Puck 310
on November 2, 2015 at 10:03 pm
A NEW VOTING INCENTIVE COMIC (generated by me and my six year-old daughter)!!!
After watching a Reading Rainbow episode about comic artists, my daughter really wanted to try her hand at the process. This is the result: a comic co-written and colored by her, with my fantastic brush doing the ink. (Her watercolor job is actually better than my contribution, IMHO.)
As for this comic…
Some back story: I lived with a Jamaican family for a year while I was in animation college. They were super nice and very friendly and very understanding of the skinny white art nerd renting out their basement. A year went by, though, and I don’t think I ever totally understood a word they said – especially Norman, the dad. He had a deep, deep voice and strong patois that I found baffling.
I was talking about this in animation class one day to my fellow students when one of my friends joined the conversation. “What’s this you’re saying about Jamaicans?” he asked. “I’m half Jamaican, so you better not badmouth them.”
“I’m not badmouthing them,” I protested. “I’m just saying that I can’t understand a word they say.”
“Oh totally,” he concurred. “I don’t understand a word my dad says half the time, and I was raised by the man.”
QED.
That floozie will land you in jail Taylor. And that’s your name boy. One of these days I’ll knock some sense into you if you aren’t dead first, and then I’ll still knock sense into you for dying. I’ll haunt your grave.
You do a good ‘mom’ voice.
I was channeling Bill Cosby and a jewish matron.
Don’t channel Cosby too hard.
Dude, Daphne should be “your mom” instead of “you mom” in panel three.
Thanks man. As you can probably tell, I’ve been working closer to the line (and getting less sleep) than ever. So thanks for letting me know about the stupid typos.
Somethings do translate regardless of language barriers.
And there is the fact that he’s willing to mention it to her while having no way to escape…. either he’s getting braver… or he’s having a memory lapse of just what she’s capable of.
When you reach a breaking point, thoughts of personal danger sometimes fly out the window. I think Tyler has reached that point.
Tyler feels a bit like Colin in this regard:
It’s the first that I can remember that we’ve heard that he has a family.
And today I learned there’s a language called Patois. The more you know!
Now I’m curious what Tyler’s mother is saying about Daphne. The fact he doesn’t understand it just makes it funnier, in my opinion.
A patois technically refers to any non-standard English that’s different enough to sort of qualify as its own language. In North America, though, the term is most often used to refer to the Jamaican patois, which is English, but the pronunciation, delivery, vocabulary and syntax are so different that it’s hard for many non-Jamaicans to understand.
And I don’t think we’ll be meeting Tyler’s family any time soon, but he does have one. And my guess is that his mom would be no fan of Daphne.
Does Daphne actually look worried in the last panel?
Maybe? She’s not immune to worry. She’s just worry-resistant.
Just about her, or her whole family? ‘Cause when the crack house guys think you’re bad neighbors…
Probably whole family.
Is Doggie Dan going to teach us about prepositions, Sesame-Street style? Tune in next week to see Doggie Dan *under* the dinosaur!
No, Doggie Dan goes in a totally different direction every page. We’re dealing with a six year-old’s sense of continuity here.
Will this be the next “Axe-Cop”?
Unfortunately, I think that this will be far less engaging that Axe-Cop. There are no cops. Or axes. Lots of dogs, though.
Ooh, Tyler;s Mom. I can just imagine what she says about Daff. “That girl is Trouble. That be t-r-o-u-double b-l-e and that stands for larcenous ” I suspect it would be the cant name that also is properly used for female dogs and that works on all kinds of levels.
I think you’re probably on the ball with all that. We know how that conversation would go, even without hearing it.
I wonder what happened to Miranda.
I love how what bothers Daphne is how his mom’s accent gets so thick she’s unintelligible.
Umm, been there, and my mom has no accent… You know you’ve touched a nerve when that happens, and as soon as she can get two words out straight, the sharp edge of her tongue is going to skin you sharper than any razor.
Yeah, there are those who get unintelligible when angry. I grew up in a neighborhood where lots of the kids had parents that hailed from other parts of the world, though, and a formative memory for me was going over to their houses and listening to their parents revert to their mother tongue when cursing something or other. It just feels better to curse in one’s mother tongue, I think.
