Tom: Anyway, so back to Shaenon Garrity and Narbonic and all that

Shaenon: Yeah. The important stuff.

Shaenon: Me.

Tom: What is your impression of the world of comics/comic books/online comics. I mean, contextualize what you do, if you wouldn't mind/

Tom: .

Shaenon: My impression is that we are ALL INSANE!

Tom: Haah

Shaenon: Contextualize how?

Shaenon: Forgive me; it's been so long since my English-major days...

Tom: I don't know exactly. Let me ask you a question I've asked you before. Why a daily strip in these days? Why on the web with this form? And who are these thousands of people doing similar things and frankly, why aren't they as good as you? (We can edit out the last answer if you want to be extrememly smug.)

Shaenon: Nobody is as good as me. It just ain't happening.

Shaenon: Anyhoo....

Shaenon: I think people still love daily comic strips, or at least the idea of daily comic strips, but the modern newspaper page is so restrictive that it's virtually impossible to draw anything interesting.

Shaenon: (Not that there aren't good newspaper strips today; I like "Zits," "Mutts," "Rose Is Rose," "For Better Or For Worse"...)

Shaenon: But even from my list of choice picks, you can see what the problem is. These are all extremely safe strips. And visually, they have to work miracles just to fit a halfway interesting picture into three tiny panels.

Tom: Right. So the reason so many still try to cram stuff into the same panels but on the web- it really surprised me.

Shaenon: "Rose Is Rose" has some very impressive art, which Pat Brady often achieves by composing his panels diagonally, this giving himself a little more room.

Tom: Ah- I guess I've noticed that.

Shaenon: Yeah, on the web you can theoretically have billions of panels, with each panel ten feet wide... but most people don't. Possible reasons:

Shaenon: 1. The four-panel structure has immense appeal. There's something rewarding about working in a very tightly-procribed form. It's like writing haiku.

Shaenon: 2. People grew up on teeny-tiny four-panel black-and-white strips, and most of us lack the imagination to think more creatively. Cat Garzas are rare.

Tom: Everyone says it's like writing haiku- but then I had a clever rebuttal but since I 've forgotten. So ok , I'l nod my head.

Tom: re 2: yes

Shaenon: 3. A lot of webstrippers are secretly or openly hoping to get syndicated.

Tom: hmmm. ok . so where did you come across the idea of going to the web?

Shaenon: 4. Andrew says "sense of history." People want to copy the cartoonists they grew up on. He says it's like wanting to play for the Yankees so you can be on the same team as Joe DiMaggio.

Tom: Yeah I think 4 is important too.

Shaenon: I don't know why he thinks he understands this, because HE DOESN'T DRAW A STRIP!

Tom: hhaa

Shaenon: For some reason, the majority of webcartoonists are more into comic strips than comic books. So they think in four panels.

Shaenon: Dunno why more comic-book wannabes don't get into this scene.

Shaenon: I got the idea to do a webcomic from - ta da! - "Sluggy Freelance"!

Shaenon: Some friends introduced me to it in my senior year of college, and I thought, "Hey, I can do that!"

Tom: And you did! How soon did an audience build for Narbonic?

Tom: (side note- I was reading a bunch of Thimble Theater tonight (its so great!) and was reminded that it was 6 panels! Its so many!

Shaenon: Yes, in the good old days, you could have SIX panels and they were still printed big enough for your art and writing to be legible! It was amazing!

Tom: yeah - amazing strip. lots of kings in the volume i was reading (including king popeye. anyway...)

Shaenon: Audience built verrrry slowly. When I launched the site, I sent announcements to 24 friends and the newsgroup I then frequented (not anymore: I have no time). I wanted to see how far I could get my audience to grow from there.

Tom: And you have these robust message boards now. What was the newsgroup?

Tom: Sci Fi?

Tom: 2 years is not "very slowly" by the way.

Shaenon: rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc. Newsgroup for the TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Because I am a NERD!!!

Tom: HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAA

Shaenon: It seemed slow by the end of Year One. Things took off very quickly last winter for mysterious reasons.

Tom: So what are you drawing with? And when? And how. I want to get to writing a bit too.

Shaenon: "Mystery Science Theater" is my favorite show ever, with the possible exception of "The Adventures of Pete and Pete," and I have no shame about this!

Tom: Iggy Pop was on that!

