Your only jig-maker

Fuel burning fast on an empty tank

mrvoid — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:57:42 GMT

Finished my last final for the year last night. All of this week's comics are done.

This means that I made it through my first year of grad school while working full time, and not missing one god damn five-day-a-week strip.

On a scale relative to webcomics, this makes me responsible enough to get elected president.

Brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed

mrvoid — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:39:44 GMT

I was having trouble figuring out what to write after Friday's strip. I'd gotten out everything I wanted in the chapter, and couldn't think of an ending. So then I thought, "Hey, Dan! How about just slapping 'End of Chapter 6' on a strip and calling it a day?"

True story!

Tomorrow is the start of a crazy sweet interlude that I've had plotted for a while. And after that is Chapter 7. I have no idea what Chapter 7 is going to be about.*

Seriously, no clue. We'll find out together.

---
*I'm fighting the urge to do a parallel universe story, and call it "Two Americas." It would be pretty hilarious to design robot versions of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Abraham Lincoln. But that's about all I can think of for that idea, so... meh. I think this comic teeters on the edge of "high concept with no follow-through" enough as it is.

A hassle with the human race

mrvoid — Fri, 20 May 2011 17:02:43 GMT

So as you've probably noticed, End Times Fever is runnin' wild in the United States. The Good Lord is apparently callin' the flock home tomorrow, or tonight I guess, depending on what time zone you live in. And since, let's be honest, I'm going to be Left Behind,* I'd just like to say in advance: I get to be Warlord of Logan Square.

Seriously, you guys. I called dibs.

For reals, though... I know a lot of you folks either live in another country, or have spent a crapload of time in one. So I have a question that's been tickling me: does any other country get periodically wrapped up in the Rapture like America does? Or are we the only ones egomaniacal enough to think we're so awesome, we must be life's crescendo?

---
*'Cuz... y'know. Atheist Jew.

Keep me running, running scared

mrvoid — Wed, 11 May 2011 14:53:06 GMT

I like drawing Mercury Novus. He's a weird little lump of a Bart/Milhouse love-child with physically impossible facial features. He has no discernible personality, motivation, or nose.* And I don't feel the affection for him as a villain that I do for Ursa Master or the Sleeping Dragon. But he's fun to draw.

On the whole, certainly, he's the maguffin for this chapter, not the driving force. I came up with him kind of hastily, which is probably why his name sounds like a car. (I actually googled it before posting the first strip of the chapter to make sure it wasn't already the name of a car.) And minus one fun scene I thought of, he'll most likely vanish forever after this chapter wraps up.

But he is fun to draw.

---
*COINCIDENCE?!?

A wretched seat within your memory

mrvoid — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:01:44 GMT

So when I first put the website together for Stick Figure Hamlet, I was just stumbling my way through HTML and CSS for the first time. It took all my skill, and some additional research besides, to put the site together. And I was extraordinarily proud of it.

Several years later, it got kind of embarrassing.

Therefore, I give you the new Stick Figure Hamlet website. Go on and give it a read-through. I'm extraordinarily proud of it. In a few years, we can do this again.

Watch him now; here he come

mrvoid — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:08:28 GMT

So the most fascinating thing about bin Laden's death* to me: an NPR report this morning said that the majority of people celebrating outside the White House last night were young. Like, late teens/early twenties young. This seemed mystifying to me, so I spent a goodish amount of the morning thinking about it. Then realized: oh, right. 9/11 was almost ten years ago. Which means there's a crapload of young adults walking around for whom Osama bin Laden was pretty much the fucking boogeyman of their childhood.

I honestly have no idea how to relate to having a childhood fear that can be shot. It must be exhilarating, though.

---
*Okay, second-most fascinating thing. The really-most fascinating thing is that two days ago, I honestly would have bet cash money that he died sometime around October, 2001. I mean literally, we got the news last night while sitting in Longman and Eagle that Obama had a weird Sunday night press conference coming, and Carl said, "It's got to be something huge. Like 'they killed bin Laden' huge." And I said, "that would be a hell of a trick, since bin Laden's been dead for ten years."

WHOOPS.

We made such a pretty pair

mrvoid — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 02:19:42 GMT

Aw, hecks! Did you guys know that in addition to being Shakespeare's (observed) birthday, April 23rd is, by staggering coincidence, also the birthday of President James Buchanan?!?

Fuck it, artistically speaking, I own this day. So I'm officially declaring April 23rd Dan's Comics Day.

WHAT?? You forgot to buy your loved ones presents for Dan's Comics Day?!? DON'T WORRY, I GOT YA COVERED.

