Geek Speaking Quick Drawing Undies on the Outside

Geek Speak: Step Aside

You didn't actually think that I would run an old lady over with a bus did you? This is supposed to be a comic strip. How is crushing an elderly woman under public transportation even remotely funny?

Is he wearing his underwear on the outside of his clothes? Yes. Yes he is.

Sorry for the delay in putting up something new. Today's cartoon took a while longer to post for, I hope, obvious reasons. A couple of things make this an exciting post for me. It's been a long, long time since I attempted to draw anything in a full comic book layout. The last time I attempted anything like this I might have been fourteen or fifteen years old. I also get to introduce another recurring character and one of the major recurring themes of Geek Speak.

The world of the strip is definitely stranger than our own, and people with powers aren't unheard of in the general populace. The world even has its superheroes, but neither the powers nor the superheroes will always be what anyone has come to expect. At some point I may introduce super villains as well, but for the time being I think there's enough fun to be had with those in the underwear-on-the-outside-wearing people at the hero end of the spectrum.

Comic Con Day Three

Once again I'm bringing some of the highlights form my trip to Comic Con this year. Saturday was another day of panels and checking out some of the things that Comic Con had to offer in the general downtown San Diego area.  

Quick Draw

The Quick Draw panel is a huge...um...draw...every year. The best way to explain the panel is that it's set up like Who's Line is it Anyway for cartoonists instead of improv comedians. The panel usually features a guest cartoonist with regular panelists Scott Shaw and none other than Sergio Aragones. In this case the guest panelist was the great Neal Adams. For about an hour the moderator challenges the cartoonists with drawing things suggested either by audience members, or from words chosen beforehand. 

The first challenge was "if they did it" which challenges the cartoonists to draw what a child would look like if their parents were famous cartoon characters. 

The combinations they came up with were Betty Boop and Bullwinkle (for the furries or those into bestiality), George of the Jungle and Smurfette, and Johnny Bravo and Olive Oil. The crowd favorite was Sergio's who was challenged with Betty Boop and Bullwinkle.

 

Quick Draw usually also includes participation by a notable person of some sort. When I attended the panel in San Diego they had three...celebrities...for lack of a better word. The people tapped to take part in Quick Draw, or to be made fun of by the cartoonists in front of thousands of people, were people no less notable than Peter David, Leonard Maltin, and Jonathan Ross. 

This is where the event turned a little bit less enjoyable. Each of the celebrities was challenged to look at what the cartoonists were drawing and come up with an answer for what the drawings represent. This would have been fine if the audience had let them play, but jackholes in the audience kept shouting the answers. At one point when Leonard Maltin was struggling to come up with the title of a movie based on drawings up on the screens Scott Shaw got fed up and scolded everyone, "Hey, maybe when you've written eight hundred books about movies, then you can act like an expert." Admonitions from the moderator and scolding from the cartoonists notwithstanding a bunch of assholes in the audience kept shouting answers before the contestants had more than a half a chance to guess. It to a point where I was starting to feel uncomfortable with the goings on, but eventually the event got back on track. 

The last celebrity to take part in the event was Jonathan Ross, and I'll admit that I don't really know who he is. He's British. Wikipedia says that he's an actor, radio personality, and television host. Apparently he's also the voice of the dad on Phineas and Ferb. Even not knowing who he is he won a lot of respect from me when his part in the Quick Draw event was done. The moderator asked him to talk about his projects and what he's working on and instead of doing that he responded in classy fashion with, "Oh, let's not do anything so craven," and proceeded to talk about another panel presentation entirely where he would be moderating a group of scientists talking about some of the amazing things they are doing. 

There is one other story I really want to share from Comic Con. At this time it's very late, and tomorrow is another long day, so it will have to wait until my next post. I think one final report from the trenches of Comic Con, a wrap up, and some photos of the best costumes I saw over the weekend and I can put this to bed. 

Speaking of bed...