Shaenon: I draw on bristol board with technical pens.

Shaenon: Yeah, he was Nona Mecklenberg's dad.

Shaenon: I draw whenever I have free time. Mostly in the evenings while watching "Simpsons" reruns on TV, and during my lunch break at work.

Tom: The true cartoonist is always sneaking drawings in on lunchtimes. Great! Do you carry your finished art stuff with you or do you have to be in special place to finish the strip? And ok snotty question- why don't you adjust the levels/contrast after you scan?

Shaenon: I can usually finish a set of six strips in about three days. One day if I work fast and have an entire afternoon free, which is almost never. Sunday strips take longer.

Shaenon: I carry my art stuff everywhere. In my backpack.

Tom: (Side note - I was just looking at the Slugg yFreelance guy. You draw a million times better than him and needless to say, you're funnier and smarter. Ihate that that thing is so popular, but I'm a gruch.)

Shaenon: Ask Joey. He was interviewing me for the old Talk About Comics site when I lost my backpack, and Chuck Whelon had to drive me all over the Bay Area looking for it. It contained crucial sketches!

Tom: Haha

Shaenon: I do adjust the contrast. Just not very well. Because I suck at Photoshop.

Shaenon: You'll note that I nearly always color the Sundays by hand, because I hate the way my Photoshop coloring turns out.

Tom: Adjust the levels. it's super easy. your stuff would look great if the blacks were black. And the word was "grouch" above, if that wasn't obvious.

Shaenon: I don't know how! I'm sorry!

Tom: Ok I'll tell you some day but you;'ve gone fine without it. Anyway, so what does the Shaenon preliminary stuff look like? I mean, notes- story notes and ideas?

Tom: And do you sketch ever? From life or anything outside the strip?

Shaenon: I doodle constantly. Need to sketch from life more.

Shaenon: I sketch the strips on notebook paper. The sketches are all in folders. I have hundreds of them. Possibly over a thousand, at this point.

Tom: Hundreds of notebook pages? You said most of the story ideas you're working on came early on in the strip. I'm wondering what a story outline looks like for Narbonic. A few simple sentences and then you take off from there?

Shaenon: Basically I come up with a rough plot idea, then I write strips to fit into the plot. I sort of fill in the story gradually, as I come up with ways to make it funny.

Tom: Werner Herzog (probably my favorite living director) writes this way. His "screenplays" are basically a page or two

Tom: So a rough plot idea might read, "Helen makes intelligent gerbil. then more gerbils. Rebellion." Something like that?

Tom: Here's an odd question: were you always funny?

Shaenon: I don't write the plot down. I keep it in my head, and draw the strips around it.

Shaenon: Was I ever funny?

Tom: I guess I mean, as an English major at Vassar, were you handing in funny assignments, or being the class clown?

Shaenon: "Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, blackmailing, cowardly, thoroughly dishonest creep."

Shaenon: -Klaus Kinski

Tom: of course

Shaenon: My heartwarming story of How I Became Funny:

Tom: the murderous Herzog- it's his fault I can't fuck my giant/

Shaenon: In fifth grade, I had a teacher who made us write essays once a week and read them out loud. I hated this; I could never stand to listen to my own writing, and I still can't. But, tragically, the other kids liked my essays and would always demand that I read.

Shaenon: Or maybe they just didn't like me.

Tom: You probably made them laugh. Ok I'm going down random questions cause it's getting late. What are some of your favorite current comics, and let's stay away from daily strips since we've covered that so much. And please argue their relative merits.

Shaenon: Anyhow, I found that I could stand this ordeal if I could make the class laugh. So I started writing funny things, because the serious stuff was too painful for me to read out loud.

Shaenon: Whew! Current comics:

Tom: That's a great story.

Shaenon: Finder I already mentioned.

Shaenon: "Scary Godmother" by Jill Thompson

Shaenon: "Bone" by Jeff Smih

Shaenon: Er, Smith.

Shaenon: Anything by Jason Shiga, mad genius.

Tom: Shiga's incredible. Fleep made me nuts,

Shaenon: I'm a big Lea Hernandez fan.

Shaenon: And I like the work that hippie guy Hart has been doing.

Shaenon: You should see Shiga's Choose-Your-Own-Adventure comic, "Meanwhile." Blows my mind.

