ALSO…
As for this comic…
Things that I never thought I’d be trying to figure out: how to graphically depict freckles popping off someone’s face in a visually plausible way. It took way longer than I expected to get it right.
And yes, this is going somewhere. I think.
Woo Hoo!! (I’m not going to say it)
Anyway, here’s my thing!
You will be happy to know that ‘Howlers’ now has a mobile dining car (dining car yet to be purchased) and a spokeswoman.
(I’m probably going to mess this up. Bear with me.)
http://imgur.com/a/Oxs9N
Also, everyone, Gecko is so close to the $50 dollars level on his Patreon.
I got this paper doll for being a Patron, and you can too!
There, some free pluggage.
You are a kind and generous salesman.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
If you buy for a dollar you can print out not ONE. Not TWO! But [several] PAPER DOLLS FOR NO ADDITIONAL COST!
I’ve uploaded five Phoebe dolls with many outfits, BUT there’s a Puck series coming too, so be warned.
It’s majestic. Particularly the train part.
Agreed.
Nice Milk Bags.
Thanks!
The dining car is actually an Amtrak car and it’s at a place I have to go to to get it [and I have to redo a section of track so it doesn’t wipe out my gas station], but we’re on track!
OH! Pun!
I appreciate train people. I am not one, but understand the draw. I sometimes go into the local train shop to buy supplies for modding Transformers and Lego. I look wistfully at the miniature trees and enjoy the atmosphere.
This is my second layout.
I learned from the first one that it’s the journey and not the destination.
I built the first one basically overnight and then… got bored.
This one, I’m taking my time building, which is why my tunnel is still bare.
Also, this one is going a more desert theme because I forgot to lay out the grass before tacking down my track…
My friend’s dad used to have a largish section of his largish basement dedicated to a massive mini-train world. Like, ten feet by fifteen feet or so. He also had an arcade cab of Space Invaders. He was the coolest dad in the universe.
“Poppin’ Freckles” would be a sweet stage name if Puck ever became a blues singer. Or poker player. Or professional wrestler.
Blues-singing, poker-playing wrestler? There’s gotta be at least one of those out there.
Or her “stage name” for “Amateur Night”…
That is certainly a fine fantasy, but will remain so.
I understand that Puck losing her freckles is pretty important.
But how accurate is Daphne’s shirt? Is there really no more gum???
There isn’t. But there are some cool glasses that will show you who’s an alien…
I might need the contacts so I don’t get the splitting headaches from wearing them too long.
It may just be the “coming down from a sudden coronary episode” look, but Puck’s face looks odd without the freckles.
I’ve thought that for a long time, actually. It never looks right until I add the freckles.
Where do the freckles go, though? Maybe they go searching for a new host?
It might be hilarious if they attacked Phoebe. Would freckles be a good look for her?
Don’t get too far ahead, man! Gotta save some of the surprise for later!
Heck, that could be a funny little mini story arc.
My genius knows no bounds.
“Where do the freckles go, though? Maybe they go searching for a new host?”
So they are tiny PARASITES ?
Mind Control ?
I dig it !
I’m gonna be a stickler here and say: shouldn’t that line be , “…all out of bubblegum.” ?
Technically yes. You win the stickler award.
Duke Nukem says ‘All of out of gum,’ though, and it looked a bit better on the shirt. One of the problems I’ve had with designing Daphne’s shirts is the limitations of the comic size. I have some great, more complex ideas, but if the idea contains more than the minimum number of letters, the end result is practically impossible to read.
Why would I ever need those? Aliens aren’t real, and as long as I got some chewing gum there’s no reason to get all rowdy.
I see what you did there.
so THAT’s how you get rid of the damned things!!!!
or, do they grow back and multiply?
The next 28 days will tell if evil should befall Hammonton.
Well, maybe more than 28 days in real time, but yeah.
28 Days Later…….. ZOMBIES!! ZOMG!!!
That hasn’t happened … yet.
More on that soon…
From someone who has them, “More” is not a word you really want to associate with freckles!
