Grrl Power #23 – I promise it’s not radioactive elephant tusks
Ug, hate leaving this one hanging like this, but occasionally I’m not going to fit a complete thought on a page. The questions is, do I make the pages longer, which take longer to draw, and also will screw me when I’m trying to compile this in to a book or… well it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if I was posting them faster obviously.
Of course I could go the other route and put half as much on a page and post twice as often, but then they wouldn’t end on a joke – not that these are all gag-a-week type pages, but then basically every other one would be a pregnant pause like this one. If only I could knock one of these out in 2 hours, it wouldn’t be a problem. :P
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It’s good to not have a gag-a-week style. It’s fine for a weekly comic, but if this is to be put into a book, if each page ends with a laugh then the story won’t progress and the laughs will get stale. I think this page does more to develop Sydney’s character than earlier funny pages do. =D
I am pleased by story episodes. As fun as the stand alones are, I always went back to the complex episodes…
Oh, wait. Talking in GitS again.
Just a quick note – you misspelled Sydney’s name as “Syndey”.
Twice, at that :-\
What the hell, attack of the dyslexics. I really wish Photoshop had a spellchecker. I’ll fix that when I get home.
Or you could just say he suddenly came down with the flu.
Oh, and in the second panel,
thier -> their.
It’ll be interesting to see how
this “Secret Identity” thing develops, btw…
That typo is still there, just to remind you. ;-)
It’s called suspense. And it’s a good thing. Don’t feel you need to cram a joke in every page. I don’t see your comic as that kind of single strip type of story.
Don’t worry about getting more comics done or posting faster, just focus on keeping your update schedule. A lot of comics fall back on that and can’t recover *cough*vgcats*cough*
As I said, don’t worry about it, you’ll get faster the more you get used to drawing. Also think about what takes the longest, sketching, inking, or finishing the comic (color, shadows, etc).
Yeah I’ll stick to the schedule I’ve got at a minimum, and I won’t erode my modest buffer, but if I can post more often, I’ll do that occasionally as well. I think that will happen as I get in to some action sequences. For those I’ll have to draw larger as 8 panels on a page doesn’t work well with that sort of thing, but at the same time, checking your weekly webcomic to see that the new page only has 3 panels on it isn’t very satisfying either, even if they’re full of explosions and catfights.
Wording in panel 5’s a little awkward, using an adjective as a noun. Either “it’s not dangerous” or “illegality.”
I love that case. It reminds me of a bank tube from the drive-thru tellers’.
It is, but that’s partially intentional. As much as I like Aaron Sorkin’s writing, all of his characters do sound like they’re reading lines written by an excellent screen writer. I also like the far other side of the spectrum, the Kevin Smith dialogue or even the retro-scripted stuff like Dr. Katz where dialogue sounds really natural. That’s not easy to pull off with word bubbles, and when I wrote that dialogue for Syd I left it sounding awkward like she’s winding down as she’s talking, like she’s trying to think of that thing to say that will make it all better but instead her grammar is suffering for it. In my head that’s how it comes off, but I can totally see how it would read weird.
The wording seemed fine to me. Showing Sydney leaning against the wall and the “…”s made it pretty clear that her thoughts weren’t getting completed like she was just worn out from all the poor lying.
Ah yes the fatal crux of the hero persona ballancing the stabilty andsafty of your real life with your dangereous heroic alter ego’s life
Yes, but you find it is ALOT easier to do if you don’t have quite as ‘powerful’ a set of powers. Halo would have problems with that, it’s true, but what about a supervillain who’s power is absolute control over spoons? A little easier to work with, right?
((DAVE, I will right now STRONGLY suggest a Sympathetic Villain who’s power is ‘spoon control’ for a later storyline, like maybe a winding-down from a big plot event, light-heart funny storyline. ))
Well I do have a villain in mind who will be… let’s just say, non-standard in a lot of ways. They won’t all be goofy but some will definitely have a humorous angle to them.
And that’s all I ask ~
:)
yeah that would kinda suck go to the supervillian conventions and never tell your super powers sothere is this big pool of what your powers are and once it comes out you are made fun of at every convention after words “hey jim do anything evil with spoons yet?” YES I HAVE I CARVED OUT YOUR HEART!!! screams jim as he tackles a rather prominate super villan to the ground and carves out his heart * hmmmm spoon master jim is a dark brooding man but yes i get what your saying much easier to conceil that you have dominion over spoonware then it is to conceil 8 amgical and ancient orbs that you have to put in a poster tube on your back
Realy love the comic so far!
I have some questions though:
1: Isn’t Dabbler from Rann’s “Wereworld”? Did he lend you the character, do you lend him the character or ar you just sharing her?(….yup…that sounded weird)
2: Will there be a villain with german accent in the actual story? Zat sure vould be great! :)
Thanks! Yup, Dabbler is an oooold character of mine and Rann thought she was nifty and he asked me if I’d lend her to him and I thought it sounded fun so why not? I wasn’t planning to do the Grrl Power webcomic quite that long ago, but the concept was in my head as maybe something I’d do as a standard comic or something, and most of the characters that will be showing up, the main ones, have been floating around in my head for years. Dabbler’s received a few design tweaks since then but she’s largely the same.
