wurf this took long enough.
two supplemental pages for book 4 of this, showing something that is mildly alluded to later, since I introduced the idea of these dumb blobs so long ago without a plan, thinking a plan might arise, and then it never did and I forgot about them for a while. They are placed as 63 and 64 for now just so they will come after 62 but I want to put 62 earlier.
what is presently page 3-01 i may break into two pages since it is too cluttered for what it shows and it may work as 2-65 instead so the book gets and extra page, and then also i can end on a revelation with actual implications rather than the lurking robot since that ultimately is a non-issue.
Somehow it took me two weeks to draw these pages even though hardly anything is happening. The machine design was frustrating and I worried it looked too simplistic, yet the pages are still hopelessly cluttered. In fact I had a totally different idea for this insert from august 2019 but then COULDN’T FIND IT nor any sort of script describing it when I finally got around to dealing with it a year later, until a few days ago when I was looking for something else. And I couldn’t remember anything ABOUT it, either. In fact I eventually convinced myself I hadn’t made it at all in order to make myself give up looking for it. That it was too long to fit on one page is the SOLE detail that I recalled and that prevented me from totally believing it didn’t exist. I seem to have more anxiety about things not fitting on pages than what they actually are.
What this IS, whatever it is, it does not completely contradict what I did use, so it can be used as a foundation for a similar page later. probably for the best that I didn’t find it, for the book 4 spot, since this openly shows (or would once it was drawn better) kumquat becoming kaklabesk, and also some baser form which i have no recollection of designating as part of the process. since i fussed so much over the way i presented kumquat being kaklabesk in recent “book 6” pages, inserting an earlier page where i show it more blatantly would seem counterintuitive. Which would also be consistent since nothing I do is intuitive but there is still plenty on today’s pages that doesn’t work so don’t be concerned about that.
page 3-49 of the bimshwellian comic strip. This section is visually complicated and frustrating to draw despite not communicating much, as is typically the case.
a twitter-inspired image, not a judgement so much as an observation. from sunday, before “black out tuesday” during which numerous people posted pictures of black squares to show their belief that black lives matter and/or to stage a Kazimir Malevich-inspired art exhibit.
Combating white supremacists with white suprematists is certainly an approach I would not have considered.
my intent is not to judge anyone for not wanting to be an activist; not every person posting is in the united states and we’ve seen riots before, but the dichotomy is bizarre. I don’t think posting hashtags, saying you “stand with” someone or “going silent” accomplishes anything important, but if it helps some people feel like they are part of something positive, and maybe some even get a legitimate positive feeling out of it, that is good, right? I know that I wouldn’t, I would feel like a silly person being led by a force I don’t understand or necessarily have the means to identify or trust so I don’t. I tried doing that for a few years trying to please internet activist sorts that I knew and I wasn’t good at it, I didn’t like trying to do something I wasn’t good at for no real reason, and I don’t know any of those people now.
as implied, I have encountered NUMEROUS videos of police clobbering people in the street with seemingly no provocation. and mixed in with them are occasional videos of non-police doing awful things. I think there is nothing noble about ganging up on people even if they came looking for a fight. The goal of these protests, ultimately, is to reduce police violence, and ANYTHING counter to that empowers sorts who advocate more brutal policing, and they’re forever seeking to be. I see far more of the “bad police” videos but as long as there are a few “bad non-police” videos the people who fixate on THAT angle won’t acknowledge any other type. I remember a few years ago when it was trendy to say and sell shoddy merchandise branded with “punch a nazi!” But they aren’t exactly wearing swastika armbands and executing minorities in public, and if you do punch somebody who displays mildly nazi-like tendencies, and it is RECORDED, bet on any context being edited out so you look like you are against free speech. Of course if such a person punches you first the video will be labeled as justified by the same people who would criticize you for punching first but it won’t be at risk of changing anyone’s mind.
I think it is valid to point out that USAmerica’s thuggish law enforcement did not start with Trump, but he is held up by many supporters as a Obama/Clinton antithesis despite seeming to double down on and enjoy their worst traits. His “virtue” is his emotional honesty and no other kind. He tells you he is going to send soldiers to clear protesters, and by bolly he does it, and doesn’t pretend that he wishes he didn’t. It is as refreshing as getting sprayed in the face with lachrymator agents can be.
if you are seriously considering robbing a dollar store please just look for a vending machine to beat up instead.
dollar tree supposedly took $22 billion in revenue in 2017 and has over fifteen thousand stores, so they can handle being burgled, but it isn’t time well-spent and the individual employees aren’t getting paid enough to deal with that.
