IT'S MARCH!!!
I'd like to say this month's voting incentive pic is seasonal, but nah. It is, however, a picture! If you'd like to see it...
VOTE TO BECOME THE KING OF CARTOONS!!!
As for this comic...
Sometimes when you hire criminals to run your criminal empire, this sort of thing happens. I'd love pontificate more, but I've got a killer migraine and I can barely stand looking at the screen right now, so I think I'm done with the pontification. For now.
Puck 695
IT'S MARCH!!!
I'd like to say this month's voting incentive pic is seasonal, but nah. It is, however, a picture! If you'd like to see it...
VOTE TO BECOME THE KING OF CARTOONS!!!
As for this comic...
Sometimes when you hire criminals to run your criminal empire, this sort of thing happens. I'd love pontificate more, but I've got a killer migraine and I can barely stand looking at the screen right now, so I think I'm done with the pontification. For now.
POGGERS?
Does that mean my Alf Pogs are worth face value again?
Wrong poggers.
There’s another kind?
Poggers is a powdered energy drink for Twitchers.
Well, not necessarily just for Twitchers.
They use a Pepe on their packaging.
Yeah, I dont really understand it either.
But then how could they be totally poggers?
There’s a long and roundabout etymology but basically it means “you did good.”
Source: I am in the age group that says Poggers.
That does make Totally Poggers make sense.
Thanks!
take some time off pal, you’ve earned it.
What’chu talkin about, Willis?
I don’t like that Gary Coleman line. Just saying.
He will. Out of necessity.
I was talking about you.
Oh, I am loving this! 😀
‘When raising up evil, make damned sure you can put it back down as well. If you can’t, you have only yourself to blame when it consumes you.’
The thing about evil is that it tends to be very slippery. Hard to handle. Easy to lose control of.
The Apprentice usurps the Master, it’s in the rules.
Sith, wizards, dictators. It’s always the same deal.
– Signed the American Republican Party.
Too many of these tax evasion plans somewhere along the way involve handing your money over to someone else.
Karma’s a bitch. You would do well to remember that.
Hey wait a minute. I forgot.
FOOOOSSSSSHHHH.
I can shoot flames from my hands and all my orifices.
And I’m real handy with axes and large butcher knives.
Would be convenient if true.
“Cabal” more b@d@ss than “Mutiny”???
Did anyone read “The Cabal On The Bounty”?
Did anyone see “The Caine Cabal”?
Sailors mutiny. Pirates mutiny.
People who read lots of books and think they’re smarter than anyone else form cabals.
Like … accountants, money managers, lawyers … and anyone else who uses a phrase like “as the kids say” 😉
You are not wrong.
Cabal my shiny metal heiny, they are a camarilla.
A mutinous camarilla.
Most definitely mutinous. As Jeff Schmidt says in {Disciplined Minds}, “Professionals are trusted to run organizations in the interests of their employers.”
Damn, I’ve been reading again. Barkeep, pour me another cabal thanks.
Kids “might” say badass … if they are 60 years old.
Badass is from the 50s.
You and that reading; it’ll get you into trouble one of these days.
The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers.
How convenient that they were already working for Satan, then.
They wouldn’t be WORKING there. They would be suffering. For eternity. They may have control over the Devil’s earthly resources, but not of hell.
Well, fair enough.
I’m a bit worried about how badly they might have cleaned him out.
I’d hate to see him have to move in with Puck, Phoebe and co.
I have a terrible vision of him sitting on the front porch at Pucks, in a wifebeater, drinking a bottle of Elsinore beer and yelling at anybody walking past
You have a frightening ability to predict where this is going.
when the cabal is sus
also do those 3 have names? (no pressure if no) /lh
I don’t think these three will ever be given names within the context of the comic. They will henceforth be simply known as ‘the Cabal’.
Personally I think “cadre” sounds more badass than “cabal”. But then again maybe I’m not hip with the kids anymore.
Cadres are more positive. Like a cadre of elite tennis players.
Are you saying positive things can’t be badass?
They can be. They just usually aren’t.
These folks really are more the CABAL types than MOB types. I’m with them on this.
So, what do they need with HIM?
I’ve been fighting after-migrains for a couple of years now. It’s no fun. Fingers crossed.
Day two and the migraine has waned but is still hanging on slightly, making my days miserable. I think it has to do with the fact that my routine was thrown off. I just came off spring break, and I was living the good life: sleeping in, eating what I wanted, etc. now I’m back to getting very little sleep, eating very little throughout the day, and it’s done a number on me.
Ow. 🙁
All the better to take the fall for him, then.
