May23
SPRINGTIME WATERFALL NONSENSE
Just a little May nonsense for a celebration of spring! Vote for Puck on TWC to experience the refreshing vibes!
As for this comic…
Let’s just see where this goes.
Oh, and I put a pic of Miranda in the back seat so people would stop coming up with theories that she was left behind. Also, you’d only be able to get the shot in panel four from that angle if the front seats were removed. I am aware. But I drew it anyway!
Ummmm, yes?
But yeah. Even the quiet ones have a limit.
Even the scared quiet ones.
Colin’s like “ENOUGH IS TOO MUCH!!!! OUT OF THIS VAN, YOU HOTCHA, YOU CROONER, YOU FALSETTO, YOU JAZZ SINGER, YOU.. YOU… YOU… *slams the door, only to open it and say* PTOOEY!!!!!! *slams the door again*”
You sling vintage epithets with the best of them.
“Don’t make me turn this Mystery Machine around!”
…would absolutely be the right thing to say, if he had not already turned it around.
P.S. love the ducking lovebirds. Sometimes the only safety is in concealment.
P.P.S. Miranda d’aw so sweet!
Is it a bad thing that a baby can sleep so soundly when her parents are fighting? Might be something of a bad indicator.
Hey, train ‘em young.
Hey, when you gotta hide, you gotta hide. No one gets a medal for sticking your head up.
“That’s it! Back to Winnipeg!”
When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound like much of a threat…
If you think the 9th level of hell is bad, wait until you get to the 10th level of Winnipeg…
Ugh… should have said “circle”, not “level” – I blame those damn dungeon crawlers…
Enh. For me it’s video games. If Dante were writing today, hell would have levels. Or worlds.
And they have the audacity to look surprised!
Too bad I didn’t come up with that line.
S’a good line.
There is only one small critique I can make. Well, two. Two out of four. Phoebe’s glasses were askew in the previous strip, now they are normal.
And quite suddenly, for reasons that I don’t know have me thinking, “Carmine said one boy, and here there are two.”
Yeah, the askew glasses are mostly symbolic, implying that Phoebe is erratic or losing control. In this comic I wanted the ‘erratic and losing control’ factor to be fully focussed on Puck. So Phoebe needed to look a little more composed as a contrast.
I do think about these things.
Hmmm. Hadn’t thought about that. I was just thinking that the dialog must have been as instantaneous as possible. Kind of thinking of a news anchor going from one camera to the next. All “Camera one, camera two” stuff from “Wayne’s World.”
Yeah, but things get so erratic with continuity in this comic. It’s REALLY bad if I ever give a character a bag or backpack or purse. That sucker will disappear every few panels like clockwork. I’m that consistent in my inconsistency.
I think it’s a bit sad that Miranda is so used to her parents yelling that she can sleep through that…
Hey, when a baby is really tired, nothing is waking her. Hence the phrase “sleeping like a baby”. When you need them to sleep, though, this rule doesn’t apply.
I love that the teens are just hiding. None of this mess is their fault, so they’re just staying clear.
And don’t worry about camera location of last panel, it’s pretty common in animated and drawn media for cameras to ignore walls in this way for the sake of the scene
Yeah, I know that live action productions sometimes take out walls for certain shots, so I don’t feel too bad.
Has Puck always had fangs or did I just notice them
I suspect they only come out when she’s gone feral. Like now.
All the characters in the comic have fairly pronounced incisors. But they’re drawn more prominently when angry. Sort of a quasi-anime touch.
Incisors or Canines?
Asking for an Orthodontic friend.
Uh, I guess canines. I’m not good on teeth names.
Not sure I get the punchline: Did Colin lose a testicle to cancer?
Check out episode 389 for start of that adventure.
Yup. One a very special episode of Puck….
https://www.puckcomics.com/?comic=puck-391
And a reality inspired one.
Thank goodness Colin is speaking up to Puck. She is throwing Phoebe to the sharks when it is her that has gone totally overboard.
To be partnered with a firecracker is to always walk the line of knowing when to let her burn and when to reach for the extinguisher. The line was crossed.
Remember that as the driver, you hold the cards. You can put that sucker right into a tree, or a ditch, or turn the whole thing into a big, watery coffin.
How terrifying.
Not if you die peacefully in your sleep.
I mean, it might be terrifying for the passengers.
Puck is in serious need of a bitchslap, with rings on. If I was Phoebe I’d be moving out, and reminding her just who it was who paid for ‘her’ house. And leave her wondering if those generous repayment plans would remain so generous.
What repayment plans? That money is as good as gone. Though I do wonder whose name is on the deed.