So tired of all the darkness in our lives

mrvoid — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:00:10 GMT

So this guy won a Pulitzer Prize today.

You know, I'm on record (along with about eighteen hojillion other cartoonists) as being baffled by editorial cartooning. It's the only area of art where you can get away with just writing the name of what you're supposed to be drawing across it. Like, you can draw a snake with "IRS" written on it, and a mouse with "taxpayer" written on it, and HA HA HOW AWESOME IS IT THAT YOUR ART DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAVE TO BE REPRESENTATIVE PAYCHECK PLEASE.

But beyond the wild hackery this allows, I'm mystified by the fact that even when unnecessary, this practice is a convention of the genre. Look at that cartoon I linked to. THOSE ARE GOOD LIKENESSES. You could take out every word in that panel except for "No, seriously..." and it would work. It would be a good comic.

Geez, editorial cartoonists.

Flying high above the sky, the battle down below looks simplified

mrvoid — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:16:37 GMT

Oh, hey, I still have this livejournal, don't I? Well then. Let's talk about The Political Machine.

Today is the 400th strip. It's also the strip that I came up with before plotting this chapter; in fact, this entire chapter was written as an excuse to get this scene (start here and read forward through today) out of my head, because it made me chuckle so much.

Buchanatron, as you may have noticed, is dumb. Really, really intensely dumb. He also tends to be everyone's favorite character. So he also winds up getting the most attention from my head, because I like to know why jokes are making people laugh. So I've been thinking about the jokes I make with him, and about things I laugh at where another person's character is dumb. And I came up with: a likeable dumb character has to be a shaman.

When Buchanatron has an insane idea, it has to work. When he has an odd quirk, it has to make sense to someone. Even when he's confused, what he's saying has to reflect information he can't possible have.

And he definitely has to be the only character who's allowed to make fourth-wall busting jokes like this, this, or this.

In short, to be an effective dumb character, he has to actually be the smartest character in the room; one who seems dumb from our point of view, because he's operating on a bafflingly incomprehensible plane, which leaves him not so hot with the plane the rest of us are on.

Anyhoo. 400 strips! Yay. If you like 'em, then hey, maybe you can go ahead and buy the first book here to show the world that years of hard work pays off in the end.

The things you do for love are going to come back to you one by one

mrvoid — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:09:50 GMT

Have I mentioned that I love doing this kind of drawing? If I had the time, I would totally bring back a Popstar Ninjaish blog comic in that style.

I don't.

At all.

Maybe after Political Machine is done?

How's about it indeed, sir? How's about it indeed.

mrvoid — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:12:28 GMT

So I was all set to ramp up a truly furious rant about Rahm Emanuel today. It was going to be a thing of beauty, magnificent to behold. But then I checked my referral logs to see where the unaccountable traffic spike for Stick Figure Hamlet was coming from.

It turns out that it was coming from a ridiculous website that links to sites of interest. By "sites of interest" I mean "mainly pictures of tits, with the occasional joke about a celebrity taking a shit." And on the day's links, there was my comic. Right in the middle of all the soft porn and praise for Howard Stern, there it was, with the caption:

How's about we get a little bit of culture up in this motherfucker?

Upon reading this, all my anger just melted right out from under me. I can't tell you how happy this made me; this is exactly the reaction I want for my comics.

Go ahead and smile, people. It's going to be a beautiful day.

And I've made up my mind

mrvoid — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:06:41 GMT

In one day, Wizard Magazine stopped publishing, and Rahm Emanuel got booted off the Chicago mayoral ballot.

I don't meant to alarm anyone, but it's possible that I did this. Like... with my mind.

It just sounds like something I would do, is all. Like if I could suddenly do things to reality by wishing hard, but I wasn't aware of it, and I didn't have any conscious control over it or anything. It would probably be something like this.

So... yeah. It's possible you're all characters in my dream. Just tossing that out there.

While another day goes down the drain

mrvoid — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:42:29 GMT

So that was a dang nuisance.

Those of you who read my comic every day probably noticed that the website hemorrhaged and collapsed last week. It was, to say the least, not cool. I don't know why, but ComicPress suddenly stopped working. I didn't install an update, I didn't make any changes, it just stopped working overnight. This was, at last count, the third or fourth Big Problem I've had with ComicPress, so I finally decided screw it, enough is enough.

I still think ComicPress is a pretty solid service, mind you. I just think I don't know quite enough PHP to use it right. So I reached the point where it was actually easier to make my own website from scratch than it was to constantly be wrestling with this software.

