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 give 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.