THAT sentiment, in the blue text, though not the exact wording, was from Thursday may 28, before somebody who I knew five years who had not engaged with me previously on that topic or really any other recently responded “people are getting murdered” and was done with me without any further discussion. Nothing like “hey person I’ve known for half a decade, traded art and had prolonged conversations with, I think this joke is tasteless. Are you unaware of how serious this situation is? Are you getting news from an automated aggregator of websites that are slow to update and may have agendas rather than righteous retweet chains? Perhaps I can provide you with insight that you lack.” I may still be dwelling on it. That doesn’t mean I think I am oppressed now, but I also don’t believe that attitude, turning on anyone who isn’t as dedicated to saying all the “right” things as you are helps anybody, and it’s impossible to know which tragic world events that affect other world events are bad enough to temporarily get fun outlawed and which, like the by now regular mass shootings and unprecedented natural disasters, aren’t. the fact is that nobody can know and care about everything, and nobody does, and anyone who acts like they do is full of beans and only does it when instructed to do so by “influencers” as they are now called who I couldn’t possibly keep track of unless I spent every day doing that and I won’t. I think communication should precede condemnation if the possibility exists.
Perhaps this is new because the murder was filmed and unmistakable. Alright but if anyone is awful now they (or I) didn’t just abruptly become that way because the dominant public sentiment suddenly shifted.
and then yesterday June 2 a 77 year old retired police captain David Dorn trying to help out his friend who owned a pawn shop by checking on the place was murdered by a looter stealing a television set. and I wondered: would a thief who was willing to shoot someone dead robbing a best buy be less likely to face opposition if they had robbed a dollar tree? Which is a ludicrous thing for me to wonder since I am not responsible for the action of someone who was willing to kill anyway unless I have advance access to that person plus awareness of that intent. And I didn’t! A joke in bad taste does not make a person bad. I also think back to a “few” years ago when I was angry at somebody for supporting an artist who, to seem cool, presumably, espoused nazi-flavored antagonism. This is not the same thing. I am not setting out to rile people up and then pretending I wasn’t usually.
here is a theological question that not enough people are asking.
this may raise even more
oh shoopf forgot to post something again, busy busy busy.
I can’t believe anyone still talks to that weirdo.
you can theoretically imagine this is culturally relevant to do with protests/riots except in the respect that I am thoroughly unable to talk about it without screwing up. it helps that anybody can find a version of “facts” that matches their personal agenda and then they feel entitled to become indignant at someone else who doesn’t believe in or simply hasn’t internalized the full rundown of those facts and since neither of them is actually THERE or close to it they can be as abusive as they want and not risk having a personal experience that gives them a valid perspective on it. Every other doofus on the premises is recording SOMETHING so one way or another a more cohesive picture will eventually emerge and be undeniable. I hope.
There is someone in my family who has been saying for ten years that a “race war” is imminent. He so believes in that as to sometimes come across like he WANTS that, and he seems to selectively repeat other people’s material which in his mind aims at that conclusion. And you can’t attempt to say otherwise lest he start yelling at you about secret pedophile networks, which you also can’t refute because he’ll say fake news bill gates george soros operation fast and furious and it is as possible to talk to someone like that as it is pleasant. But I think giving up on this sort of person only further encourages extremist viewpoints, and eventually they get to the point where they actively engage in race war-fare.
a pathetic snake loses face in public
initially i put some stereotype cactus in the background but it was less funny to me if the location seemed to switch. It could transform in the same place, have different lettering and texas doors but not BE another place. The horse-like figures are a hold-over from the cactus phase but not as out of place as the cactus was and I felt no great impetus to remove them. i could have given one a shopping cart but then i think maybe it should look like a little covered wagon and that might be too distracting and that was rather late in the process anyway by which point I was already tired of changing things that did not matter, which typically means two more hours of changing things.
most of the comments on this were positive, and I am glad to get comments at all, especially since the snake ones tend to be complaining about people who comprise the little audience I have, but one did say “the snake should probably know better than to put other people at risk with such a weird and long-term illness!”
which seems to imply that I the real person who isn’t a naked neon cartoon serpent is most definitely out and about breathing diseases every which way. And this sentiment may be harbored by more people than spoke up. Which is normal, these snake comics tend to be misconstrued and this is a fairly mild case. I should move on and not worry about it but that isn’t what I do and usually there isn’t a rough implication that I possibly kill people.