Tom: Jill Thompson did Sandman. I don't know her book. I haven't read anything of Lea's except the thing on line, but that doesnt' seem to update enough. But it is very cool

Tom: Yeah I've seen that Shiga book.

Shaenon: "Castle Waiting" by Linda Medley

Tom: So your favorites are genre pieces mostly?

Shaenon: "Clan Apis" and "Sandwalk Adventures" by Jay Hosler

Tom: I liked Clan Apis.

Shaenon: Yeah... I can admire highly experimental work, but seldom fall in love with it.

Shaenon: I like a good story, well told, and that is very rare in comic books.

Shaenon: And a lot of comic-book fans seem to regard ANYTHING that's not about superheroes to be weird and alternative and experimental.

Tom: Aha. Do you think people don't use the medium well enough to do this? Do you see people trying and failing or not bothering to tell stories?

Shaenon: Are your comics genre fiction?

Tom: Shrug.

Tom: They're "Shrug Fiction"

Tom: So do you prefer Nemo or Krazy Kat (I have a reason for asking.)

Shaenon: I think that comics can be used effectively to tell simple and exciting stories, and yet they tend not to be. I'm a big fan of Herge, for instance, and I'm sometimes amazed that his type of Boy's Own adventure never caught on in America. It seems to appealing and accessible.

Tom: Both Jason Lutes and Little are trying to pick up that mantle, except Lutes made it a honry old man in 1936 Berlin.

Shaenon: My senior-year English composition prof used to rag on "genre fiction" all the time. He thought us Vassar students ought to be above that type of drek. Ha!

Tom: Ha! Probably a jerk like me.

Shaenon: I love Jason Little. Haven't read Berlin, but I liked Jar of Fools.

Tom: You haven't read any of Berlin, really?

Shaenon: I love both Krazy and Nemo. And Nemo is totally experimental, especially by today's tame standards.

Shaenon: Nope... haven't gotten around to it. I know, my bad.

Tom: Krazy is more experimental. People tend to divide which they prefer -(And everyone loves both of course.)

[Tom's note- I am an asshole. I finally aas.i ntmsfan f my ass for 20 years. Don't listen to me.]

Shaenon: Yeah, I know... but I've never been eager to draw that line in the sand between "mainstream" and "experimental" or "alternative." I just like good comix.

Tom: Good for you! Keep it real.

Shaenon: Scott McCloud divided comic-book artists into the storytellers and the experimenters...

Tom: IT was funny watch "independent" and "alternative" diverge.

Tom: yeah i think you're right. and i came along as a direct response to Scotts book so maybe I tend to do that. Interesting.

Shaenon: ...but the best artists draw from both sides. Art Spiegelman is the example McCloud gives, but a lot of very good comic artists switch back and forth.

Tom: Sure. I agree.

Shaenon: I was thinking of that recently when I went to a Chuck Jones cartoon festival. That dumbass Kurtz/Cho flamewar was still in my mind/

Tom: yeah?

Shaenon: And I was watching all these Bugs Bunny cartoons and thinking, "Jones is one of the greatest animators of all time, and he's totally mainstream! He's only seeking to entertain, he's not experimenting at all, and it's great! The mainstream is where it's at! I've been so blind!"

Tom: HAAH. Leela and I have been gorging on Looney Tunes lately and realizing the same thing.

Shaenon: Then they showed two Jones cartoons from the 1960s: "Now Hear This" and "The Dot and the Line." They're both highly experimental in format, and exist mostly to play with form. And I thought, "Wait! Chuck Jones was an ALTERNATIVE CARTOONIST!"

Tom: HAve you heard all the MP3s on the Comics Journal site yet?

Tom: Wow!!!!!

Tom: I don't know those two cartoons.

Tom: But I have his book so I will investigate.

Shaenon: And they ended with "What's Opera, Doc?" which combines the mainstream comedy of the Bugs and Elmer cartoons with experimental visual techniques, especially in Jones' color and Maurice Noble's impressionistic backgrounds. It was a magnificent blend of these two strands of Jones' work.

Shaenon: And then I knew inner peace.

Tom: Yeah.

Shaenon: You ever read anything by Daniel Pinkwater?

Tom: Ok I'm kind of running out of steam. Is there anything we haven't covered? I'm a lame interviewer, I have to admit. Yeah I've read him. He's done a comic or two and he's always on NPR. But its been a while since I read anything I think

Shaenon: I first fell for "The Sands" because it reminded me of his books.

