Rocket Monkey

Greetings, monkey enthusiasts!

I really didn't know what to expect with today's comic. This strip was an experiment for me, and it was a good learning experience. Omar's right about the confidence thing, and the thing is that I have confidence that I probably could've done this comic better. I won't really get into it because I'm not all about the self-deprecation and I don't want/need affirmation.

Most of it is I think my standards and expectations are increasing faster than my artwork can keep up, but that's a good thing. It means I have something to look forward to, and that's exciting.

You can always have confidence in my resolve to bring you the best comics I possibly can. Another one coming on Friday.

Danger! Danger! (Bobbo) Watch your back!

PJ is being very modest about this comic, which I really, really like.

If our influences (or at least PJ's on the drawing side) aren't obvious, one of them is certainly Penny Arcade, where they've mixed the usual comics fare (funny curse words, silly situations) with some genuinely good comic strip artwork to stretch their work in new directions. Cardboard Tube Samurai continues to get better and better. I keep telling PJ I'm amazed at how far this thing we're doing has come in such a short time. I like the idea of Bobbo getting out of the ship and having an adventure or three.

I mean it's one thing for he and I to bitch about what we're doing. But not in front of you guys. Nothing inspires confidence like confidence. So... uh... WE RULE!

Blah

The comic really didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.

In case you can't tell what's going on in my craptacular drawing, Bobbo's being chased by a monster and decides to confront it. He calls on the power of his awesome Bobbo Rocket™ to dispatch of the creature, and then walks off into the sunset. The End.

My newspost should come later in the day. I'm going to sleep.

Great News!

It would appear that I have Fridays off from school/work this semester. This means that regular updating on Mondays and Fridays can continue starting the 30th! Woo!

Can't wait to start back up again. See you then.

Dude....weak

They're space monkeys, Omar!

Use your imagination. For all you know, Bobbo has some sort of clothing manifestation device. And if not, there's always ebay. You must keep the faith, and know that Bobbo will always find a way.

Rest up. For we have many monkey moons ahead of us.

Comics that make no sense

It just occurred to me... where the fuck is Bobbo getting all these elaborate costumes from? Does he roll his 20-sided dice for "Closet of Many Things" or is he ordering from space.jcrew.com or what?

What's the damn deal?

I guess PJ and I should have discussed that before we did this one.

Natural breast and teeth enhancement

Rebecca and I saw Napoleon Dynamite a few weeks ago. We've been so busy house-hunting and working that it's one of the few entertainment pleasures we've gotten to enjoy recently. It was much funnier than I expected. I knew it would be cute; I didn't know it would be cracking us up.

The strangest thing about it for us is that we were maybe the oldest people in the theater. Everybody in the packed house was like 17-20 years old, around PJ's age, and I got the uncomfortable feeling that they weren't just laughing with people of my generation (parachute pants, fro-hair, mullets, Pro-Wings shoes), but laughing at us. PJ and I know there's a slight generation gap between us, but nowhere is it more pronounced than when people his age are laughing at people my age (the ripe old number 29).

Anyway, like PJ said, we're taking a bit of a break; we've done 15 strips, more than I ever dreamed we could do in such a short time, and with my crazy work schedule lately and PJ's going back to school (gotta get your degree on. You go!), we're gonna try to get some normalcy back in our lives before we entangle them further with monkey expoits. See you in a week and a half!

Heck Yeah!

Why is it that Bobbo randomly appears in strips dressed as certain pop culture icons? Because he's Bobbo and he'll do whatever he feels like he wants to do. GAWWSH!

I'm loving the updating regularly. It gives us the opportunity to keep up with current things like Napoleon Dynamite. The Rick James comic came nearly a full month after the "I'm Rick James, bitch" hysteria that swept the nation. I was expecting the tossing of our hat into the ring to be received with sort of a, "Huh? Oh...it's a reference to that show that was funny last month and everyone decided to be obnoxious about constantly repeating that catch-phrase up until about yesterday....*unamused sigh*." That wasn't how it was received, was it? Was it?!

So, yes, we totally got to be hip with this strip because of our updating regularly. The idea was sort of a spontaneous thing.

Me: What strip are we doing for Friday?
Omar: *shrugs* I had thought of something, but I can't remember...
Me: I saw Napoleon Dynamite yesterday.
Omar: THAT WAS IT!

Anyway, as much as I love updating regularly, I'll be taking this next week off since school is starting back up again. I need to get my sleep schedule back to somewhere near normal, and deal with the adjustments that normally accompany the first week of classes. I'll also be trying to figure out when and how I will continue the regular updating without letting it get in the way of my schoolwork. Fun stuff.

So, meet back here not this coming Monday, but the next. Mark it on your calendars.

AVPVAVMTMVETV.....

I haven't seen Alien vs. Predator like PJ has, but I hear it's not a total sham, despite critics going at the film as if it anally assaulted them.

The original idea for this strip was to be an even larger battle royale. Get this: "Alien vs. Predator vs. Alf vs. E.T. vs. Marvin the Martian vs. Those Aliens from 'Signs' that Were Afraid of Water vs. an Illegal Alien Named Pedro." Sadly, our time and budget constraints kept this glorious vision from these pages. Maybe we'll hit it up in a sequel. I wanted E.T. to be jacking those "Signs" aliens up with a glass of water.

