Tag Archives: Adam

Pony Rebuttal

Last comic, I may have depicted my very understanding wife in a… less than understanding light.  The problem is that with any sort of… dramatic reenactment, you really need a hero and a villian, and unfortunately in order to cast myself as the hero… well, you know the rest.

So, in the interest of fairness and balance, I offer this rebuttal on her behalf.  Now, I try not to do this… I really do… but I get so excited.  If it’s not MLP, it’s my own comic, my novel-writing aspirations, building Servos, something from work, a new tv show, my ever-growing collection of giant robots, some new electronic gadget that I desire… the subject may change, but the mantra generally remains the same.  Maybe by venting my own demons here, I’ll be able to help not do this… so much… in the future.  We’ll see.

Also… love the hovertext for this one.  Not sure who’ll get it, but I love it.

Con-tagious

What happens at Penguicon stays at Penguicon.  Whenever possible.  If you watch MLP and experience itching, burning, flaky scalp, uncontrollable giggling, bronieitis, or inflamed cutie mark, please contact a medical professional as soon as possible.

I was going to remind everyone that Sunday’s Tropecast is going to be all about My Little Pony, but our extra special Ponyologist Yamino of Sister Claire is unavailable, so instead we’re going to be covering Guilty Pleasures… which will, of course, include a good amount of discussion about MLP.  Never fear though, as soon as the schedules line back up, I promise you we WILL DO Tropecast is Magic.

Old Friends

I’m still not 100% sure what to do about The Apple of Discord – I’ve been trying to come up with ideas for it, but my AoD-worth creative process has, at least for now, run dry.  I go through cycles of artistic… drive, I guess you could call it… sometimes I paint, or write, or build Servos… other times, like now, I start a brand new webcomic on a whim.  Right now, AoD is just not on the books… but it still leaves me with a question – what do I do with it?  Should it be put on hiatus until I’m “feeling it” again?  Ended? Steal the best bits and roll them into Webcomic Hell?  I just don’t know.

Anyway, if you have any feelings about AoD, I’d love your input.

Good Talk

And this ends our Penguicon journey.  Fortunately, I have a lot of podcasts I listen to which, combined with Margott’s snoring and Hal’s stoic disapproval, kept me company the entire drive home.

Lesson to all you con-goers.  At least one night of the convention, SLEEP.

Homeward Bound

Alright, nearly done with the Penguicon comics.  At least for this year.  If you want to see more of my adventures at Penguicon, my fellow Tropecast host Alex Heberling has a couple more comics that chronicle our Saturday night together.

In July, I’ll be going to Ikasucon, so there will be a whole new batch of convention comics – and hey, Ikasucon is an ANIME CONVENTION, which is only peripherally my genre, so that ought to be interesting.  Also, we’re doing Cinematic For The People again – maybe this time with better results.

Unfortunately, Margott won’t be accompanying me on this adventure – instead, I’ll be joined by Impy and Poe of Errant Story and Does Not Play Well With Others, who I now have to figure out how to draw.

The Healing Power of Rick Asiley

Continuing my stories from Penguicon 2011.  As you may have picked up, I did not have a good Saturday night… the CFTP panel/show fell apart, and I didn’t get to do my usual attack-on-my-internal-organs by hitting up all the room parties (but I did make it to Barfleet – thank the gods for Barfleet).  I was in a bit of a funk Sunday morning; not only from the intense bout of “we don’t want to have to flush this booze, but the bar closes in 5 minutes – DRINK IT!” drinking that I did Saturday night, but also from the fact that I still had not accomplished any of my goals for Pengicon – sales, social, or a couple of other s’es that we’ll get into later.

That’s where long-time friend-of-the-comic and occasional convention co-conspirator Margott came in.  I had originally brought her along to watch the booth while I did panels (the proverbial “booth babe”, I title she flaunted with pride) and she wound up being both a source of frustration… of many types… as well as a source of support during some of my darker hours.

On the ride up to Penguicon (it’s not a terrible trip, but it’s a good 5 hours from where I live) we had broken into some Queen.  She sung “Somebody To Love” about three times, which given the acoustics inside a PT Cruiser, was about two times too many.  Still, she likes to sing.  So come Sunday morning, as I was busy wallowing in my own funk, she pulled out my laptop and discovered that  there are a bunch of karaoke videos (music plus the words) on Youtube.  And thus the singing began again.  First she jumped from song to song based on YouTube, but as the second panel depicts, after a while we started getting requests.

And a few songs later, once we’d reached a critical mass of dozens and dozens of people around my table, a large and joyful Rickroll broke out, with strains of Rick Asiley echoing down the sleepy Sunday Morning hallways of the convention, washing over those doing the walk (or stagger) of shame back to their hotel rooms from a night of partying, just trying to get packed up to go home.

Of course, with all those people standing around, nobody (still) bought anything.  But hey, I rickrolled Penguicon.  Sorta.  That’s gotta count for something, right?

Enter Samantha

One of the hard things I’ve had to do the last couple of years is balance personal life, work, and webcomics.  I’ve frequently failed at this.

Frequently.

In fact, right now, I should really be asleep, because I work tonight (this is written Thursday mid-afternoon) and we’ve got a terrible thing going on at work with mandatory overtime and meetings and contract negotiations, and I’m pretty sure one of my coworkers was drug off behind a bank of filing cabinets and eaten by a marsupial earlier this week…

Ok, I just checked, and apparently, that’s not what “gout” means.

Anyway, Sam is an active and engaged little tornado, and she loves technology (even if she does not understand it).  She has figured out, just by watching me, how to plug the USB for my tablet into my laptop and how to use the pen.  She doesn’t know WHAT she’s doing, but by god she knows that she’s doing it.  She’s also mastered YouTube, and has on several occasions successfully navigated from one episode of Binka to the next for extended viewing marathons.  So while you’ve been reading Apple Valley or The Apple of Discord the last year or so, there’s a good chance that at some point in the creation of that comic, Sam has probably slobbered on it.

That, or it was a marsupial.

 

 

Oh, hey, today’s shirt comes to us courtesy of Selling Out for Fun and Profit – and yes, I do actually own a me-sized version of this shirt.  If you’ve got a webcomic related shirt that you’d like to see me wear in a future Webcomic Hell, drop me a line or tweet me.  You don’t actually have to send me a shirt to get me to draw it… but it certainly would help.  I wear a 4XL.  (how’s that for “selling out”?)

Market Forces

Starting with Penguicon this year, I’m bringing along a few spare Tom Servos to sell whenever I go to conventions.  I don’t actually make any money on most conventions, and since nobody’s ever heard of any of my comics, they fill up table room and bring people over to my booth that might not have come otherwise.  Of course, transitioning the discussion from how I use a PVC endoskeleton of my own design to the fact that I also draw like… three webcomics, and have stuff for sale for all of those as well… is usually a rough process, and very few actually survive the transition.  Still, I do what I can.

I started out with 4 Servos at Penguicon – one is Hal, my trusted sidekick (featured here in the comic) who goes with me to all the conventions anyway; beyond that, I had a blue and gold “googie” inspired Servo, a pink-and-white Princess Servo, and a futuristic green and silver “Alien” Servo.  I donated the Alien to the charity auction (because I’m awesome like that) and kept B&G and the Princess to sell.  I originally asked $100 for the Princess (as she was a lot more complicated, with real working electronics) and $75 for Blue and Gold.  After no takers for a day and change, by Saturday night I managed to unload B&G on a lovely couple for $60, at which time I knocked the Princesses’ price tag down to $75.  Eventually, she also sold… late Sunday, right before the end of the con… for $60.  And the Alien Servo I’d given to the charity auction?  Well… he went for $60 too.

In other words, I think I’ve found my price point.

If you’d like to see pictures of the Servos in question; Hal, the sold Servos, or some other ones I’ve built for various people, I strongly recommend checking out the Bot Building section here on WCH.  And if you might be interested in buying one of my Servos… ah, who am I kidding.

Father’s Day

This is a true story.

With Father’s Day this last weekend, I started thinking about the day I learned I was a father.  I can’t say it was a “good” day… not for the news, but for the sequence of events leading up to that.

It was just before Christmas in 2008.  I’d worked all night, but that morning Jacque and I opted to go into nearby Beavercreek for a little last minute shopping.  We took Jacque’s pickup truck – a little teal Ford 150 flareside – and took off with a morning of shopping and lunching.  Unfortunately her truck had other thoughts… it turns out that when she got her oil changed recently, the auto place had removed the oil but not… actually… replaced it… leaving it with just enough oil to get us to the exit before our destination, where it threw a rod and we sputtered to a halt.

We managed to putter to a mechanic, who told us what we were afraid already… that the truck did not survive the adventure.  We called a tow truck, and the mechanic let us stay in their waiting room until the truck arrived.  Their waiting room wasn’t heated, so I (being a gentlemen) gave my coat to my wife.  It took about an hour for the tow truck to arrive, and by the time they got there I was feeling pretty funky.

Then, we rode back in the towtruck.  I am not a small person, and the cab was really… tiny… and by the time we got back to the house, I was actively ill.  I thought it might have been motion sickness, but it turned out that I was also running an incredible fever.  Like, I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t actually there; time started moving backwards at one point, and I was starting to taste colors.  I went to bed.  A few hours later, the sequence of events in today’s comic took place.  And that’s when I knew I was going to be a dad.

…or possibly a banana.

Cinematic Failure

Penguicon 2011.  This really happened.

For a full breakdown of the incident… and breakdown is the best term here, read this.

To see the immediate fallout from the panel, check out Alex’s Guide for the next phase.