Shaenon: Yeah, it's getting late over here. Andrew's hungry.

Shaenon: KFC tonight.

Tom: Nice. you think so? Which one?

Tom: Not Which KFC.

Tom: Which book.

Shaenon: All of them. It was sort of the overall mood. Anyway, he lives near Vassar, and he was my mentor and spiritual guide. I hope he still is.

Shaenon: Anyway...

Tom: Hmmm. Have you met him? You're talking about his children's books, right?

Shaenon: ALTERNATIVE COMIX RAWK!!! GO HIPPIES! GIVE A HOOT, DON'T POLLUTE!

Shaenon: Yeah. He mostly writes children's books.

Tom: Do you think we covered enough to be interesting? I can cobble together something with some of your emails too. YES GIVE A HOOT!

Shaenon: I hope so. Is there anything else you'd like to ask?

Tom: I can;t remember. My original plan with this interview got completely bamboozled when I decided interviewing wasn't enough I had to have you write FOR ME! So I can' t remember exact issues I want to hit upon. But I think it's mostly ok. Plus I'm swamped and distracted (just as k Andrew) so my brain flows away a little.

Shaenon: It's okay. I hope you got something of interest, anyway.

Tom: Anything in the lost Talk About Comics interview that will never see the air that you'd like to add?

Tom: yeah. absolutely. and I want this interview, whereever it appears to be a service to people who don't know your stuff, and maybe to people who do, also. So I hope there's enough there.

Shaenon: The TAC interview is a complete blur now. I was worried and distracted because I'd just misplaced my backpack, containing not only my art supplies but sketches for the next several months of strips.

Tom: How far in advance to you do the sketches? And how closely do you adhere to them?

Shaenon: (That interview was about six months ago, and I'm still working my way through that folder.)

Tom: "do you do the sketches" I mean.

Tom: Do you toss some out as you go? A lot? Make new ones?

Shaenon: I sketch strips as they occur to me. That means that I have strips that won't see print for another three or four years, but I might not have all the strips sketched for next week.

Tom: so that means you have three or four story lines in your head (all in a separate folder?) and you just add as you need to?

Shaenon: I used to not toss ANY idea, because I was worried that I'd run out of ideas since I was doing a daily strip. I have since learned that this is stupid.

Tom: yes indeed.

Shaenon: Yeah, pretty much. I have five folders now, with multiple storylines in each.

Tom: aha. cool. and most of these storylines began ages ago?

Shaenon: A lot of them came along very early in the strip. I haven't added a new storyline in a couple of months now.

Tom: That's great. I'm really inspired by that. I'm glad you have to slowly let things percolate and accumulate for the great work to come out

Shaenon: And the crappy work. It all stews together.

Tom: and the crappy work boils off and reduces

Tom: i assume

Shaenon: When I started out I thought I'd have to constantly push myself to do a new idea each day, but it tends to come along naturally.

Tom: it gets in there, but you have time to let it go.

Tom: yeah- i had to learn that ideas begat ideas

Tom: or is begat the past tense?

Tom: whats the present tense of that?

Shaenon: The worst is when I do have to force an idea because of my self-imposed deadline. Hate that.

Shaenon: Beget?

Shaenon: Begar?

Tom: haha

Shaenon: Begat?

Shaenon: Begot?

Tom: One last discursion: Have you seen the completely amazing "Famous Artists Cartoonists Course?

Shaenon: I'm a baaaad English major.

Shaenon: And yes I have.

Shaenon: I would draw the pirate.

Shaenon: I think everyone draws the pirate.

Tom: No- not that thing! Al Capp (this is where Capp started for me.) had a chapter where he talked about a sequence that was less than inspired. And he goes to show how his deadline forced him to come up with something.

Tom: It's a neat passage.

Tom: The pirate is something different- isn't it? I would draw the turtle.

Shaenon: Ah. I have heard that from other artists who took correspondence courses.

Tom: What ? That they would do the turlte?

Shaenon: I think the crucial thing about the course is that it does force you to draw, and work to improve.

Shaenon: No! Pah!

Tom: Sure. A lot of cartoonists learned that way, in the day.

Shaenon: That the deadlines provided inspiration, of a kind.