I respont “fortunately the snake is fictional! it errs for my amusement. I don’t personally mess around with public masklessness, worried that someone else might think I have a problem, but I do feel silly unless I have a big hat with it.”
I understand that wearing a mask is more for the courtesy of others than actual personal protection, since you can have and be contagious with the virus before any symptoms manifest and you may in fact never get symptoms at all, and there could be CONSIDERABLY more carriers who are asymptomatic, and nobody who has been permitted to appear credible seems to know just how long you would remain contagious for or if you can get the virus a second time. I will wear the dumb mask if it aids in preserving what passes for order and doesn’t mess with my ability to function, even if people who think this whole mess is exaggerated or totally staged comprise a larger share of who I know than otherwise. I think kids who have been perfectly fine for a month should be allowed to play with other kids who also have been, attempting to forbid people from being outside at all unless they are employed or shopping is bizarre, and selectively forbidding the sale of certain items inside a store but not others, such as occurred in Michigan, is ludicrous and counterproductive since it inspires anger in people who want to be angry. If adults think their government is treating them like children they will disobey it and make a bigger problem, often like children. Without a plan to calm them down, and with a head of state who actively encourages them to not be calm, ostensibly well-meaning policies that don’t have a whole lot of potential at best can end up having none at all.
but i will wear a dumb mask!
I won’t buy one at an inflated price from a trendo brand-conscious profiteering scumbag who advocates more complacent childish behavior
and apparently I couldn’t even if I wanted to but there is no shortage of ways to pay extra to advertise what an imbecile I am.
page 48 of the bimshwellian comicoid.
the gnomes are regrettable but elpse was pretty regrettable for a long time and now I find it very amusing. The colors on this page at least are nice. i think they are nice!
i worried that the “kaiser monarchs,” the motorcycle gang-like assemblage the gnomes belong to was among my least inspired groups of characters, and maybe i was right because i just learned [thursday] that the ill-fated pixar film onward also features a “pixie biker gang” similar in appearance and presumably to some degree in behavior to the gnome collective. I look forward to people talking to me like I ripped that off in a few years.
ehhh my approach is still probably awkward and contrarian enough to not retroactively be construed as a rip-off of that by people who need to see everything i make in terms of recent media they consumed. Due to various factors including a worldwide pandemic that you may have heard about coinciding with its theatrical release, “onward” may also be one of the least-seen pixar films so i have even less to worry about. Even though the more people think i am inspired by recent media the more they accept what I do so perhaps I should encourage them to think that but I don’t like being liked like that!
my gnomes are more awkward than onward but at least I like them. I don’t like these at all.
According to this blurry picture and I didn’t want to go searching for more, “pixie dusters” is their name. Whereas i thought a gang name that directly alluded to my characters being gnomes was too on-the-comically oversized nose. However they like butterflies and “monarch” is a powerful-sounding type of butterfly, and then kaiser because i thought kaiser helmets were really funny for a bunch of years, hence the name.
I got to thinking about onward because i inadvertently read that pixar had paid whoever owns dungeons and dragons now to use a Beholder in the movie in some capacity, which made it necessary for me to skim its synopsis to be certain it wasn’t just doubling down on the wreck it ralph formula, but I think instead it is just quadrupling down on the pixar formula, which is essentially the same thing but the characters have smaller eyes and ugly little footless stump legs and prefer annoying existing songs to ones that they sing themselves. Prior to then i had seen pictures of the main characters and thought they looked sort of like greegorp and lactorp, the pointy-ears imbeciles from my beet cartoons but had no reason to presume the behaviors were similar.
LATER ON in the one other picture I saw, it became apparent to me that one of the characters is holding a drink bottle many times larger than itself, which would indicate the creatures are rodent-sized, which would make them QUITE different from my gnome gang. I would question why something that could fly would need a motorcycle or how at that size it would get one. you can’t just say “oh magic” to explain that because nothing else about it is magicy. I would accept and grant credibility to the gang if they mugged Runaway Ralph and Stewart Little during the film because disney can buy and use just about any character they want in any way they want but that would still only get vehicles for two of them.
page 3-47 of the bimshwellian comic strip. a huge hard to draw waste of space but possibly the last page that will take place in this parking lot! Now instead of a difficult to draw background I have an impossible to draw object that is simultaneously foreground AND background.
page 46 of that. a bit cramped, hopefully not to the degree that it is confusing, since it may be confusing anyway!