Which leads us back to "Dan is working full time, in grad school, and still trying to put a comic up five days a week." The website I put together is pretty bare bones, because I had about one solid night budgeted to make it. I'm hoping to fancy it up a little as time goes, but... well. Work. Grad school. Drawing. Yeah. At the very least, I'd like to get a blog on there, and come on, I've gotta be able to set the time aside to draw an unobtrusive background image of some kind. So we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, updates have resumed, and are back on a Monday-Friday schedule. If you like all this effort, and the comics it produces, then hey, how about buying a book or something, right?

Eh? Sweet book? Yeah.

Vintage wine from fine old kegs

mrvoid — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 05:08:13 GMT

If you're like me, and I assume you are, you've often thought to yourself, "You know, I think Dan's comics are pretty cool. But I can't help wondering what they would have been like... in the 1940s."

Oh, what might have been, America. Oh, what might have been.

A time to build up; a time to break down

mrvoid — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:33:51 GMT

So I was going to make some New Year's Resolutions. But then I realized: that would be like admitting fault. As if I had flaws. Can you imagine?

No, let's be honest... my real strength in life is finding fault in others. So I've decided to make New Year's Resolutions for you. This, as you might imagine, takes some of the weight of self-improvement off your shoulders, placing it where it belongs: squarely on my powerful frame.

You're welcome.

YOUR NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

1) Buy a copy of Stick Figure Hamlet.

2) Buy a copy of the Political Machine.

3) Sit back and go, "ahhhhh, I'm a better person." You may put your hands behind your head and place your feet on the coffee table, if the fancy grabs you.

If you've already completed resolutions 1 and 2, don't think you're off the hook, mister. I've created a special resolution subset for you!

a) Tell a friend to buy Stick Figure Hamlet and the Political Machine.

b) Go to resolution 3.

I'm not done talking yet

mrvoid — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:04:18 GMT

Hey, did I mention that the Political Machine has been updating this whole time while I've been away? You know, maybe you should go catch up on the chapter starting here. If that's not enough, go ahead and buy the book.

But yeah. If you have been reading, then you know what's going on in this story. This, oddly enough, is one I had planned from word 0. Which is to say that it was banging around in my head in some form before I even started writing chapter 1. I picked which presidents I was going to use, started doing sketches of them. Carl had shared with me a tidbit about Buchanan that he had a big neck scar, so I decided to make him a floating head. (This makes perfect sense to me.) So then I thought to myself, hey, he's the fuck-up character, maybe he did have a body and he lost it. Or HEY, maybe he and his body had a big fight, and it left him!

Because Buchanatron's body seceded from him, ha ha I'm fucking precious.

So I sat down to start writing chapter 1, and decided that Buchanatron's body would be the mysterious villain who sabotaged the security system. At the time, I honestly thought that this would be revealed by the end of chapter 2. Then, well, stuff happened, and I didn't do that. True story! But anyway, chapter 2 came and went, then 3, then 4, and enough time was passing that I started waffling back and forth over whether I even wanted to include the original idea at this point. Even wrote an alternate explanation for the sabotage that would be revealed in passing in the final chapter, but didn't like it enough to use it. So hey, here we go with my original idea.

The only remaining problem: I wrote chapter 1 before Buchanatron's personality had really gelled. I was still thinking of him as the annoying, occasionally acerbic fuck-up, not the loveable idiot fuck-up he turned into. So even though this chapter demands that the body be no smarter than Buchanatron, I have him out there as responsible for craftily sabotaging advanced technology. WHOOPS. But I think I have a workaround for that which I'll be using by the end of the chapter, so that's good.

Service and Devotion

mrvoid — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:29:55 GMT

Hey, have you bought my book?

Now, I know what you're thinking. "You know what, Dan? I'm aware of your book already. And no doubt, it's the inspired work of a master craftsman, blessing humanity with his subtle genius. But that doesn't mean you're being attentive to our needs. The world is a cold and cruel place, and Today's Reader isn't satisfied with just one book. We need upwards of one and a half... maybe even two full books to feel secure in this hurly-burly modern world of ours."

Well, as usual, I have anticipated the arguments I made up and attributed to you, and I have an answer for them.

That answer is DAN'S SECOND BOOK.

Yes, it's book one of The Political Machine, covering all strips through the end of chapter 4. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. You also get all sorts of bonus material not available online!

-Digitally remastered artwork, greatly improved through advanced "second draft" technology!
-The 24HCD bonus story, "Buchanatron's Christmas Adventure!"
-Character profiles, from FDR-5000's secret files!
-AND MORE!!!

WOW, AM I RIGHT? I don't know how you can even still be reading this post, instead of rushing off to buy this masterpiece right now!