Tom: Yeah.

Tom: Ok so this is totally groovy, as we hippies say. Let's email more about this Trunktown thing, shall we? (I'm so excited about this I can't stand it.)

Tom: But you should eat.

Shaenon: As am I. I've got ideas, which I will get to in the next email.

Shaenon: More or less.

Shaenon: Right. Got everything you need?

Tom: Perfect, cause that's where I am at. "Now let Shaenon do her thing a bit"

Tom: yes i think so

Shaenon: Now you edit and make me look EVIL!

Shaenon: Very little editing required there.

Tom: HAHAHAHA ! Tell Andrew good night.

Shaenon: Will do. G'night to you.

Tom: Bye. Have a wing.

[The following was a preamble to the above. I chose to included here, as it seemed less an introduction, and more a clarification- TH]

Shaenon: I know my strip has that Berke Breathed look, and I'm kind of embarrassed about it; there are so many crappy "Bloom County" imitators out there, and the world hardly needs one more. But I can't help it.

Tom: its not the Bloom County "look" to me that is so prevalent- it's the sense of humor. I need to study my Doonsbury more, but to me it seems that Doonsbury set up a framework that Bloom County catapulted off of.

Shaenon: Very definitely. Breathed has been criticized for imitating Trudeau, although I personally don't feel that "Bloom County" resembled "Doonesbury" very closely after the first year or so of the strip, and even then it was clear that Breathed was going for a less political, more whimsical brand of humor. "Doonesbury," in turn, may have been the first daily newspaper strip to borrow from magazine cartoonists like Jules Feiffer, whose style of humor was different from that of the strips - more muted and not built around gags.

Tom: Large cast of zany characters (ok- so that isn't so original), and that punchline timing, where the punchline is the second to last beat, and that last beat is a redirect, you know? It's another punchline, but it's another direction. And it's a lot of plot seems to hinge on this moment in the 4th panel, too.

Shaenon: Yes, the double punchline in the final panel is a must! It's all verypredictable, I'm afraid. And that *is* a "Bloom County" trademark.

Tom: And the deadpanness vs. the zaniness. Was Breathed the first to give some of his characters so much wrongheaded exuberance? And the deadpan characters always get mixed up with the exuberant ones. Its all this, to me, that makes this the Bloom County model.

Shaenon: "Pogo" had both the deadpan/zany dichotomy (most of the storylines involve Pogo wandering, unaffected, at the center of some insane frenzy drummed up by the other characters) and, often, the beat-double-punchline gag structure. I don't think Breathed had read much "Pogo" before he started "Bloom County" (he's written and said in interviews that he never had much interest in comic strips), but I assume he got into it at some point, because his later strips show a "Pogo" influence in many respects. Again, though, "Bloom County" blended these elements into a new formula which has been copied, as far as I'm concerned, far too many times.

Tom: Alot I know. I'm sure someone will come along and tell me this was all in Segar or Gasoline Alley, but I really don't think so. Breathed was the first to really squeeze juice out of that 4 small panel set up, that earlier cartoonists didn't really contend with.

Shaenon: I'd love to see a cartoonist try to duplicate the Segar structure, but I don't know if it's possible. Most of the "Popeye" strips don't even have a recognizable gag, or there *is* a gag but it's not the funny part of the strip, or the only funny part is the sheer weirdness of whatever is going on. It's a very strange comic, the sort of thing that seems to be coming from deep within the artist's subconscious.

Tom: I think this idea to interview you came over me because a) webcomics get little or no press b) you're the funniest I've seen at this idiom (long pronounced dead by me!) in a while and you've got the archive to back it up, c) I want to revise my interest in the daily format, so to that degree it's a personal "quest" and d) you've got an understanding of comics history and culture that I think alludes the average web cartoonists (bravo!)

Shaenon: Wow! Thank you! Yes, the four-panel strip format is very limiting and perhaps close to dead, but also interesting. I like to think of it as working in a very strict formal style, like haiku. And the Internet opens up great storytelling opportunities, because the presence of an archive allows us to do long, continuing arcs. New to the strip? The entire backlog of previous installments is right there, available at the click of a mouse! Whee!

Tom: SO, regarding b, above, who else is funny? I remember a few years back I went searching on line and was stunned at the number of daily (breathed-inspired) web cartoonists out there but couldn't find many that I enjoyed.

