In which Leonard flashes back to less responsible times.

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A Week Late and Seventy-Eight Dollars Short.

Depression, illness, exhaustion … oh, and a lack of financial incentive. These are all fine and valid excuses for me not to work on new pages of Scwonkey Dog. Indeed, the only thing that keeps me going, the only thing that keeps this train rolling, is guilt. Guilt that I am letting you, the reader, down, and guilt that I am letting pal Evan, who has put a certain amount of faith in my ability to produce comic pages on a semi-regular basis, down.

Thing is, you people out there who are reading this, I figure, have invested some time in reading the previous forty pages and deserve some sort of continuing payoff for that. So here I am again, scribbling out the art and klacking in the words to wrap this chapter up and get the next one out.

I still intend to get Chapter Three done ’round late May or early June, which will require an accelerated schedule — but since all I’ll be really doing with late May is hunting down a new job in another part of the country, I think I’ll have plenty of time to crank the pages out. The only problem will be motivation — something I haven’t had a lot of a lately. We’ll see if I can keep this fire lit through May. I think it’s burning now. As always, we’ll see, eh?

That number at top, by the way, is the amount of stupid fees I wound up with on this month’s credit card bill, on top of the usual interest and whatnot. Stack that on top of this month’s utterly ridiculous cell phone bill (roaming scams, boys & girls), and I’m just drowning in idiotic charges I could have easily avoided if I wasn’t such a moron. Once I’ve demonstrated that I’m actually back on a real schedule I’ll probably start one of those Starving Comic Artist Begging Drives you see all across the web, but until then, if you don’t mind, could you click a Google ad here or there? Or hey, buy a print comic and help me get some money in the ol’ PayPal account? It’d certainly be appreciated.

Things I’d be buying if I had any money right now: after two years or so, Mirage Publishing has finally released the new issue of the ongoing black & white Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book series. And it’s a limited edition that costs ten dollars. Mind you, it’s, like, forty pages, so that’s not so horrible — most Marvel Comics titles are now four bucks for twenty-two pages off the bookstore spinner rack — but it’s still a bit rich for my blood right now.

Also: it looks like Paramount has finally stopped being stupid and has decided to release at least one of the Transformers cartoons they own the DVD rights to in a box set. According to TVShowsOnDVD.com, Transformers Cybertron, the last of the three modern Transformers anime shows, will be coming out in a box set in July. This one actually had a halfway decent English version, as I recall, though a lot of the casting and performance decisions were kinda odd — even with most of the same cast providing voices, I think every role outside of Optimus Prime and Megatron was recast and many of them were given bizarre accents that bore no resemblance to the characters’ previous portrayals. However, the scripts weren’t as sloppy as those of Armada and Energon and I think all the characters were properly identified throughout, so that’s a definite improvement. And Levi tells me that the Japanese version, Galaxy Force was pretty solid, so I think if it’s not too pricey I might check it out.

But for sure I’m buying the current show, Transformers Animated, when it comes out on DVD. Heck, I’ll probably buy the silly single-disc release that’s coming up soonish. As long as the Autobots aren’t dealing with silly human enemies, it’s pretty darned near-perfect. Last weekend’s episode, bringing members of the Autobot Elite Guard onto the scene — Sentinel Prime and Jazz, commanded by Ultra Magnus — was solidly fantastic; Magnus was impressive, if a bit dull, and Jazz was a pitch-perfect recreation of the classic Transformers character. Phil LaMarr hits the nail right on the head with the voice, and between his performance and the way the character is written, it’s like an old friend has finally come home.

If he turns out to be the big bad Autobot traitor at the end of the season, I will hurl things at the TV. But as Levi remarked to me, it’s probably Sentinel Prime, who is a big fat jerk, because that’s the obvious route to take. This show has had some phenomenal writing at times, but I have to admit, it’s still a kids’ show. It’s probably going to take the easy path and make the entirely unlikable Autobot into the bad guy. No redemption arc for him, nooooooooo.

More talk about the things I’ve been taking in lately to come Thursday when I plan on getting the next page up.

–Jonathan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 3:08 am and is filed under Chapter 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.