Hey! I’m in New York, but I’ve used technology to update my website for me so I don’t miss the comics update. It’s Halloween, but these comics have nothing to do with that.

SecGov Robots:

So that ends this little epilogue with the beekeepers. I intend to get back to that little plotline in the future, but we’ve an unrelated story starting next week.

Phone Guys:

So thus begins the second batch of Phone Guys comics. Personally I think that this batch has about five percent fewer nonsensical pointless strips than last year’s did. If we keep up that trend we could one day get it down to only eighty-five percent pointlessness!

Okay, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it somewhere on here, but I’m too tired to be bothered checking so I’ll just say it anew: From the 30th of this month until the 6th of the next, PDR is going to be in the New York, New York, the city so nice, they named it!

I’m similarly confident that I’ve mentioned before: I’m broke. I haven’t so much got money as I have credit cards. And after this trip, even those will be maxed out. So that’s not good. When I get back, I won’t even have room to go further into debt.

So why am I taking the trip? Well it’s a gift, so it isn’t a stupid thing to do. So how did I make it a stupid thing to do? Well, since I wasn’t paying for the trip, I decided that I’d go longer than usual (a full week) and then I’m paying for more hotel and thus I’ve driven up my price. You see?

One downside to this trip that already occurred: I did not manage to get tickets to the Daily Show or Colbert. They were both off the table before the trip was even booked. I never had a chance. But then, out of nowhere, I found out that Conan O’Brien just happened to be doing shows in New York the very week I’m going to be there! Hot dang, I thought as I went to their website to get me some tickets. Except apparently they do this thing where you put your name on the list and you may or may not be given the tickets. Like a lottery. Anyway, I did not get tickets. So there goes that. My several ideas for free entertainment didn’t work out. I’ve got some spending money, but I’m still gonna be on the lookout for cheapness next week.

Nonetheless I look forward to being back in the city where probably I should live. When I get back I plan on doing some real work on getting myself back into financial non-ruin. My goal is that in half a year I should be in a state where I can call myself not poor. So lets see how that works out.

Anyway, I’m not one of those people with good technology, so probably I’m not gonna be posting much next week. Oh well. I’m sure all of you can survive without me guiding you through the Internet for that brief amount of time. If anything important happens, like if I get to pet a dog, I’ll let you know when I get back.

Okay, so two days in a row I have encountered dogs that were chained up outside places of business that, when I passed, expressed an interest me. This meant I had to pet them, obviously. And since both of these times I had places to be, I wasn’t able to just sit there and pet them until the owner came back, so that means two days in a row where I got to pet dogs and not have to deal with people. It is important to enjoy the little things in life. And dogs are pretty little.

Anyway, I’ve got stuff to do, so go away.

We continue our SecGov Robots storyline already in progress:

Also, here’s a thing:

And then we get to the Phone Guys’ Season Finally!:

What an amazing conclusion! That wraps up the first year of the relaunched Phone Guys comic. I made another 52 over the last month or so, and they’ll start next week.

I decided it might be worth mentioning that Bertrand Black, the Secret Robot Agent who appeared on the most recent comics post was based on a sketch I did about how Robexor, a robot character who has nothing to do with the Secret Government might look. Well, I never found a Robexor design that worked for me, but I decided I liked this one enough to use it as a non-Robexor robot.

But then it occurred to me that I could make a whole post about behind the scenes stuff about the strip. So why not do that? I’m into putting too much information on my website for posterity.

I don’t know when I first had the idea for Secret Government Robots, but it came to me first as the title. From that I drew three robots and decided I’d like to do a cartoon about them being sent to investigate a haunted house owned by a friend of the Secret President. This was around 2009 and then, as now, I don’t really have a means of making cartoons. So I just sat on the idea until I decided to start it as a comic. Those three robots I drew on the first sketch became the designs for Cyril Blue, Ephraim Green, and Ezekiel Purple. (Basically I wanted one circle guy, one square guy and, one triangle guy, and that’s what I got, except then I added a ton more robots as well). That story about the haunted house became a story where Purple and the other two cadets (with whom I still tried to keep with the three shapes, though Vern Yellow and Gladys Blue were new designs) went to an apartment building that had some bad stuff going down. So in the end, I kinda actually carried through on my original idea for the Secret Government Robots. Good job, me. It only took me three years, which is less time than some other ideas.

Speaking of robot designs, Stanislav Blue is a robot I drew in MS Paint at work one time as part of an image I made about National Robot Day. I still have a beat-up printout of that image, which I ought to scan for posterity sometime and when I noticed it was a blue robot, well I figured I’d throw him right in there.