More on that soon too…
Daphne was my favorite, but she has crossed the line. You don’t scare away the freckles.
Sorry to ruin it for you.
I like how she actually doesn’t have her freckles in the fourth panel, showing they are actually gone (and not it just being for one panel).
I have, admittingly, never seen anyone lose their freckles like that.
So yeah. That’s new. And cool.
Oh, they’ll be gone for the next many comics. Rest assured.
That will save some drawing time!
Or, is there a freckles app that splatters them on?
Nah. If I were advanced (and using Photoshop), I’d have a freckles brush. As it is, I just copy the freckles over like a sort of mask, almost, then rearrange as I see fit.
Are her freckles the source of her Fey powers?
Considering she really has none, the Freckles may had been holding her back.
Watch out Daphne !
The freckles HAVE been holding her back, but … more on that later.
Ooooooo! Is this a hint at future plot points I hear?
Probably.
Hey, Puck has freckles on her SHOULDERS as well !
Are they trapped underneath her top ?
Or did they skitter around underneath the fabric and escape anyways ?
I think they stuck to the inside of her sleeves. That’s gonna stain…
Maybe next time, they could try putting Puck’s hand in a pot of warm water…
That’s for amateurs.
Yeah, it’s more fun to fill the hand with cool whip and tickle her face till she swats at it with said hand.
That’s devious and awful. And I GOTTA TRY IT!
If you want to be more malicious, use shaving cream – tastes worse if they get any in their mouth, and they can’t just lick it off.
Meanie.
(snicker)
Put her hand in a bowl of clay and shale.
If you scare her, maybe she’ll “drop” a brick!
Is that how that works?
If Daphne tried that with me (I have like three freckles on the bridge of my nose for the summer) she would need a skin graft on her bohiney. (Hint to Puck)
Well, one would think this would be a surefire way to invoke the wrath of the ginger dragon here, but things have a weird way of turning out…
Fourth wall, Daphne! Fourth Wall! FOURTH WALL!!!
Well, must one address the fourth wall when breaking the fourth wall? Must one?
Rules are made to be broken.
Wait – has Daphne always known she’s in a comic strip?
She’s not Deadpool. But maybe? I think it’s just a momentary thing. This too will pass.
“When artists get tired of drawing countless freckles, next on Geraldo…”
Guilty admission: I never draw them. I have ‘freckle objects’ that I copy from image to image. I will at most rearrange freckles to make them look better.
I used to draw the freckles in the old comics, but that’s why they were limited in number to four per cheek or so.
Guess I should have kept reading down.
Question answered from above.
The ST:DS9 Dax symbiote would occasionally be asked “How far down do those spots go?” and ultimately resolving that issue was a minor, if satisfying, plot point.
As for Puck, determining how far down the freckles disappeared may be a minor, if satisfying, voting incentive, i.e. how many cheeks did they fly off of?
I wish to state categorically that I have no freckles that are not on the brige of my nose.
Well, well – I am STRIPED !
A Straight Flush beats Four of a Kind !
From my tiny little snout to the tip of my tail (if I had a tail -sniffle)
Determining the location of the freckles does seem to be a problem, especially considering the fact that the amount of freckles does tend to vary somewhat picture to picture. The nature of freckles, though, and the fact that they’re mostly caused by exposure to the sun, means that (generally speaking) the freckles are limited to relatively public locations on the body. So no, I can say with fair certainty that they do NOT go all the way down.
So Puck’s freckles are not supernatural, but behave like human freckles. That is, they are the result of sun exposure and a defective tanning gene, so sun exposure brings out the melanin pigment in clumps instead of spread evenly to protect the skin from sunburn. They come out where most people would be tanned from the same sun exposure – but it’s likely that someone with freckly skin will avoid the sun much more than most.
I assume so. Though this comic right here seems to suggest otherwise.
Such a scholarly explanation for something so darn sexy – Freckles !
I asked my bf if he thought my freckles were sexy. He said not nearly as much as other parts of me. I asked him to specify. He refused.
I find the perception of freckles interesting.