Regrets, I've had a few

mrvoid — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:44:00 GMT

I really can't get over this Bristol Palin/The Situation abstinence ad. Everything about it tickles my funny bone. I can only imagine the casting meeting that went down at the Candie's Foundation...

"All right, we got Bristol Palin. Now we need a co-star that makes her look like a spokeswoman for responsibility and self-control. What have we got?"

"Well, it's a tricky puzzle, but so far we've got it narrowed down to The Situation, a rabid wombat, and the rotting corpse of Nancy Spungen."

"I see. And how rabid is the wombat?"

"It's... pretty rabid, ma'am."

"Pretty rabid?"

"Pretty rabid."

"All right."

Our finest gifts we bring

mrvoid — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:00:27 GMT

I've been looking around, and people... I've been making some observations.

For starters, the air has gotten noticeably colder. Sometimes that cold manifests itself (as is my understanding) in the form of white flaky business in the air. Additionally, the top-right corner of my computer screen is telling me we're in the early stages of something called "Dec," which I take to mean that the year is drawing to a close. And all this adds up to one unassailable conclusion:

CHRISTMAS.

So since we've established the inexorable march of peace on Earth and good will towards men, you've got to be asking yourself, "Dan? How can I best honor the memory of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, He who is Risen to redeem our non-matzoh-based sins?" And I'm glad you asked, because frankly, I'm a bit concerned over the state of your immortal soul. And as it happens, the answer to your question is not only simple, it's awesome.

PRESENTS.

Yes, presents. The kingdom of heaven is accessible only by gathering around a tree ringed in tinsel* and giving presents to everyone you know. Lots of presents. The more the better.

And so now you've got to be saying to yourself, "Ugh, everyone I know? That sounds exhausting. And it does. You're absolutely right, I agree with you 100%, it sounds extremely exhausting. Thankfully, I've got you covered on this point as well. With one thin visit to the digital bookstore of your choice, you can buy as many copies of Stick Figure Hamlet as you please. Then you can get all your Christmas shopping done in one fell swoop!

Lemme tell ya, people. That's not redeemin' your soul hard... that's redeemin' your soul smart.

So to summarize, I have observed a drop in the air's temperature. By the hard and fast rules of logic, this has led me to the following conclusion: buying multiple copies of Stick Figure Hamlet is the only way to save your soul from eternal hellfire.

NICE.

---
*Pay no attention to Jeremiah 10:2-4. That was a typo.

Hope you need my love, babe

mrvoid — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:07:39 GMT

Interesting indeed.

I guess I must be having fun

mrvoid — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:48:34 GMT

So the current story.

No, that's not going to be the art style for the whole chapter. Yes, it is going to be a framing sequence that shows up several times over the course of the chapter. I might ask for some indulgence over the course of it, because this is a style I've been trying (and failing) to get down for years.

Let me explain, because yes, I know it looks like I banged that out in three seconds.* I'm obsessed with kids' drawings. I love the manic energy you get all over them. And I think it's nigh-impossible to reproduce that energy as an adult. Yes, I've seen several high-concept art installations that try. Yes, I've probably seen the one you want to link to. And no, they never, ever lose that ironic polish that adults put on everything. Today's strip doesn't either. I really feel like I'm stretching my brain to be as unapologetic as possible to get what's up there.

So anyway. You're getting the closest possible approximation of what I want to do with this chapter. What finds its way to the page will still be awesome, but this framing sequence is going to drive me slowly insane.

---
*This, incidentally, is the story of my artistic life. Seriously, if I could wipe one kind of person off the face of the Earth with a single wish, it would be people who assume Stick Figure Hamlet was drawn in a weekend. And feel the need to tell me their assumption.

Doin' it for you

mrvoid — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:43:13 GMT

So it is, perhaps, explanation time again. Feel free to go read today's Political Machine, then come back here for some scintillating commentary. I'm gonna discuss the whole plotline, so if you need reminders, it starts here.

In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt was on a bear hunting trip in Mississippi. The story goes that, after three days with no results, his men called him into the woods to let him know they'd found an injured bear, beaten it and tied it up, and he could go ahead and shoot it. He refused, because that's just dashed unsportsmanlike, although he did tell them to put the injured bear out of its misery.

The story found its way to a political cartoonist named Clifford Berryman, who used it as the basis for a cartoon called Drawing the Line in Mississippi. The cartoon was a widely-syndicated hit, so Berryman spent the rest of Roosevelt's presidency drawing him with a little bear cub sidekick, and the association between Roosevelt and bears stuck.

Soon a New York candy shop started selling a new kind of stuffed bear. While previous bear toys had been fierce animals, this one was cute and cuddly and huggable. They called it "Teddy's Bear."