urk 100% of the words out of nemitz’s mouth are trash. in fact if mit literally said “trash trash trash trast” it would communicate more information than mit typically does.
i keep forgetting that having the elpse lope and nemitz in the frame together messes with my usual way of plotting out pages, and with the giant stupid sack there also it will only be intensified.
i fear that I shamefully copy-pasted the scraps of the automobile. but i fear that the car has not been shown full frame recently enough that this clearly IS the car. it is such a distinctively poorly-designed car that surely anybody who had been keeping up with the “story” up to this point would know when a car is mentioned and a piece of that one is shown that it is being referred to. i hope.
i also hope that giving this quality to nemitz is not a mistake. it seems very mundane. it in fact was not planned. it seemed like a way to follow up elpse refusing to move the bag and also allude to something from earlier that i never gave an explanation for, the curious three blue electricity-looking shocks that nemitz experienced during the hospital section. instituting a major character revelation primarily to resolve a circumstance that only occurred in an attempt to be funny feels unwise, but resolving something old that I didn’t know what else to do with is better than simply forgetting. i see plenty of fictional media where a problem like this — such as a large object that no one can move — is resolved offscreen without an explanation. if i just cut to the imps in the car with the bag you could assume they found some way to get it in that might have taken a while but was not incredibly important. i may have to limit nemitz’s sphere-activation-shock-strength ability in an odd way or make the energy work differently depending on circumstances. super strength is just too common, especially if i indicate that elpse also already has it on account of the kumquat injection and is just too deep in self-pity to use it.
page 45 of the inexplicably ongoing comic strip
it features copious views of areas where i really don’t know what is supposed to go in them, like the blue part of the building’s outside wall. apparently the only other time i showed this area was page 3-2, where i didn’t make it blue and put yellow grass there in a way that makes no sense, and it wasn’t zoomed in close enough that there was massive void like here filling the void here with lines and angles seems to work but it feels really lazy.
3-1, the page before it shows that there is a sort of tunnel in that spot but I recall in a previous update noticing the inconsistency about the tunnel and resolved to just not have a tunnel there because there are more pictures without it than with it and they are all small. I ought to edit the pages where it DOES appear so i stop rediscovering this inconsistency re-evaluating which way is correct because eventually I will choose the other way and that will make an even more longwinded stupid problem.
Out of nowhere between 410 and 420am i decided the green elf should have one earring, and once that was enacted it instantly seemed like i should have made this gnome be the less wimpy of the two here. The script seems to have them trade off which one is more aggressive than the other, which is probably frustrating as a reader. None of the gnome stuff was well-planned or “planned.” i established previously that gnomes with hats that point straight up are aggressive but pathetic, so I don’t want to have this one also be like that. Really one of those should have been in this pair instead but I ALSO established or at least implied that these two specifically have some sort of partnership, so they should be together, without considering that there might not be any justification for it other than me having put them together the first time before I knew anything about them or that they would be appearing again. in fact they are part of a group of three but i ADDITIONALLY established that the third one isn’t in the gang and so would not be out searching for creature-imps to beat up. oh!
bimshwellian comic strip page 3-44 featuring some rare views of the weird tv thing here, one more component of the room “designed” on a thoughtless whim that has continually thwarted my ability to draw this room without a hassle. Followed up by characters designed on a thoughtless whim
fiddle dumpkin i summed up my last six months, possibly years, of written posts in four pictures
my end of year post seems to almost always happen the next day. whoopth. it is just a rapid slideshow of every drawing i made. Of course I found a way to make that take hours and hours to assemble!
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comic page 43 ! its artwork is possibly even worse than the previous page’s but something does almost happen on this one.
other pages are here!
lope seems most disinclined to throw anything out!
page 3-42 of the comic strip. I fear this may have been the longest delay between two pages that was not due to me slacking off. And not a whole lot happens on this one!
this is something that should make no sense to normal people, but I don’t know any of those anymore. if you have no idea what this is about I have deduced that you are better off continuing to not know than this website is with my attempt at explaining it present.
of course the picture is an exaggeration; only two people have actually become dead before they delivered on what I paid them for, and it probably seems callous to put their entire lives beneath some stupid garbage that I paid $30 or less for but it was funny before I thought about it at length and that was the only time anything about my relationships with those people was pleasant so I will take it.
that I can be systematically unable to update the website for this long and not be stressed out of my mind about it is surely a positive indication. I have been spoiled by all the automated websites where I can just select a picture and it shows up. For this I have to manually upload it and put in the code for it and somehow or another I cannot spare the mental change to go through with that at the moment. After sorting out some prolonged nonsense with the comic book printing website I assure you I will get to posting filler trash that I already put on twitter a week ago.