Shaenon: So... four-panel (or three-panel), newspaper-style strips which are funny and recommended by me. That's tough. Also, very few online strips are daily anymore. Most update two or three times a week at best, I'm afraid.

• I like R Stevens' "Diesel Sweeties", even if I'm not always sure why.
  There's a weird little strip called "1/0" (http://oneoverzero.keenspace.com) which takes the concept of breaking the fourth wall and builds logically on it from first principles. The art is crude, although I can see the artist developing a style as the strip progresses.
  
• "Freefall" is a rather cut science-fiction strip. I think I'm most amused by its pace: it's been running for over three years, and I think less than a week has passed for the characters.
  
• "Bruno the Bandit" is a fantasy sendup which varies in humor value, but has, I think, struck gold at least a couple of times. The art is quite nice, even though the cartoonist says on his website that he's most influenced by "Garfield" (really). Same with "Ozy and Millie", only without the Garfield part.
  
• And, yes, I'm one of the thousands of geeks who read "Sluggy Freelance". To be frank, it's the first webcomic that interested me, and what excited me about it is its ability to sustain a lot of long-running, complex plot threads.

Tom: It's a little toned down, but I'm a fan of Alex's Restaurant: http://www.alexsrestaurant.com which no one seems to have heard of.

Shaenon: People have recommended this to me several times. I guess I'd better read
it now.

Tom: Thanks for the recommendations. I have to admit that Sluggy hold a special place in my heart as most hated STRIP OF ALL TIME! This is mostly because I heard about it on NPR!! one day and was curious, and found its knife wielding vampire bunnies completely banal. Its got to serve some grander purpose for me- some strips become pornography for a certain demographic, if you ask me.

Shaenon: Yes, Sluggy is definitely a guilty pleasure. It does, however, provide a valuable index to all the cultural elements which function as geek crack. It's got cute animals, fantasy creatures, aliens, demons, video-game in-jokes, anime in-jokes, plots lifted from the "Evil Dead" movies, gratuitous violence, hot chicks, and heroes who have nothing but geeky interests but are portrayed as cool. I read it every day. I'm very sad, I know.
But it *did* inspire me to draw a webcomic, because the idea of being able to do long-running stories in a comic strip appealed to me immensely, and it's not something one can do in a newspaper strip anymore.

Tom: Anyway, the other strips are pretty neat- that 1/0 thing is fun. I've liked diesel sweeties for a while. It's fun.

Shaenon: "Diesel Sweeties" really sucked me in. I'm still not entirely sure why or how. "1/0" is fascinating; it seems to be somehow smarter than its artist.
I get the same feeling from reading Shakespeare.

Tom : And strangely the first thing I clicked on was Freefall and I didn’t like it at all, but looking at it again later I found it really charming.

Shaenon: I've been reading it for a while now, and its rhythm is kind of comforting. I sort of like the idea of a serial strip in which weeks go by with nothing in particular happening beyond some clever but mild humor.

Tom: Anyway, thanks Shaenon. It's cool to be talking. Let's plan on that wedding for some day!

Shaenon: Will June do for you?

[NOTE TO READERS- I LEFT THIS TYPO OF MINE, AND SHAENON’S REPOSNSE TO IT- IN THE TEXT TO SHOW THE PRECISE MOMENT I REALIZED SHE WAS THE PERFECT COLLABORATOR! I MEANT TO SAY “INTERVIEW”. SHE IS FAST!- TH]

Shaenon: I wish I could recommend more comics, but there aren't many daily gag webcomics I really like. Come to think of it, most of the print comic strips that really impress me are self-syndicated weekly strips: "Ernie Pook's Comeek," "The K Chronicles," "Nina's Adventures," "Dykes To Watch Out For," etc.

Tom: I am shamefully not up on my Pogo! that's one of this summer's projects!

Shaenon: This whole creative process is fascinating. You asked what I started Narbonic with. Basically, I put together three characters I'd drawn before (Mell was in a strip I drew in high school, Dave was in a strip I drew in college, and Helen was in a three-page comic I drew for a contest) and came up with a reason for them to be together. Then I made up a bunch of storylines, and I've been gradually fleshing them out. Mostly I'm still working through plotlines I came up with two years ago. It takes forever to tell a story in four-panel strip form.