My mom goes unintelligible and she’s got the standard American accent you might hear on any TV show. Her vocabulary just isn’t all that hot so she uses words wrong and entire sentences starts sounding like something if a character from Wonderland took acid. “I tell you skid! My cheese is fainting in heart disease!” Well not that one, but pretty damn close.
Those types were always fun. My mother was the type to be very, very clear when angry. Her clear words were usually accompanied by a clenched fist and a subtle threat of violence. I’ll willingly admit that there’s a lot of my mother in Puck.
First panel, Daphne seems to blaming the universe for noticing her behavior.
Last panel, Daphne has finally gotten alarmed about something, and it’s Tyler’s mom. Makes you wonder if they’ve met, whether Daphne respects her opinion, or even if she’s realized that Tyler’s mom could do what the law cannot: break her relationship with Tyler.
—
Super cute voting incentive/nice contrast with the very-worried strip/evidence that Writer Is A Good Dad.
I think that Daphne is aware that, when push comes to shove, Tyler is a good guy. And good guys don’t cross their mothers. And if mom put her foot down, Tyler might end up a bit more distant than he is now. I think that Daphne can learn. I have hope for her as a character.
And yes, in real life, I’m a passable father. Most of the time.
“Tyler and Daphne rot in a jail-like setting.”
Probably doesn’t even have a fourth wall. They’re just sitting against a wall with a bar separator, like an “enclosed” bus stop.
Something like that. The exact physics and layout of this jail cell do seem to be slightly elastic, as we’ll see in the next comic, so it’s best not to take anything seriously about it.
Damn. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized I grew up with a “Daphne” type too. My mother couldn’t stand her and with good reason I suppose.
I think they’re fairly common. And moms everywhere despise them.
when Tyler says “pissed” about his mother, does he mean angry or drunk? cuz i watch a lot of British TV and when they say pissed they usually mean drunk but i’m American and also i dunno what it means in Canada
Pissed = angry in Canada. Usually. Canada is often a halfway point between the US and Britain, so it could mean either here, but if you mean ‘drunk’, you usually use the phrase ‘piss drunk’. I’m not sure if they say that in the States. But they do here. If you just say ‘pissed’, though, it always means ‘angry’ in Canada.
What about an angry drunk?
We just use the term ‘angry drunk’ for that.
By “halfway point” you really mean “10% of the way point”, right?
Canada is kinda “America Lite” … but it does a few things differently and then will never shut up about doing them differently.
… In any case though… here in Britain, pissed = drunk … consistently. Angry would be “pissed off”. The “off” is vital. Going out and getting drunk is often referred to as “going out on the piss”.
Nobody, NO BODY, has ever used “Pray Tell” in actual conversation.
And lived.
Maybe they just weren’t praying hard enough. Or telling.
More Doggie Dan, pleez.
He’s a nice dog – a pleasant contrast to the rest of the cast.
Will he be in the next round of Voting Incentives ?
Nah. That was by far one of the least popular voting incentives ever. There ARE more pages done, but I think they’ll stay on paper.
Awww….
Ok, maybe in the next PDF Collection.
I was a little disappointed to find no Doggie Dan in the PDF Collection I bought. Then I checked the dates, and discovered he post-dated them.
Or Miranda might need a pet someday. Something better than a Gecko (Uh Oh – no offense)
(when I wanted something warm and cuddly, my folks bought me a USED parakeet. A green one. I think the blue ones cost an extra quarter. sigh)
So…. Letting your kid do a comic eh? Family Circus much eh? I doon knoo aboot all that eh. The following is a public service announcement from the Daphne Bashing Unit.
“The crime against Humanity known as ‘Daphne’ has finally been apprehended. This Monstrosity is scheduled for public execution tomorrow morning at 8:00, and should proceed without incident barring any unforeseen interference from the Abominations sympathizers. Unfortunately we lack the necessary resources to stop the author of the web-comic known as “Puck” from railroading the plot away from our humanitarian efforts to rid this world of that most vile, and heinous creature. We apologise in advance if our righteous and just goals are thwarted. We now return you to regularly scheduled programming.”
Can we feed what’s left of the Jackal to Doggie Dan ?
the daphne is not fit for eating. The remains are to be cast into the fires of Mount Doom.
Just for the record I was just making a joke about letting your kid help do a comic. I bet she had a grand ol’ time playing on the computer with dad. That said…. Family… Circus!