As you may have noticed, it proved reasonably successful.

Anyway. As I mentioned in a previous entry, the practical reason for this plotline was to explicitly get out the fact that Ursa Master was created by the Shadow Cabinet. And also to keep moving the flashback plotline about the Shadow Cabinet forward, and further involve Teddy Roosevelt in this flashback plot. Having all these goals in mind, making Ursa Master into this world's inspiration for the Teddy Bear seemed too overwhelmingly wonderful to pass up.

An interesting historical side note: when Roosevelt's presidency ended, the toymakers started worrying that the gravy train would end with it. So they began marketing a new stuffed animal, based on incoming president William Howard Taft. It was called Billy Possum. Suffice to say, it did not take the world by storm like the Teddy Bear did.

If anyone ever has an insane amount of money to spend on a gift for me, then yes. A Billy Possum from around 1908 would be a spectacular present.

Just want to do something special for all the ladies of the world

mrvoid — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:32:42 GMT

So I've mentioned this on other sites, but not here yet... this was my final project for my Text + Image class. Each of the four little circles is a button.

The project spun out of an author we were reading who argued that visual modes, when paired with text, don't just act as a supplement to the information in the text, but act as a venue for information in and of themselves. This seemed kind of obvious to me, so I figured heck, let's go ahead and demonstrate the obvious.

The idea of my project was to take a well-known and widely-interpreted piece of text (in this case, the end of Ulysses by Tennyson), and provide three different visual narratives to go with it. Each would contradict the other, but none would contradict the text. This would show that the information contained in a visual narrative can alter, reinterpret, or undermine the textual narrative. Then the final version would allow the user to mash up the three versions, to show that if the visual narrative is incoherent, the textual narrative would be incoherent as well.

I considered just handing in a copy of Stick Figure Hamlet, but this seemed more responsible.

Also, for the ladies (and some dudes), I figured I'd throw in some tasteful male nudity. So let's all enjoy that.

Also, there's a new Political Machine. If you know your obscure little pop-cultural/political historical factoids, it should be obvious where I'm going with this by now. If not, the money shot comes on Thursday, and I'll explain then.

The path soon grew quite dark

mrvoid — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 22:43:22 GMT

The Weekend of Endless Work continues. The plus side: I like to watch TV while I work, and finally got around to watching the premier of The Walking Dead. (Yes, I'm a couple weeks behind the curve on this one.) Suffice to say, there's horrors I like, and horrors I don't, and this was the horror written with Dan in mind.

There were no moments in the episode where something sudden happens, and it's really gross, and you clutch your heart and go, "Oh, that scared me!" and kind of want to puke, but now it's over, okay, calm down.

What it did have was a long buildup of creepy mood. Very slow, very subtle, but still managing to reach a huge crescendo by the end, so the creepy feeling stays with you for hours after the episode's done. I mean literally, to the point where I needed to run an errand after it was done, and had a kneejerk reaction like, "are you crazy, outside is where zombies are! Stay inside!" The show draws you in, so even though the premise is fantasy-based (I mean really, it is about corpses that want to bite you), you're still right there in the story. It makes empty streets horrifying. It makes a dead radio horrifying.* And it makes a dismembered zombie seem pitiful.

Good damn show.

It's also pretty faithful to the comic, but not so slavishly devoted that they felt like they had to exactly reproduce every line of dialogue in the exact order it was originally written, and make sure every single panel is exactly reproduced on screen. So that's a secondary plus.

---
*This isn't actually very hard. I don't know why, but I always find radio broadcasts with nobody listening horrifying. One-sided communication in general, really. Terrifying stuff.

I just lost all m'picnic spirit

mrvoid — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:42:39 GMT

There's a new Political Machine!

I don't know if I've mentioned before, but Ursa Master's backstory is fully fleshed out in my head, even if very little of it will actually make it into the strip. For the most part, it'll only be alluded to in various cryptic snippets.

This plotline, however, was sketched out in some form or another from word one. Originally it was going to be an injured Ursa Master speaking in monologue to wild bears, and was going to take place fifteen years later, during the October Revolution. Then, in the course of researching Teddy Roosevelt, I found out about the real-life event in which this plotline takes place. And it was too perfect, and dovetailed too well with my plans for Teddy Roosevelt, and kept me from having to research the October Revolution and finding a way to cram Ursa Master in there somewhere.

So there's that.

In other news, it's final projects time for my classes. Tomorrow through Sunday, I'm pretty much going to be hunkering down and working like a maniac. I had a dream last night that I was smoking again, and I can't help but wonder if that was my mind going to its happy place.