Yay! Everybody's a winner!

I went into AvP with low expectations. There was the PG-13 factor. The horrible tag line factor. The director who didn't really do much with Resident Evil. And there were the first couple of trailers they released with the, "You ugly....son of a...." thing going on.

I'm an Alien series fanboy so this movie was on my list of highly anticipated movies when it was announced. That's why I didn't let any of that stuff get me down. I knew from the time it was greenlighted that I would see it on opening day no matter what.

I won't say I was disappointed by the movie. I think they did some really good things with it. There were some stupid things, but I think that's to be expected from Hollywood nowadays.

**Spoilers lie ahead in the following rant**

My major gripe, and this is going to sound really stupid because it's the complaint I hear from lots of dumb people, is that a versus movie should have some sort of outcome. I didn't see Freddy vs. Jason, but I heard that ended in a tie somehow. I always thought it was stupid to hear people complaining about that, but this is now the second offense. It's a total cop out. Have some balls about pissing off half of your audience instead of finding some wimpy way to appease everyone. I would've preferred to have the predators come out on top even though I was rooting for the Aliens than to have it end in a tie. That's kinda the point in seeing two forces duke it out. You want to know who would win.

****

But we all know who would win in today's battle royale. Alf goes hard in the paint, fool.

Oh, those monkeys

Will they ever learn?

PJ's ability to crank out the monkey shines continues to impress me. But then I'm impressed by moon craters and cheese that doesn't go bad right away.

The monkeys on the Moon

Looney Toons references abound in today's strip. And by that I mean I stole me some Wile E. Coyote.

I'm quite proud that I was able to do the entire comic in one night. I didn't even start working on it until after midnight. I'm improving in leaps and bounds. Kinda scary, actually. The hope that I will be able to continue doing this once school starts back up in a couple of weeks keeps growing.

I really hope that ends up being the case because I've had a flurry of ideas recently. Some of them still need a bit of working out, but those are the ideas which are for further down the line. I know Omar has some good ideas for where this monkey spaceship is headed in the future.

Now, I leave you with this short poem by Tippi (a fellow primate enthusiast) entitled "Monkeys on My Mind":

I've got lemurs leaping all around my melon,
While the chimps dance in my cerebellum.
That's because I've got monkeys on my mind,
As sure as baboons have got a red behind.

Have a good weekend, y'all.

Fast-clotting action!

Action Gravy is back in another action-packed, er, gravy-packed(!) adventure.

One thing you can say about Action Gravy: He's got thick skin.

This comic is part of the Monday-Wednesday-Friday triumvirate of entertainment this week that I, as an editor by trade, was skeptical would even happen. But I'm pleased to see that my nocturnal sibling works hard even as I sleep and dream of... well, anything but gravy.

Action Gravy: Year One

Don't be alarmed by the amount of blood in today's comic. Lasers'll do that shit.

Take comfort in knowing that witnessing such a heinous murder might propel a certain foodstuff into...action.

Also make note that the Rachnid Triads are all about the lasers. With the hurting. And the NICE LADY!

P.J. needs sleep. See you Friday. Same gravy time, same gravy place.

More freakin' iPod

I feel like I've been doing nothing but writing about my Goddamned iPod for the last few weeks, and I'm sure everybody's sick of listening to me blather on about it.

But it really does change your life. I bring it with me to work every day. I bought a Griffin iTrip to listen to the thing in the car and was jammin' the tunes in a rental car on the way to Dallas recently. [Incidentally, the iTrip is great except that in Austin proper (or as I say, 'Propah'), it's hard to find a free slot on the FM dial to park that signal. So I still get some static sometimes, harshing my iPodbuzz. I've even started looking at replacement CD decks that have an AUX input to accommodate my insatiable technolust. It's a sickness, folks.]

When my wife is in San Antonio, I lull myself to sleep by reading a book and donning the white headphones like a sleepmask in bed.

Yesterday at work, a reporter was having trouble concentrating because of all the background noise in the room, so I handed her my iPod and told her, "Here. This'll drown out the outside world." 20 minutes later, her story was done.

I'm not saying that the iPod is the cure for all of society's woes. That would be cotton candy. But I do think that there is something inherently good about being able to carry your music around with you all the time, to listen to a song exactly when you want to, to create a mix that you can patch into a theater's audio system for pre-show music when you forgot your burned CD in Austin.

It feels like when I bought my laptop and went wireless: Feeling unencumbered by desktop machinery and dangly cords. It's a kind of freedom: The kind William Wallace may have killed a bunch of Brits to get.

iPods=good

What PJ said.

My-pod

Ah, technological breakthroughs.

The iPod is the type of gadget that could easily substitute for any of the three major necessities to sustain life systems. That would be food, shelter, and....I forget the third thing. I know for a fact it is part of this balanced breakfast, and if you're not careful, it'll steal your wife.