Some guys consider freckles attractive. Given the fact that I draw a webcomic about a girl with freckles, and am married to a girl with freckles — a girl with at least as many, if not more freckles than Puck — I am firmly in the ‘find freckles attractive’ camp.
Other guys really don’t care about freckles. I haven’t found many guys who actively dislike them, really; some guys are just neutral.
The vast majority of women, though, especially women with freckles, HATE them. Really, really hate them. Google ‘freckles’ and you’ll get links to an incredible number of articles called things like “Bleach Freckles Quickly and Easily” and “12 Ways to Mask Your Freckles”. Honestly, my wife and her sister are some of the only women I’ve met who have tons of freckles and feel positive toward them.
I would like to point out that we do not know how long Puck was naked in college.
At least twice a day – privately.
Publicly ?
Right here: https://puckcomics.com/?comic=puck-42
thru: https://puckcomics.com/?comic=puck-45
But how long did the publicly translate into comic tome passing.
Oh no! Will Puck ever get her freckles back? Tune in next time – same Puck channel, same Puck time!
Short answer: yes. Long answer: keep reading, and waiting patiently from week to week as this interminably slow webcomic crawls its way forward.
Maybe when you get yourself to a level where drawing is easier and faster, say, in a few years, maybe you might find yourself upgrading to twice a week….?
I wouldn’t have thought Daphne would try her hand at stupidity after the theme park debacle – I mean, what could be stupider than farting around with an exhausted red head? But hello again lol
Daphne has teenage retention of life lessons: they’re kept for later, maybe a future decade, but packed off into a dusty corner of the mind to be temporarily forgotten for the near future.
So… have all the souls been returned to their former owners then?
That’s not a bad theory, really.
WHOOOOSH~
“Jumping The Shark” is SO 70s-ish. I prefer “Nuking The Fridge” instead
I am against nuking the fridge. See, though people like to forget about it, the Indiana Jones movies contained dozens of absolutely ridiculous things in them. (Remember skydiving with an inflatable life raft, landing in the Himalayas and snow-surfing to freedom?) I’ll admit that the fridge-nuking part was a bit of a silliness crescendo for the series, but I didn’t feel it was vastly out of step with the franchise. Honest admission: having seen that movie in the theaters, I didn’t actually have a negative reaction to that scene. I thought it was stupid but fun, with a great payoff visual at the end. It didn’t bother me nearly as much as the CGI gophers or the Tarzan monkey scene.
The Fonz jumping over a shark on water skis? That’s silliness on a scale and level completely out of step with the rest of the show. Though I guess the fact that no one alive on the Internet remembers Happy Days does make the term a tad dated.
Gecko is likely too young to experience, firsthand, a Refrigerator of the 1950’s era.
(Janet & Baldie, my human mom & dad, had one until just a year ago.)
Manufactured in the U.S.A., frequently by GM, they were extraordinary. Heavy, built like a Tank.
The concept of one surviving a Nuclear Blast is very believable to me.
In fact, the only part I found fishy was that Indiana was able to escape after his flight !
There were never any Release Latches inside, and, sadly, many children died playing “Hide-N-Seek”.
I still have a ‘bullet’ fridge in my garage!
I use it to store my… adult… Pepsi.
The manufacture date is Aug 1948 and it has survived 2 power surges that wiped out everything else in this house over the past 20 years.
The only “problem” with it is; you have to put it on the lowest setting or else it will freeze all your… Pepsi.
I am jealous.
Bet you a donut it makes 100 if you keep the outside coils / wires vacuumed.
Old appliances are where it’s at. New ones won’t last you much past the two year warranty. 1948 models? STILL GOING.
I have a Filter Queen (60’s vintage) vacuum for that very reason. They’re no longer in production, but there are whole companies devoted to making replacement parts for them because so many of them are still going strong. Best. Vacuum. Ever. (Heaviest too, though. Ugh.)
What about frying the Coke?
That’s just plain awesome. That was a perfect moment in cinematic history!
Am I the only that thinks that Monsieur Gecko was tired of drawing Puck’s freckles & wanted a (short?) break?
O.O omg I think you’re on to something! Gecko! Are you holding on out on us in the name of an extended gag?
The freckles take very little effort on my part, and no, it’s not about labor reduction. If you look back at the Stickterlude comics, THOSE were about labor reduction. Even though they ended up taking more labor than I was expecting.
I wonder what would happen if the Borg tried to kidnap Puck and company and make them part of the Hive.
Complete and utter shutdown of the collective mind, I would assume.
Again, man, you make the most random comments…
LOL, I think the occasional insert of randomness is awesome, personally. kinda brings a perspective that none of us thought to think about!
I’m tempted to ask him why the chicken crossed the road!
True, but it’s a little disconcerting. Since it’s a written note, and not a part of a conversation, I can’t tell whether or not he’s asking this seriously. And since he never follows up on other people’s replies, it’s hard to say whether or not he’s actually joking…
“it’s hard to say whether or not he’s actually joking…”
Which is beautiful !
Do the Borg eat Hot Dogs ?
No, but they do assimilate them!
Hmmmnn…..
ME TOO !!
🙂
Would you mind if I started to post these to IFunny And Imgur? I really like the strip, and want more people to see it, but I want your permission to do so.
Please! I’d be very grateful if you did.
I’ve had bad experiences with sharing sites personally, in part (I think) because people don’t like you posting your own stuff. But if YOU were posting my stuff, that wouldn’t be happening, right?
http://imgur.com/user/SirSatan7139/submitted
Just in case you don’t trust some rando on the internet.
I TOTALLY trust some rando on the internet. If he’s cool, like you. A Rando Calrissian, if you will.
But, watch out that he doesn’t betray you and then have his cyborg come to the rescue.
Puck loses her freckles and therefore her chutzpah, making her into a meek obedient housewife! Colin is delighted, while Phoebe and Daphne are extremely freaked out. They call upon dark magic (and a dermatologist) to fix this predicament!
I mean it’s possible.
It may be even worse. Maybe she loses … her soul.
Fairies have a soul? Who knew?
But she’s a ginger! How could she have one to begin with?
I love how Miranda’s face in the last panel just says “wtf just happened here?”
Yeah, in reality, a baby who witnessed this whole exchange would have probably started screaming her lungs out, but I thought it was funnier to give her this oddly puzzled look.
I’m just wondering if they’re going to be able to paint over the freckles wherever they land, ya know.
Ooh… They’ll never be able to get them off the upholstery…
Lololol. That was pretty funny but a very punchable offense. Wouldn’t be angry one bit if Puck took flight on ol’ Daph …then picked up her freckles. 😀
Agreed. It’s a pretty low blow, but hey. It was worth it.
Punch! Punch! Punch!
A Happy Thought, but the Gecko will never allow anyone to “Whack the Jackal” (Daphne).
Because, I suspect of all the characters, Daphne is channelling “The Inner Gecko” the most. She does things he wishes he could get away with.
How-evah …. 35 hours from now (Sunday Noon) I could be proven Oh so wrong.
*pouts, considers getting my bf to give me drawing lessons*
Fan Art of Daphne getting her due would be AWE SOME !
Soooo I guess EG is tired of drawing Puck’s freckles?
Hey, anyone else notice in the ARCHIVE this Story Arc is now officially titled FRECKLES ?
https://puckcomics.com/?page_id=109
I fear “Something Wicked This Way Comes”
At least it’s not Freckless.
Even if it’s all getting the Freck scared outta ya.
Well, it would have been ‘Freckless’ if I had been smart enough to come up with it. But I wasn’t.
There’s no editing ability?
I have editing ability. YOU DON’T! AH HAHHAHAHAHAHHAH!
I hear Penicillin is effective against “Editing Ability”.
In the meantime this may be effective:
https://youtu.be/CxXApAKDLtE?t=72
Awww.
*walks away to Charlie Brown’s “Christmas Time” motif*
https://youtu.be/GPG3zSgm_Qo
MAGIC!
Well, she is an ancient fae of lore…
Rules are different, I guess?