The Highwayman cinematic universe

     Once again I thought I had something I could type up complaining about the wasted opportunities we keep seeing in the way people create and consume media today, but I just don't have it in me right now.  October is drifting past me in a haze, I'm dying for the cold to come back while everyone makes things with ink.
     I'm not an inktober kind of guy, since I can't really work with it at all.  If I tried to make things with ink and paper the way I do on a tablet, it would cost thousands of dollars.   The tablet lets me fuck up all day and it doesn't cost a thing besides time.
     Still, I did start off October with a new project.  I moved on to the second pass of this after finishing the first off about two months ago.  It will need another round after that, because I'm still shit at things like backgrounds and sets.  I think it does display a pretty solid improvement from where it started, though.

     I'm mostly sure you can probably click these to make them bigger, I literally never read my own blog to check afterwards.

      Don't know a lot about architecture.

      Man that guy's arm is at a weird angle, it makes him look like he's hiking his pants up or something.  That's something that'll get fixed in the next pass.

      That one is so different because I did a big edit on a few pages and moved some things around.  That guy pointing on the bottom is a bandit named RipDick, which is really stupid because it's the face of Swedish actor/wrestler Tor Johnson, who I suppose is most famous for being the big zombie guy in "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Get it? Tor Johnson, Rip Dick? Right now the face is a pretty blatant trace, I'll have to work on it.
     The good thing about putting in whatever placeholder dialogue is you look at it later and realize it's the worst possible thing, so anywhere you go from there is up.

     Well that's that.  

FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:RE[LOL]SO TRUE

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     Have you noticed what the kids are up to now? It's egregious.  I know we got a little crazy when we were younger, but it was nothing like now.  It's as if any sense of restraint has gone out the window, yeah?  I don't know where we went wrong with them,  or what could even be done.

     I mean, they never put them down, right? Everywhere they go they bring the damn things along, they can't live without.  Well, we got along fine when I was younger.  We didn't spend all our
time buried in technology.  We got out there and lived life.  We weren't rushed like they are now.  They put all this time effort into getting an upgrade, and when they finally do another model has already come out.  We used to socialize, you know? Now they're hunched over all day, squinting at
little devices and ignoring each other.

     So, take my word for it, stone axes and fire starting kits are going to be the end of us.  What will happen to discipline when you don't have to tend a fire bundle all day? How much time do you waste  "knapping" stones? Call me when you can make practical changes on the world around you, for instance killing this sabre-toothed tiger that's abou

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     That was dumb, but here on the internet, everything is dumb.  I realized it had been about 2 months since I put anything up, but there wasn't anything big pressing on me and I choked for content.  As for drawing stuff, I have greasy wheels turning in the dark, but in the meantime I've been idly doing this.  I was a lot more satisfied with it before I wrote the above.

      Gonna recycle that head

wet fart,
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Let off some steam

      Lately, I've been thinking about the action-classic "Commando".  A movie I've watched dozens of times over, but then went several years without viewing.  It had been long enough that I went back to it, just recently, with fresh eyes.  I had always known it as king of the dumb action movies, but never fully appreciated the depth to which that's true.
     When you talk about what makes a movie entertaining, there are several measures.  Some of these are subjective, we don't all have the same tastes.  However, even if a movie falls short in those areas (acting, plot, characters, etc.), there are a few objective measures too.  Basic crew competence (camera operating, lighting), art assets (cg, matte paintings, costume design) post-production (foley, editing) and other nuts-and-bolts areas of production can elevate something that lacks otherwise.

     When a movie meets the objective criteria but not the subjective, you get a standard Summer blockbuster or average Marvel movie;  looks good, totally forgettable.
     When a movie meets the subjective but not the objective, you get into the realm of cult/b movies.  Sam Raimi, Roger Corman, people making movies that are charming as hell on a shoestring budget.

     So what happens when a movie fails both measures of quality, and is still amazing?
     I call this "The Commando Effect".