It proved strong enough to ensnare our good friend Meany who I guess is...sorta nothing like a wife. *Sigh* I got nothin'. The point is: he really liked the damn thing afterall. At least, that's what it seemed like from outside of his covers, no? Who knows what was really going on in there.

All I will say is that scroll wheel is like having sex with your finger....wait. That's terrible. Moving on...

Omar was kind enough to bring his new iPod home recently, and I had to refuse to look at it after playing with it for about half an hour for fear that I would literally run to the nearest Apple store in my underwear (I was fully clothed while tinkering with the iPod, mind you). It really didn't help that Omar listens to the exact same music as me, and as far as I could tell, our playlists are identical. It was like seeing exactly what it would be like for me to own one except for maybe the engraving on the back. Damn Omar and his iPod...Okay, maybe not the iPod. I'm sorry, iPod! Don't hit me again.

Remember, we're doing a comic this Wednesday to make up for Monday of last week. Be here or be squere?

Kevin

PJ is absolutely right. There is a new comic up today.

We had the damndest time coming up with a name for the more volatile of our two primary characters. It went on for days and then weeks and then, depressingly, into months. Our Web site and comic launch came and went and we still didn't know what to fucking call him.

Omar: How about....? Shit. I got nothing.

PJ: This sucks.

I don't even remember where "Bobbo" came from, but I know it was really early on and seemed to come out with no effort, like a smooth Ex-Lax bowel movement.

Meany, though. It's been like giving birth to some sort of tentacled alien child. I think we had names like, "Cornwallis," "Terrence" and others. How do you convey the name of a mean monkey, one with a bar code on the back of his damn neck, who has probably witnessed untold horrors at the hands of man? We call that "Meany." "Kevin" for short.

Against my better judgment, PJ has promised not the usual two, but THREE comics next week. I guess he just plans to forego sleep entirely, just cruising past 5 a.m. and watching the sun come up as he huddles over his WACOM tablet, drawing space craters and shit. Me? My ass will be sleeping.

Nice Pants

It appears our unibrowed friend finally has himself a moniker. His name is simply the result of habit. No creativity whatsoever went into the name "Meany." I'm sure you might've guessed that. Omar and I were perfectly aware that we'd have to come up with a name for him sooner or later, but in the meantime we just kept referring to him as "the mean monkey," shortly thereafter, it became "Meany" due to laziness.

So for the past couple weeks I've been trying my damndest to not let the cat out of the bag since I knew we had this strip lined up to reveal the name. That's why I haven't given much attention to Meany in the newsposts. For fear of making people all too aware that he was nameless, I just refrained from talking about him at all unless I could seamlessly work him into a sentence laden with pronouns. I really do like him. It's hard to compare him to say.....a Bobbo, but I enjoy drawing him just as much.

It would also appear we've introduced you to yet another auxillary character. They just keep showing up, don't they? General Bastid just sorta came to me a couple days ago. I was able to draw him perfectly on my first try, and here he his today. Please be kind to him since he and I are much alike. I also like wearing poofy pants.

As promised, the new wallpaper is up at the hot stuff page. Now that you know the name, you can partake in the desktoppy goodness of Meany's wallpaper.

Behave this weekend. Don't die so you can come back here on Monday. I mean it.

Always with the foot

Okay, I'm in better condition to write a newspost now.

I'm not sure what to think about this new show. I watched the first episode, which was a strange occurence to begin with since I really don't watch tv anymore (much less reality tv), and it really didn't do anything for me. The novelty wore off quickly. I spent all of high school and college so far just watching dumb people make fools of themselves. I've had my fill of that, I'd say. I guess I'm biased. I've never liked the concept of reality television.

I would have to say that if I ever got suckered into being on one of those shows, I would probably be asking for laser rifles as well. But then again, I don't think I'd ever leave my tentacled lovechild behind. He'd need me to feed him Skittles.

Comic and wallpaper on Friday. Tell all your hos.

Woo!

New comic! Yay!

That is all. PJ says there'll be a new one Friday. I am taking a "Wait and see" attitude.

As in... "I'll wait till Friday and if you don't see a comic here, I'm gonna put my foot up his ass."

Swap/Meet

I'm not always there when you call, but I'm always on time.....except for this Monday.

My friend Andre told me today that he was sad on Monday, and I would have to say that I was too. I pretty much slept the entire day out of depression from missing the update.

Even after all that sleep I'm still dead tired. I think I'll get some rest before I make a fool of myself on here.

See you Friday.

Well, shit

The streak of consistent updating has sadly ended. No excuses here, but don't let this deter you. The updating schedule remains the same with today's comic being pushed back to Wednesday. Expect a bonus comic next Wednesday for your troubles. You can also expect that wallpaper I've been talking about.

What's all this "expecting" business, you say? How can I ever trust you again, you might ask? You're not my real father! Now, give me my toaster pastry! These are all valid feelings when someone misses an update. My reply to you is: I think you all know how much we want our monkeys to touch you.

I did manage to do one thing right. I've posted link buttons and banner ads at the hot stuff page so you can pimp my non-updating ass to all your friends. I ain't much to look at, but I...well, I suppose I'm not that flexible anymore.

See you Wendesday. I promise.