The prologue thing to the first SecGov story introduced us to Reg Lincoln. Although Reg was a new character (albiet with pictures I took years earlier, one of which I’d used before), the Lincoln family and their cursed connection to the supernatural has been something I’ve tried to work into stories since around 2001, though I don’t think one of those had turned out until this. I do know that I have at least two half-finished comic scripts in my filing cabinet about Reg’s cousin. And I think I tried to make a choose-your-own-adventure about him once too. That prologue also introduced the Empties, the monsters who hang around in Transuniversal Space. Those guys I first drew way back, I’m gonna guess around 2003 or 2004, in a sketch I did of Dude Cyborg (a character designed by Marq and I who we have done not a thing with).

And finally, the beekeepers from last week. I’ve long wanted to make the world see beekeepers as the badasses they are (the earliest evidence I can find on the site of this comes from an offhand reference in 2007), and that image on the last page was originally drawn as a sketch for my own amusement which I decided to work into a SecGov story. For the record the beekeepers story is only nine pages long and I did it all while I was getting tired of that super-long story that ran most of the year.

And when the beekeeper story is done we’re going right into another story which will include at least three robot designs from older drawings as extras, and also a character will show up who would have been the main character in some other webcomic idea I had, but now he doesn’t get to because I’m doing this comic instead. So there you go. Now you have too much information and I have a post for my website. You may now continue not caring, and I’ll continue using SecGov Robots as a place to finally get long-lasting ideas out of my brains and my filing cabinet.

Today we have a boat that gets swarmed by an army of killer fish and the seafaring humans must defend themselves… by eating those same delicious fish. Or something like that. Maybe it’s closer to “They realize there’s a lot of fish around and that will make it easier to find lunch” but I’m still pretty sure that the swarm of fish is, in fact, attacking. Either way, it ends with one of the dudes reporting back to Royal McFancypants that “We got lots of fish.”

I can five this one no more than Two and a Half Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. While I can (and often do) quote the “Oh Sire, until the end of time!” line, that is pretty much it. Apart from that, this one is actually much less eventful than I remember. With the swelling music and the dramatic angles, I suppose they were trying their best to work with a pretty limited story here, but being a well-made commercial isn’t what I like these things for. Between this and the Maple sugar one, I guess any time that the commercial ends with a report back to a monarch, I can assume the plot of the piece is just not strong enough to stand on its own.

Some things of note: The look on the king’s face as some guy pointlessly shows him a map in the middle of the sailor guy’s report (surely they would have already known the area the guy was discussing. Or did that guy just barge in and start talking without explaining himself?), and I certainly can’t blame the sailor guy for being wrong about the infinite number of cod that, as far as I know, still haven’t recovered from our overfishing. But I can blame all of you for eating all those fish. I don’t eat seafood, so it wasn’t my fault. It was all of you.

Final thought: Someone on that boat likes the sound of his voice too much. He yells “Captain! Over here! You must see this!” even though one guy had clearly gone specifically to get the captain already. And then the “Heave-ho”-ing when they pull up the bucket. It’s one small bucket of fish. Save the heave-hos until you have something heavy, guy.

Okay, so today you’re getting three pages of an epilogue-type SecGov deal.

And the continuation of last week’s Phone Guys.

In drawing Pete’s bloodshot eyes, I realized that I wish I’d given those guys character models that included pupils. Anyway, stay tuned for the Phone Guy’s guaranteed to not be exciting season finale next week!

I met a dog on the way to work last night and I got to pet him a little bit. I was just walking by and it paid attention to me, so obviously I had to pet it. Naturally, I had to talk to its person a little bit as well, which of course was awkward, but still. Doggie.

Hakiu!

Call me a doctor.
As in, locate one for me.
I’m bleeding to death.

Here’s where I explain the haiku: He wanted someone to call a doctor for him, but instead that person just referred to him as a doctor, so he had to explain what he meant. This has been a Helpful PDR Poetry Note.

So, across the street from me there is a Vogue Optical, right? Place what sells glasses and your second pair is free and all that? You know. Anyhow, since as long as I can remember there has been an eye chart in the window. That changed a few weeks back. I was looking down one day and I watched in horror (maybe “watched with mild interest” would be more accurate) as the chart was taken down and in its place they put up some pictures of beautiful people wearing glasses.

I immediately chose to be outraged. This could not be a simple case of a store owner trying to change things up a little. What this was is an example of modern society placing less interest in actually using glasses to correct vision, but instead using them to look good. Once again society’s obsession with beauty outrages me.

And I was so outraged I forgot about it until weeks later when I needed something to put on my website. That’s how outraged I was.

Secret Government Robots:

For the record, next week I’m starting a short SecGov story, after which I shall try some more larger stories.

Oh and here’s the Phone Guys: