This one goes way, waaaaay back. WKRP was on TV when I was so little that I’ve only seen it in reruns. Still, even if you’ve never seen the show a day in your life, you’ll get a kick out of the Thanksgiving Turkey Drop.
Foiled again
The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch
When I first started drawing comics, I tried to draw every comic with a full (or almost-full) view of all the characters, full backgrounds, no cut-and-paste characters, and accounting for almost every minute of the characters lives.
I also, strangely, almost ever used the beat panel, or as some apparently call it, the Silent Penultimate Panel (SPP).
It’s been almost two years since I started drawing comics (December 14th being the anniversary) and a lot has changed. I still have to physically stop myself from drawing all of every character. I still draw fairly detailed backgrounds, but even I don’t know where the hell Lila’s desk is or why it’s surrounded by a sea of orange. My anti-cut-and-paste stance made it about 6 comics, and I do skip around a bit more in characters’ lives (because, really, walking around and stuff gets pretty boring).
March 27, 2005, was the first comic I posted where the empty panel didn’t just stand for the passage of time or a different camera view, but the first true “beat panel” I attempted wasn’t until April 29, 2006.
Even now I’m kind of torn on them. They take up a lot of space, comic-wise, and don’t accomplish as much, and I’m not sure I’m good enough a writer to really say that they’re effective when I use them. So I try to avoid them (though lately I’ve abused them a bit).
And maybe that’s a good thing, because today I found The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch, a blog specifically dedicated to display the abuse of beat-panels. Veeeeery eeenteresting. And definitely has me thinking more about my timing.
Is that supposed to be good news?
Child’s Play 2006
This year, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia finally finally finally got involved in Child’s Play and while I don’t honestly expect anyone to give me anything in exchange for this scrawly comic and whine-fest that I host, with the holidays coming and much stuff going on, the best present you-the-reader could give to me would be to give to them.
Why, you ask?
Well, as has been mentioned before, my husband has Cystic Fibrosis. (As does Lila’s husband Cole in the comic. Coincidence?) Nighthawk’s been treated at CHoP. He’s been hospitalized at CHoP. He’s become healthy again within their halls. And he’s been bored senseless in between.
Hospitals look scary when you first get there, especially where emergency rooms and stuff are involved, but really most of the time they are boring. Sometimes you’re so sick you don’t care. Other times, you’re so healthy that you can get up and wander around and make trouble scaring the nurses by drinking apple juice out of the plastic urinal bottles. In between, you’re too tired to get up (or not allowed because of IVs or tests or whatever), and you’ve already seen everything on TV (or can’t afford to have it on) and you filled up your coloring book and you can’t even hang out with the other kids because you’re contagious or they are or maybe they’re too sick to play. And when it’s over the holidays and your folks are strapped for cash because you’re in the hospital and they have to miss work and they have to pay ridiculous co-pays on the insurance and Philly isn’t anywhere close to where you actually live, and gas isn’t cheap, well, it sucks big time.
So if all you do this winter is buy one book, or one video game, or one movie that’s going to keep a bored and sick kid a little happier, well, you’ve done something that looks little but is actually very big.
(And you don’t have to give to CHoP — you could give to any Child’s Play hospital. Or to any other hospital that’s put a wish list up on Amazon. Or just to your local hospital. You know, whatever works for you.)
As for me, I have some money I’ve saved up for charity that I have to go spend now. Thanks!
Ohnorobot! comic search finally in place.
So I finally got off my butt and added an Ohnorobot search to the site. (Note the addition of a new searchbox to the left.)
Of course, it needs your help to transcribe comics…. either by using the link you just saw, or by clicking a comic title in the archive and looking to see if it has a “Transcribe This Comic” button under the comic. (For the newest comics, click the “navigation links” link underneath the comic on the homepage.) If you see the transcribe button, go ahead and clicky-clicky!
(hint: some of the early comics have transcriptions in the alt tags for the images, as that’s how I’d originally planned to make the site searchable.)
Next up: I might actually advertise on Project Wonderful.
Oh, and it’d probably be good if I started Saturday’s comic.
Rolling the dice.
Well, This is an interesting little hole in government regulations. Let’s hope they figure that one out in a hurry.