So as a way to motivate myself for not having updates, I’m going to post some bad, embarrassing old comics on my blog each time I miss an update. Now, if some of you remember, I said in my last blog post about my old comics that I would post something a little more recent than Hoops, but my god, there is just so many of these comics. I can’t believe I did so many and got through school with good grades. I flipped through the piles of notebooks and picked out a few for the chopping block. Here’s one:

The reason they’re in Chicago is because it’s part of the big story arc where they try to get to college in Dallas but the Bullies blow up their car so shenanigans ensue as they try to figure things out instead of calling home because apparently they’re all orphans. Considering that Hoops and his buddies are from Montana, the Bullies must be some kind of Montana-based gang if they’re willing to blow up a car.

So our TV-head hero, Sid, is running from a cop, carrying a bag of stuff he’s presumably stolen. Our clever protagonist then ditches the cop and hides behind a lamp that apparently someone left in the middle of the street. City workers are must be pretty lazy and don’t feel like putting streetlights up anymore.

Here’s a good question: What makes the characters with the inanimate objects for heads different from the other inanimate objects? And why do some characters, like our cop, have regular heads (with correct proportions if normal people had watermelon-sized heads) while some guys have random shit for heads? Why is no one calling them out on this? Is the cop trying to beat our tube-headed friend because he’s different than everyone else? Who knows? I certainly didn’t care, apparently.

So anyway, after evading the cops by hiding behind the shittiest-drawn lamp in the world, Sid gets abducted by aliens. In the middle of the city, apparently. Aliens just don’t give a fuck anymore, they’ll just abduct anyone they like in broad daylight. What’re you gonna do about it? They’re aliens, they can blow shit up from the sky. I’m assuming its broad daylight because I don’t see any stars/black dots on a white background. Then they start chasing Sid on their spaceship. The lamp, however, doesn’t make it.

Here’s a couple more in the series, when Hoops leaves Chicago and goes to Las Vegas.

So Hoops’ love of his life, Jessica, is driving in Chicago for some weird reason, and Hoops decides to blindly follow her. I looked a few comics back, and she was in Montana, with no plans of going anywhere. And now she’s in a convertible in Chicago. Why??? Why is she even here? Does she have the ability to warp in front of Hoops?

This is a problem I still feel I struggle with: writing a convincing female character. It doesn’t matter so much to me on Pretty Jeff (obviously) as it does on other projects like Fencing Club Adventures. Although I still feel like I’m floundering around, I have improved, because Jessica is flatter than the paper she is drawn on. She’s nothing more than a bunch of stick figure breasts hopping around, enticing Hoops at every turn with her poorly-drawn hair.

So in the next comic, Hoops has apparently driven blindly to Las Vegas. From Chicago. And didn’t even know it until pigskin-head pointed it out. It’s a 1,758 mile trip! There is no way anyone can drive there without knowing it. And to top it all off, I got an A in Geography class when making this comic. You have failed me, Toledo Public School system! All we did was watch “Finding Nemo.” We learned NOTHING about where shit is in the world!

And here’s another thing: If his buddies didn’t want to go to Las Vegas, why didn’t they take the wheel from Hoops? Throw the idiot out and move on with your lives. It’s funny that I’m pointing this out, because having an idiot with some unwilling but still loyal friends is something that other webcomic artists do. Guys, listen, you have to give a reeealllly strong reason that people would hang out with a dangerous idiot before you start your comic. Trust me, I’ve done this before. I’m a professional.

Oh, here’s a funny thing I noticed. Apparently, Vegas casinos just give you cash when gambling instead of using that whole chip system. Looking back at this with about 6 years more experience and countless hours of CSI: Las Vegas (or should I say, the only good CSI), this is just plain embarrassing.

Alright, that’s enough self-flagellation for tonight. If I miss any more updates, I’ll try to throw together another one of these posts. Or if I just really want to rip into more of my old comics.

But of course, a moment of silence before I end this post.

So the site design is going to be going through some changes in the next few days. I’ll be cracking open my book on CSS and working on revising the design. Probably best to change it now, with the comic being a year old. No idea how to sync up my site files with Dreamweaver so I’ll be doing the changes directly. So some weird things will be happening. One moment, you’ll be reading a comic about my problems with stress, and as soon as you press the Next button, the entire site as you know it will be transformed into Stinky Pete, the journal comic about hardcore Halo fan Pete who can’t stand all the noobs he has to deal with online. All of his comics are stained with Cheeto dust and Mountain Dew.

I was wasting more of my valuable time surfing the internet when I came across this comic. I think it applies to pretty much every creative profession, not just cartoonists.

I do wonder though why people know more about Van Gogh and his struggles than other successful artists. It’s even weirder that with so many methods of spreading images to people and finding ways to get your name out in the world that people tend to think making a career in art is difficult. What’s difficult about it? We live in a consumerist society where people have so much disposable income that they will buy bottled water for a dollar instead of using their own tap water. There’s always someone out there willing to shell out some cash for a picture.

Did some hourlies yesterday that I’ve posted.

It’s like the hourlies I did before, except that I’m not putting them on this website. Instead, they’re posted on a forum where a whole bunch of other people are doing the same thing. You should go check some of them out.

So, like all the other comic artists out there, I too am taking up the challenge of doing a twenty-four page comic from start to finish in twenty-four hours. Everything must be completed within that period; idea, script, sketches, penciling, inking, and even putting the book together. Let’s see how this goes.