story which made the rounds a few months ago, and I forgot to link to it, so there’s that.
Videowise, here’s a couple of intriguing and squorbious takes on violence. I’m pretty sure I look like this just walking around.
[10] it all comes out at once blorp blorp
Ooh I’ve found some fun things. Here’s the latest trawl. One: if you are in the UK one of your fine local ad agencies has some lovely tote bags for your convenience. Well, presumably, there’s no contact info or way to find the bags outside of my link. But I would trade Nobody Scores! posters for these bags if I were magically hooked up. Anyway. What else: stop-motion Lego Mario antics. The sage musings of wise cartoonist Eddie Campbell. Now if you’ve read his comics you might be prepared for how sage this man is, but I’m guessing not; he really is quite sage. I don’t agree with him on every single point but if the run of sequential art critics government officials were half as knowledgeable as Campbell we’d all be better off.
Big media wise I just finally saw Hard Candy, which features two broadly unlikeable antagonists in a vicious, claustrophobic, morally ambiguous duel to the death over a minimalistic backdrop – so totally my speed. It comes in second only to Oldboy as the best Valentine’s Day movie of the 21st century and since I’m not doing a Valentine’s comic this year you should treat yourself.
In other news I had victory here, sweet throbbing victory, and now it is gone, and I know just a little bit more how Hillary Clinton feels. Don’t feel bad for me though, unless that leads to sending me pies; it could always be worse.
A while back I read an interview with the Gaping Void guy, and he said that as he gets older that the only themes that are worthwhile are “love, loss, ambition, and religion.” I figure this is something I should go around saying too, on the theory that it’ll get more motherfuckers to punch me in the mouth on general principle. I got ambition and loss totally covered, and every now and then I veer towards the edges of cooties love, so I guess I oughta do a few religion comics, so that when I get punched in the mouth everything will be 100% valid. And that is what I am going to do this week.
Also I am reorgamatizing my link list into “magical inspirations” which will be comics that I read and slavered over before starting Nobody Scores!, “you may also like these fine comics” which will be comics that are like Nobody Scores! in that they use similar techniques or have similar senses of humor or both, and then “you may also not like these other fine comics” which are other comics that go in other directions that I nevertheless like and fuck you if you don’t I’m linking to them anyway. There will also be a fourth category called “please remember to read these” which will consist of Dinosaur Comics and Wondermark, both of which have been amusing me and yet I never fucking remember to read them.
Which is what brings me to mention Truck Bearing Kibble. I don’t really understand the motivations here, as in, why would you want to go directly after Perry Bible Fellowship, you’re just going to get smoked, and who wants to do the same thing somebody else is doing very well anyway? (I will obviously never ever ever understand superhero comics.) But damn if this comic doesn’t stay right on Gurewitch’s six. Here’s the best one. It is pretty damn nice. Anyway, it’s going in “you may also like these fine comics,” and if anybody has any other suggestions for comics I should be aware of and that maybe I’m in a position to help out with readers, well I am soliciting and I brought out my best red garters.
[10] comics bonus insights recap verbage
because I know how to make titles what make the readers want to read more. Insulin, the most recent Nobody Scores! offering as of this writing, is wholly autobiographical, with Jane serving as the authorial stand-in: a while back, I, like so many, was reading XKCD, a comic that I do not expect to hurt me, when. Insulin! So I woke up three hours later in a pool of fluid from my thyroid or some shit, vowing revenge. You may notice that the revenge, such as it is, was implemented like two months after the fact: this is because ingenious devices for woo wee wurgle snorgle woo are, as you can imagine, kind of a stretch for me, specially considering the bent of my recent creative output, which goes more sorta like this.
I would like to extend my apologies to all of everyone.
In re stuff elsewhere, I’d like to direct those of you that are open to journal comics that feature a sense of humor that exists to Tip Me Over, Pour Me Out since I have no idea if they could use an influx of readers or not. (They have a book out, but it looks like it’s a zine.) The artist’s style sort of reminds me of Lynda Barry’s black-and-white work in that it is dense and pointedly awkward and a little off-putting but it rewards you if you bull your way past your initial aesthetic instincts, if they’re like mine. Plus (like I try to do here) there are a lot of actually funny and apropos details to be found.
Also, since it appears that relatively few people are aware of this yet, pro-fessional cartoonist Dan Piraro, author of Bizarro, occasional comedian, and mentor of me for about 2 hours in high school (for serious, I sat at his cartooning desk and everything), started himself a blog. So you can go over there and blame him for the abomination you currently see before you. He’s entirely responsible.
Or else you can have some delicious pizza.
[9]
|