It’s Phoebe’s, right?
Also, no. You can’t do that. The comic would end.
As someone who’s had to mess with directions when going with cons…for sake of argument…why didn’t several people interested in going to this just….double and triple check? I know it wouldn’t be funny, but FFS, google Scooby Con, see the address then…Google Maps on your phone. I got lost coming back from a wedding once and my new smartphone-this was 2011 saved my ass. Suprised Puck didn’t just write stuff down!
Yes. This would all be sensible. But these are not sensible people. For what it’s worth, Puck is a pretty lo-fi woman who doesn’t use tech that much, and it seems like Colin had a sense they were going in the wrong way but he was distracted by van troubles. The real person who could have averted this disaster was Daphne, but she was … also distracted.
Where was Miranda in all of this?
Oh, right, toddler.
I never bother with those silly map things.
I just drive towards the sunrise and when I hit the coast I head either North or South, 50/50 chance I’m right and those are some good betting odds.
Hey, it’s a system that works.
Good. Puck is way over the line here.
Agreed!
Here’s hoping Colin is saying STOP to Puck, and not about a street sign in front of the van . . . as for his growing a pair, the man is in a common-law relationship with Puck, whether that’s from sheer courage or cluelessness, he is, Salute The Colin!
As much as people criticize Colin for being a weenie, he has endured and survived an existence More perilous than most. He deserves credit for that.
This is even funnier today with seeing Colin complaining to Cy in the nerd store over in webtoons. …And looking like a “low-rent Shaggy” waaay back at the beginning for the arc. Nice timing EG.
No intentional timing afoot here. Just chance.
It says something about Miranda’s home life that she can sleep through all the yelling.
It does. Though when toddlers are out, they’re REALLY out.
I love that Miranda managed to stay asleep through the yelling
She is used to this.
Quite a few comments about Mirandas snoozing, including mine.
Seems to have pushed a few buttons of concern about her well-being. Which is probably a bit silly, being concerned about a fictional character but eh, humans, then again it shows a good amount of reader investment in your characters and writing, well done for eliciting this level of response.
Well, given the fact her parents have both proven to be relatively unreliable, I think the concern is somewhat warranted here.
By the way, I recently attended a talk regarding the anime industry in Japan. The folks who produce that work, who do the actual grunt work, appear to be able to look up at an Ontarian teacher’s salary with envy. And about half the company producing work their (not the big ones, all the little houses that get subcontracted work) are insolvent and are likely to go under. To respond to this crisis, the bigger houses are look to Africa to find people who can animate in an anime style and willing to work for what they want to pay. Other things are happening too, but this is the headline.
You MAY have dodged a bullet there.
It’s a bullet I know a lot about, trust me. Animation is a difficult and intense field with endless competition. It requires a lot of skill but is also kind of a drudgery, so it’s been a field prone to outsourcing for decades. There really is no North American animation market left. It was mostly outsourced to Japan in the 70’s and 80’s, who then started to outsource to Korea, then Vietnam, and then Russia, and now Africa.
You need talented people who are willing to work for peanuts. Which means it’s viable only in relatively impoverished markets where the skill is present but the capital is lacking.
Meanwhile, Youtube animation is definitely an option for western animators. Once they’ve got a base, they can get both ad revenue and patreon to help them live. They’re not making bank, but most are able to live the way most people do living paycheck to paycheck.
They just had to build that audience first. The most prestigious of the Youtube animators is Rebecca Parham of Let Me Explain Studios had to do freelancing and Youtube for a while after graduating from Ringling College of Art and Design, which is a “This school will get you into the big name studios” university, before she could subsist entirely on ad revenue and merchandising her brand.
Yeah, though that market has been SO unstable. We’ve already been through two successive generations of Youtube animators that rode an algorithm high to decent money, then collapsed when the algorithm abandoned them.
Some are still holding on from the recent boom of ‘storytime animation’, but it’s interesting to note that the vast majority of that generation burned bright and burned out fast.
It’s a tough gig. No matter how you slice it.
Yeah, I remember the “golden age of Newgrounds animation on Youtube!” from years back. That’s one of the reasons Arin Hanson dove head first into Game Grumps and has pretty much abandoned his animation career altogether. But Ross, another Grumps alumni, gave animation a second try with the second boom, then fell back into streaming when that didn’t last.
Still, following your dreams has a certain appeal to it, doesn’t it? Especially when you hate your current situation.
Hey, nothing wrong with following your dreams. It sadly doesn’t work out 99% of the time, but if you don’t try, you’ll regret it. I guess.
By far, Miranda’s the most sensible person in the van. 🙂
No disputing.