I have been relettering what turned into pretty much the whole first comic book based on the same offhand remark that had me meticulously relettering book two in 2018, amidst also relettering book 3. It is a somewhat automatic mode, just very time consuming. I am not even necessarily checking for unintelligibility; if one bauble from before is readable but blatantly does not match another on the same page that I just did, I have to change that one also. If it looks too much like I was trying to imitate a font in the version that was printed in 2015, I have to redo it. If a word is HYPHENATED and on two lines, I started making myself redo all of that, which often requires restructuring the area around that. If the bauble’s shape is wrong, because I only decided lope’s should always be circular midway through preparing book 1 the first time and didn’t care that some didn’t match until THIS time, obviously I must redo that. I also decided kumquat’s shouldn’t be in that bad tintin pastiche shape midway through relettering book 2, and again let it slide if it was on a page I had already redone, but since I am re-checking every page, that means everything is up for
look see I am a sick sick person. I can’t draw well enough to be a good artist, but I can make the text readable, of nearly uniform thickness, I can make the containers balanced, consistent shapes.
Apparently I believe that so it is going to eat two weeks of my time every time there is one thing in a book that I want to change which leaves me vulnerable to witnessing other things that are no longer acceptable. I am glad I don’t have the energy to no look I’ll show you whatever beets I am here anyway.
Can you see what is wrong with this little section here? Probably not. At much smaller size on the page you definitely couldn’t. That is even worse! I hate knowing a small problem is there and nobody else seeing it, and just pretending isn’t there. Tiny little pieces of paper stuck to the carpet, I can’t live with that. The little stickers with a number on them stuck to new clothing. When somebody “cuts” off a tag on a piece of clothing, leaving tag residue which is not only worse than a full tag, but much harder to remove since you can’t (and I won’t) grab tag residue to pull the strings out so they can be cut. It has to go. Only I can destroy it.
Part of being able to make the fixes I “need” to make requires separating formerly flat pages, that I had been PROUD to be able to do flat, into multi-layered setups. I would select the color of the text containers, move those up, then expand the selection and fill that in with black. Which works theoretically but since in actuality I was not sick enough to need things to be totally smooth then, expanding the selection makes tiny little one pixel blemishes into these horrible skin diseases that I have to scratch out of existence, then I need to fill in the space on the base layer that I moved this stuff off of because it still has the old outlines which will show through if I move or change the shape of anything. I should be in a hospital. My brain should be connected to a computer as part of a circus sideshow because they can’t elephants anymore and it is not proper to call people with physical deformities “freaks” anymore, but I admit I am a freak and if somebody wants to pay to see a brain melt into porridge amidst the most tedious and pointless fever dream tasks ever taken on voluntarily by somebody whose life has no meaning, they don’t even have to pay since plainly I will do stuff for free just to feel like I matter to an ever less reputable class of people since nobody doing anything with their own life would stick around this one. And sometimes not even then; I could probably name 50 people with no skill or inspiration who watched my pages, acted like they cared, then abruptly didn’t despite still caring about the same brain dead hacks they cared about before and after me but you would not have heard of them and deservedly so. Including the one whose ultimate life advice was ‘let it go.gif’ if I have one undeniable attribute it is my fragrant inability to let any it go. If it will be my death, it was a life I could not have lived while attempting to let its go on the counsel of people who have less value than monopoly money which is at least pretty and distinguishable from other sorts of money.
I actually made a SECOND picture for somebody since I worked so hard on the first one that it was terrible even though that person has no bearing on my existence and probably already forgot about it. There are people who come to me every time I offer to do stuff for money and ask for something even though I know they have no money so I would have to do it for free if I did and sometimes I do. I am already buried in projects I will never finish that will haunt me until my death. Me offering to do work for money guarantees in the near future I’m going to be doing extra work that neither further my goals or gets me even the most pitiful organ grinder monkey money.
And apostrophes! I drew them vertically mirrored for years! I was so proud of myself to be drawing real typewriter apostrophers instead of ‘ those stupid things, even though I wasn’t drawing them properly and nobody cared except for me, later, when I realized they were wrong. It shouldn’t really matter since I have to rewrite all the text, apostrophes included, but a month ago I thought I wouldn’t and could get away with just changing the apostrophites.
But I feel a little better now.