June
25th, 2007
I always knew
I wanted our 100th strip to be something special and my original
script nearly gave Jamie a nervous breakdown. I showed him Rothermel's
The
Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett's Charge and said "Like
that, but be sure to include everyone who's ever appeared or asked
to appear in the comic. The consumers should be attacking us with
shopping bags and I want to see an eight-foot-tall Ralph Nader
astride a flaming bone-chariot, wearing Hellfire
armour and a necklace of human skulls, including the freshly-severed
head of Donny Deutsch. Our CD should be locked in mortal combat
with a mysterious blonde woman wearing a full face mask and most
of the other creatives should be taking a beating, with the notable
exception of David Droga who stalks the battlefield like Death
Incarnate, wielding sharpened One Show Pencils and a shoulder-mounted
rocket launcher that shoots Gold Lions. Adding to the chaos is
the stampede of bloodthirsty zombie
cows and chickens. Also, may I please have a double-bladed
lightsaber? Oh, and throw in any 300
reference you can think of."
I sent him
that script at 9:20, Thursday evening, knowing full well he was
taking his family to the cottage the next afternoon. I think you'll
understand why he suggested we just re-run last
year's comic after we were once again shortlisted without
winning. His addendum
to last week's blog probably makes a lot more sense, as well.
In the end,
I actually prefer the elegant simplicity of Jamie's homage.
For one thing, the heavy use of shadow pretty much gives me carte
blanche to hand out cameos. Can you say for sure that's not
your silhouette?
This week's
special guest stars are:
- Steven
Rigney
- Stewart
Graham
- Lorelei
Derera
- Klara Fellegi
- Keith Prestwich
- Chris Eaton
- Åsk Dabitch
Wäppling (the silhouette with the red hair)
- Doryen
Chin
- Jody Matheson
- Patrick
Dugan
- Nicholas
Hall
- Brian Thompson
- Borna Zlamalik
- Barbara
Vermeersch
- Michelle
Renée Maynor
- Amy Bagnall
- Rainypete
(the silhouette with the clown nose)
- John McAdorey
- Ren Olivieri
- Petra Scott
- Jennifer
Lui
- Radovan
Grežo
- Saro Ghazarian
- Sarah Moffatt
- Chandrachoodan
Gopalakrishnan
- Brian Howe
- Brendan
Watson (the lithe silhouette with cat-like grace)
- Craig Horning
- Dawn Whiteman
- Mario Cesareo
- Leith Mellors
- Jason Theodor
- Evan Long
- Hubert
Marczuk
Thanks to
everybody who asked to be in the strip and to everybody who reads
it. Your interest and enthusiasm are the main reason Jamie and
I do this. All jokes aside, we are honestly grateful.
-Graham
The
Ur-Comic
At the risk
of negating everything I've said thus far, I should tell you that
this is actually the 102nd comic. The first two were character
studies Jamie created after I bugged him for a year about creating
a comic together. I wanted to hide behind fictional avatars and
call it Ad Nauseum. Jamie wanted to use our actual identities
and call it Words & Pictures. I told him that was a
stupid name. He drew our faces in the comic and created the logo
at the top of this page and that was pretty much that. On the
upside, I got a good
strip out of the experience.
I give you
the humble origins of Words & Pictures:
Did I mention
that Jamie wrote these?
To be fair,
he only wanted to show me how the comic would look. The backstory
here is that our office had recently been invaded by a huge millipede.
It was lightning-fast and dodged Jamie's attempt to stomp it by
running sideways up the wall like Trinity in The Matrix. In his
panic, Jamie reached for the nearest weapon and spray glued the
poor creature to the carpet. I placed a napkin over her as a burial
shroud and Jamie created a tiny tombstone that simply read "Milli".
The cleaning
staff didn't touch it and two weeks later we were forced to scoop
a liquified millipede corpse off our floor. Apparently spray glue
does that.
I have no
idea why he's wearing Captain Picard's shirt.
I actually
think this one is pretty good. He certainly had our dynamic down
pat. After we launched a few months later, Jamie polished this
and proposed we run it as our second comic. It took bionic
testicles to placate him.
