VIDHERO WEB STRIPS

edit: WhOOPS! Left the wrong strip up all day yesterday. eek. I had put that file up 3 days ago, then reworked, and replaced it with the exact same file name, plus “b” at the end. Apparently this comic press theme takes the first file with proper date-in-name convention. eeps.
…
so the revised version is now on display. Which should make the commentary below make more sense. And today/monday’s art work will be delivered later on tonight. it shall pertain to the children. hmm.
yessss.
Original Comments:

weee.

This one was originally the FINAL ARTWORK FROM LAST YEAR. but I realized it was weird. The middle frame was this wider shot of the wife, in a pissy pose, smoking a long cigarette. why?
well, she was talking about the fact that she might also be pregnant. weird. WEIRD (the tone was alllll sorts of wrong).

For some reason i keep getting off track from the core idea here. It’s a wholesome family that has to endure… some shit. I’ll leave it there. but Everytime i show them complaining or being shitty, it just feels like their whole story falls apart. hmmf. And I have some shit planned in the notes/scripts… involving suicide. sooo. Shit. i really don’t know how i’m going to tweak that.

Even after I changed the middle frame to be a close up of the wife (one of those drawings you tweak and polish endlessly – and it just never looks right), I still had the almost nonsensical dialogue from last year. He’s working on somehting. She drops the bomb that she thinks she might also be pregnant. he ignores her and talks about fixing something else.

I thought it’d be a nice way to show his state of mind. he can’t deal. He’s getting a little weird about his obsession with fixing things and inventing weapons. but. bleh. it just doesn’t work if he’s anything less than wholesome.

In the previous two comics, I kept writing shit where they were happy to have killed some intruders. but it felt a lot more interesting to me to just focus on their bonding and being in love. hmm.

i dunno.
intense overanalysis.

But i figured I couldn’t go from two strips of smoking carnage romance to an abrupt pregnancy reveal to an abrupt husband-won’t-talk-about-it. sooo, i just polished off the smoking story, and kind of misused the art, to focus on the idea that they didn’t see the intruders, and wonder about the motivations of these strangers.

I should probably continue to focus on this (although the next three are written to also kind of tackle pregnancy…). I don’t know that i’ve made it clear that their lazer killed some shit while they were sleeping, and it’s all still a big mystery.
the audience may think they just missed a big battle. ehhh.
not sure if I could rewrite the existing strips, or if I’ll need to kind of beat it to death in the next few.

Whenever the story points are’t clear, first and foremost, I feel like i’m failing big time. sigh.
and yet my urge is always to be very subtle and confusing about doling out the story points. HMM@

p.s. this strip almost totally fails to let the audience have an “ah ha” moment. It is just doling out information for three frames. I feel web strips are always best when you can read them quickly and get a sort of story, but after a couple seconds you piece them together and realize the real story. Usually as the punchline to a complicated joke. but. It also works with emotion and action. hmmf. HMMF! but again, not idea how to fix this, and its late and i’m going to bed then heading up to Portland for the weekend. (I’m writing this very late on Friday night, and setting the comic to publish sunday morning).