I’m not sure if any of the villains I have planned for the comic will have German accents, but the intro RP session won’t be the last time that tabletop gaming shows up in the comic.
Cool, thanks for the fast reply! I’ll be looking forward to it.
I’m sure Dabbler loves to be shared…
Wouldn’t worry about ending each one on a joke. Ever noticed how you can make one silly scene, follow it up with another one using the same characters, and eventually your jokes actually form a character? One that has it’s own personality and life?
Then the others around them start growing into people as well causing them to act on their own which creates conflicts over differing objectives?
It’s amazing at times how they grow and change what once seemed to be a simple thing into something else entirely.
And if you want a dangerous spoon master, remember that spoons are probably in most homes, past most places security defenses so can be used for spying.
Metal ones can be sharpened to allow them to cut wires and gas lines, crawl into victims bodies like razor snakes, or down the throat into the windpipe.
Metal ones would also be fairly resistant to damage and hard to stop since they’re so small.
And I thank you. If you hadn’t suggested a spoon-master as a joke first I’d probably never of thought to try and flip it into how to make one dangerous.
Youknow dave i just realized somthing as a comic artist you ave to have som what of a split personality or slightly cracked cuz you hae to create several personas out of nothing each one diffrent and dynamicand very much their own person but if you look at it in a diffrent light your a kin to a god except that you dont demand your creataions to worship you like gods of old , just a thought
Well every writer does that. Most characters are bits and pieces of yourself sliced in to their own containers, and then rounded out with the missing bits. The trick is writing for characters who don’t share any aspects of your personality, like in my case, villains. At least 2 dimensional ones. I can come up with some simple villains, but hopefully as the comic evolves, you see that there are more than a few reasons not to be a supervillain in this world, which will create some writing challenges I think.
Sydney walks funny. The average person goes right arm back, left foot forward, and then left arm back, right foot forward when they walk. In panel two, she’s going left arm forward, left foot forward, and right arm back, right foot back. :P
Yeah that’s definitely a weird way to walk, but it was supposed to be a funny looking march, like she’s purposely clomping out – but you’re right, I should have swapped which arm is up.
Well, if you were going for funny-looking, then you hit the nail on the head. All the awkward, uncoordinated kids in my Pathfinder club march like that, poor things. :P
shes still cought in her head from trying to explain the tube so the simple automatic proccess of walking is currantly a concious task and as such odd just as her wind down speach is
I have the sneaking suspicion that her answer of “It’s full of artifacts that give me superpowers” was the truth because she’d just got caught totally without a lie.
I think that she is honest with her awnser this time. WITHOUT telling us whats in it. There is the possibly that she’s not to sure herself. Mystery origin; classic.
Don’t know why, but the second last panel on this page is one of my all-time favourites for the whole strip.
…not everything in life is a gag. :-)
Yeah, looking back, I like it too. I feel obligated to cram as much into a page now as possible, but a moment to pause for effect is nice too.
Something you apparently neglected to cram into this page is the inside-of-door push-bar from page #16. It should be visible in panels 3, 4, and 5, here, while the outside-of-door pull-handle should be visible through the glass (on the right, relative to Sydney) in panel 3.
Well, reading back through the archives to remind me where we came from I figured given then end of page comment at the end of the comment I’d throw in my 2 cents and hope it gets read, but I appreciate a comic that can develop characters without feeling the need to make a gag in every strip published. In fact the comics that feel the need for a laugh ever strip tend to be the ones I stop reading after a little bit, but your comic is one that I’ve stayed up to date on as much as possible because of the maturity that comes from not needing a funny strip every time.
Thanks, I always feel the need to deliver on the funny, but yeah, sometimes you need to have a somber moment to contrast it all.
I think Sydney is going to need adamantium glasses.
By the way I love the pathos on this page. And Sydney’s expressiveness throughout.
It’s not illegal if nobody’s thought to make a law against it.
I just realized….when did she get her shoe out of the back room?
Either when Joel brought it out, for her, when he came out. Several pages ago, albeit handled out of shot. Or in panel 1.5 above.
Well spotted mind. But we do have to accept that stuff happens in between the pages and, sometimes, also in between panels. Retrieving the shoe would have added nothing to plot, nor character development. And, if DaveB even thought of the point, it probably did not inspire a gag.
I think this is the page where I fell for Sydney. All her evasions have been getting to her, more than they have been frustrating Joel. And yet, here, she reveals that she is doing it mainly to protect him,* rather than for selfish reasons.
Plus she is clearly speaking from her heart here.
That is a super-hero worthy of empathising with. And it would be nice to find a decent girl, like her, powers or no powers.
* And other people, for that matter, from the way she phrases it.
‘just in case’ Yeah! Exactly!
As someone who goes on archive binges every couple months rather than reading steadily, I prefer having comics like they are, with an interesting art style and a standard length, rather than trying to do anything weird to get the timing just right.
I just noticed… Her glasses.
Just started re-reading this series for the third time, this time making sure to read all your notes for each page.
You know what?
I *REALLY* liked how you ended this one on an incomplete thought. It is a master use of literary devices.
Especially knowing what comes on the next page, lol.