     I am completely unable to get bored of Commando.  Boom mic dips, continuity errors, cranes visible within shots, clunky dialogue, erratic characters, unimportant.  What is important is that you please don't disturb John Matrix's friend, he's dead tired.  Did you know Matrix eats Green Berets for breakfast?  Or that he can ram a car head-on into a telephone pole at 90 km/h, without being buckled in, and survive without a scratch? 

     I could probably write an extremely long essay on exactly what is going on in Commando, or any other movie this amazing.  An alternate name for this phenomenon could be "The Dolemite Effect".  What it boils down to is this;  yeah, these movies are dumb, but they're confident as fuck.  Nothing in this world is more persuasive than a confident idiot, so much so that I'm willing to believe Bennet, who spent the entirety of the movie talking about how Matrix is too dangerous to fuck with directly, could pull an unprompted 180 and decide that yes, I'm just going to knife fight this guy who just murdered 400 people.


     So anyway, speaking of objectively and subjectively bad

      I just said fuck it and went full scratchy on thumbnailing panels out.  I'm actually pretty close to finishing the first pass of the first story, this is a scene that has the beats worked out from start to finish.  Some of these went up in a previous update, but I included them here for the sake of clarity.  It starts off after the three characters have fucked up by staying up too long and drinking too much, and passing out, missing their opportunity.

      Sometimes thumbnailing just means nothing but stick figures, baby

      Coil rifles are an actual thing, but they're pretty impractical and usually not all that powerful.  I just like the idea of a home brew railgun.

      They did good for once

      That's probably still confusing and unclear to you, but at least I know what's going on.  After the thumbnailing pass, I'll probably find it  a lot easier to progress.  I'll still have to switch some things around or redo some ideas, but it won't be long before a tale of fat men failing come to life.

Bweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

A nebulous cluster of dumb-looking assholes

     But enough about politics! Hah! Do you get it? It's because politics and FAAAAARRRRRRRTT.
Here are some pictures and words.

    

     In my head, the two headed guy here talks like an old math teacher of mine.  Or at least, the exaggerated version of him that built up in my head.  All the hard and sharp edges of his syllables are rounded off, so he'd be all "Hmm yez bleez viggs my gumbuder" whenever windows 3.11 was acting up. "Yez hello I am a Zbider Robod, bay no addenjin do my boorly drawn legz".  The guy on the bottom left is maybe the uniform I would make my henchmen wear, if I got some.

     "Mild disappointment/discomfort" is my favourite emotion to portray.

    
     Maybe my least awful looking snake fellow yet.  Also maybe an accidental Homer?, ?

     I keep falling into the same trap when I try to do comic related things.  Putting too much work into something before the stuff that comes after it is conceptually finalized.  This time I tried really hard not to do that and results followed.  This first one is the page before the "aah, empty" page from the last update.  I like to be vulgar.

     This immediately follows the "aah, empty" page.  I like to say I enjoy high-concept comedy but then I turn around and everything is "the heavyset man pees, then falls over.  In the distance, a fart."

     I have no idea how to even begin organizing the approach to this, so I'm mostly just winging it. I've still got a pile of in between pages to scribble out, but I'm pretty close the the end of the first scribble pass of this (issue? episode? story? volume?).  Following the scribbles comes sketches, then lines and background.  I'd like to paint it in but that still turns up looking like garbage, see panel 1 of the "Shitty Raiders" strip I put up a year ago.

mmm bop,

Hands and feet, Incomplete

     A bitter wind howls against the bedroom window as I wallow in the glow of a late-stage hangover.  To my right, my cat, Flapjack, is sleeping off his dinner.  He snores quietly, and I'm positive I heard him fart, just once.  As the abrasive malaise of too much wine slowly fades, what remains is a nagging feeling that I should try harder.