I have been fighting migraines my entire life. I recently found that an IceKap (NOT the one from your local doughnut shop named after a hockey player) works well when combined with other therapies (medication, absence of light, sound, family, etc).
Cabal sounds more sinister. Just like OPEC, FIFA, and the Cartels…
Migraines hit me when I deviate from any established daily pattern. Particularly with coffee or food or that sort of thing. I haven’t yet figured out a way to effectively fight them.
My wife had terrible migraines. She cut out all artificial sweeteners in her foods and drinks, cut out caffeine, and they went completely away.
Went from “turn down the lights and don’t make things too loud” to “I remember having migraines, but not now.”
It’s the coffee. I’d need to kick caffeine. Probably should.
Yeah, good luck with that. It was easier kicking cocaine.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Which is why I’m not actively trying.
I gave tea up for a bit. I got suckered back. I don’t know if it made things worse or not.
But I can’t have rasins, raisons or raisens anymore. I’m scared of bananas and after a few years, I’m not really O.K. yet. :/
If I were smart, I’d shift to tea. Tea seems to be less harsh on my system.
I quit coffee for new years’ but somehow it slipped right back in. “Just one cup,” it whispered. “What harm could that do?” It’s sneaky stuff, allied with my brain or something.
You got my sympathy.
I like how the “Lawyer Cerebus” heads each take their turns talking.
That was, indeed, the inspiration. That or the three fates. Or the three witches in Macbeth. Evil comes in threes.
Oh yes, those three! An even more spot-on analogy (although, they were very consistently all female, sisters, IIRC).
I think it was that they’re all standing right next to each other, so close you can’t prove they’re not actually a single entity, and have (as yet) never stepped apart from each other to demonstrate they CAN be separated, that made me think of Cerebus.
Guardian of the gates of Tartarus… Manager(s) of Satan’s evil empire. There’s parallels. I wondered if somewhere near the end of this arc characters would walk off the scene, subtly passing by another large painting, this one of the dog, Cerebus, where only the most attentive readers would observe that his body is done in shades of light and dark grey (exact shades of the suits/hair) and the tongues were purple (matching the ties) the canine eyes dark and reflective, not showing their whites (sunglasses indoors, etc).
Looking again with the “Three Fates” in mind, I see more intentional thematic parallels for them also, such as the hair colour, from black to grey to white (young, middle-aged, old).
There’s ALSO that pattern of 3-stage progression in their suit and tie colours, but they’re not arranged “low-to-high” in sequence, making it much less obvious.
…I’m guessing you played with that idea and thought it looked too odd, or stylistically poor, lacking contrast. You’d have one guy dressed in nearly solid white, and that’s more the role Morgan Freeman was born to play in “Bruce Almighty”. Even if you switched directions for different suit pieces, the one in the middle would be in all the “medium” shades at once, so better to randomize them all and get some good contrasting going.
Yeah, the Cerberus connection was definitely one I considered making more explicit, maybe by having them call their venture the Cerberus Corporation, but I thought against it. I’ll just keep it as subtext.
Wish I could say that I put endless planning into it, but mostly the design and colouring was improvised. I have a bad habit of designing characters in-panel. That means the first pic I draw of a character ends up basically appearing in the comic itself. (It’s partially the result of time constraints, as I don’t have time to do many a bunch of test sketches.)
I wanted them to give off the same vibe, but I wanted them to each be visually distinct. That was probably the extent of my conscious decision-making.
Silly billies, commit crimes, then place it all on your boss. Now, whatever happens, anytime the cops come a-calling, it’s all on you!
On the three lawyers here, I mean. Plus, they forget, he owns their souls! Also, guuuuuuys, do you really want the bad old Satan to come back??? Methinks soon shall you sing ‘Don’t know what you got till it’s gone!’
Yes, but if Satan goes to Jail (wow that sounds like an Ernest P Warrell movie) is arrested/massively fined/ruined, so is the massive fortune that they get paid to manage (probably by a %, particularly in the portfolio manager’s case at least… meaning when Satan’s Enterprise is losing money, his own income is shrinking!)
They don’t want to destroy the cow whose teat they live off of. They’ll get thristy tomorrow too.
Oh man, PLEASE tell me Satan stays with Puck and co for a bit… deranged culture clashes are among my favorite joke styles. (As evidenced by my all-time favorite Puck line: Be sure to top off the hamster pit with fresh hamsters!)
Tracee, too. Though it may be against her character, I don’t want her leaving and then coming back…
I don’t want to spoil it, but… Well, you’ll see.
I’m telling you right now!
You’d think that the literal Devil would like music in minor keys.
You’d think.