     I suppose I have been; when I first started doing this the updates were mostly single-image pictures, and now I've usually crammed three or four in there.  It's probably a good thing that I'm not satisfied, it makes me push more. It's still a frustratingly slow procedure to outline/write/thumbnail in a comic structure, but the more I do it, the more sense it makes at least.

     So here's some recent leavings.  There are more, but they're pretty much failures that I put too much work into and aren't worth your time or mine.   First off is form practice, and a little bit of conceptual character design. The top left figure is someone that I have an idea of a story arc for, but they aren't finalized or even named yet.  

     One big problem I have is drawing a figure that isn't just standing blandly, with arms and legs being uninteresting.  Another is drawing a person from a perspective that isn't Garfieldian.  Straight-on shots of people facing each other aren't interesting, regardless of how much lasagna they are eating.

     

     There's a question that burns on my mind daily, and I ask it of my cat at every opportunity.  It might be easier to just get something that asks the question for me.

     I almost consider this a failed attempt, but when you are implored by such a handsome face, how can you refuse.

     This piece is called "Completely normal and average human, behatted"

     And here's another thumbnail page of the comic I'm working on.  The chubby man taking a piss is a catalyst for a major plot point.

     BYE

From the Mouth of My Canon

     Canon is the enemy.

     If you aren't familiar with the word, that might be because you're a functional adult.  For the rest of us, it's the idea of an official lore in some narrative structure, usually from children's media that adults can't get enough of.  For example, after the first Star Wars was in theatres, but before Empire, there was a book written that took place in between.  It had Luke and Leia hook up, because the idea of them being siblings hadn't been thought of yet.   This book is now non-canonical, meaning it isn't officially part of the story.

     For almost any narrative, some level of canon is essential.  Without some kind of bedrock for the structure to rest on, it falls apart.  The problem is, it's tempting to get too bogged down and completely hem yourself in. 

     An example of this is Adventure Time.  One of my favourite cartoons of the last 15 years, or at least it was for the first few seasons.  The entire premise was a boy had a magic dog, they were bros,  and they went on adventures.  The world around them was whatever it needed to be for the purposes of that story, and was set up in such a way that the creators were only limited by their imagination.   Skip ahead three or four years, and the original creative team wants to move on to other projects.  The show is still doing well, so the network wants to keep it going.  New writers are brought in once the originals are gone, and these new writers have a different understanding of the material; that of fans, rather than creators.  See also The Simpsons, from Armen Tanzarian onward.

     You don't necessarily have to understand something to enjoy it.  Adventure Time is pleasant to look at, the dog farts, and silly things happen.  The intended audience of children might not ever notice anything has changed.  A manchild like me will, though.  Ideas that served their purpose as vague explanations of why the world they were in was so strange were put under a microscope, picked apart and labelled until all the mystery was gone.

     Star Wars is another example.  A series trapped by it's own backstory, unable to tread new ground for fear of alienating fans with something different and losing the hundreds of millions of dollars invested.

     I guess what I'm saying is less Tolkien, more Moebius.  Anyway here's more scrawlings.

      This will likely be a motherfucker to paint.

      Zig-zagging from top left to bottom right: The Saddest Janitor, man holding drugs, the handsomest man, the second handsomest man, a bad angle, and marionette pantomime.

That little duck face in the upper right corner is my greatest failure.

     Still have back issues of Heavy Metal on my mind, as evidenced by Upsetting Hooters.

     The bottom right is me presenting you with this update.

Comic characters should smoke more

     Here's where I lie about what's happening in these pages

     In pulp sci-fi/fantasy stories, you HAVE to have someone smoking while they drink.  I'm pretty sure Moebius wrote a book about it or something. 
    

     The guy that runs the karaoke night doesn't appreciate you badmouthing Creed.

Bragging to the bartender about having a big money deal in the works, except the bartender isn't a hot lady, but a dumpy man.  

      Finally, this is me walking away after making this update.

Brrt