War Games - Part 9

Hey, sorry about the tardiness of this one.  I mean, it's still Tuesday, but I like to get these posted in the mornings.  With yesterday being a holiday, I had some family over, and needless to say I didn't get much drawing done.  

This one was a blast to work on.  I don't think I've done a "splash page" quite like this yet.  Drawing combat is fun!  I hope you like the change of pace, because there's a lot more face-smashing to come!

War Games - Part 8

Kris Straub, who does a few webcomics, tweeted earlier:

"Do you know why I like webcomics?  Because anyone can say, 'I couldn't find the story we all wanted to read. So I wrote it.' "

This especially rings true for me.  Growing up as a huge fan of the X-Men, I never, ever got tired of seeing them just doing regular stuff in the school environment they lived in, like playing sports together, or even just shooting the shit.  I could read entire books just about the stuff they got up to in the Danger Room.  I wanted to live in the X-Mansion.

Moreover, I wanted to see something like the Venture Brothers, but strictly for superheroes.  There are a few superhero satires out there, for sure, but nothing that I've found has been quite what I was after.  All that, combined with having these characters in my head for years that have been absolutely screaming at me to tell their stories, Super U. came to be.

War Games - Part 3

If you're new to Super U., you may be wondering why suddenly I'm using photos as background instead of drawing it out.  You may be thinking I'm lazy.  In fact, you'd be right, but moreover, I use photos as background during the "Dangerous Room" sequences, when the students are participating in holographic simulations in Combat Education class.

Teams have been chosen.  Roles are being assigned.  On Thursday, you'll get a glimpse of Team Frost and Team Ex doing the same... and then the fur is gonna fly.

War Games - Part 2

Aiden hasn't been an outright lech in a while, so I thought it was about time he got back to that.  Still, it's good to see him back to his old self again.  Or, at least, the self he most recently created for himself.

I was up until the wee hours of the morning the other night mapping out the rest of the chapter, which in turn caused me to get incredibly tired last night and have to finish the strip this morning, so sorry it's a little tardy.  But thankfully I did, because as it turns out I'm going to need every available strip to finish this story arc.   I hope you're in for lots of action and excitement instead of the usual (which I guess could be classified as wannabe superheroes behaving badly).

Unbeknownst

The Technosyde story is nearing completion, as is, actually, the chapter.  I think there's only 9 strips left.  Like I said before, the hiatus between this chapter and the next is gonna be a really short one, but I wanted to go over what's gonna happen during that time (more for my benefit than anyone else's).

-Revisiting the merchandise.  Nobody's buying it.  It's time to lower some prices, axe some merch and create some new merch.  I may even need to look into different merchandisers entirely.  I'm still looking for feedback from you guys as to what kind of merch you'd like to see.  You don't need to buy anything, just tell me what you would buy, theoretically.

-New marketing campaign.  My current one gets me a lot of visits to the page, but that's as far as it goes; it hasn't seemed to attract a returning audience.  Maybe it's just because my comic sucks?  I have no idea.

-Looking into a new website entirely.  I think one of the major things my comic suffers from is site navigation.  As far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a way to make it any easier using Blogspot.  I know for a fact I can do it better through WordPress or the like, but the last time I tried that it was pretty unsuccessful.  It wasn't drawing an audience, and my regular readers were still coming here.  I plan on keeping this site going for some time, and playing with this whole Google + relationship, but behind-the-scenes I may start building a better site, and then one day I'll switch it up on you out of the blue.

Put a Hurtin'

This one took just about every waking moment I had available yesterday.  I'm happy with how it turned out, though.  

I'd love to stay and chat, but I got shit to do.  No Walters File this Saturday... I have family staying for a couple days.

I'll do my damndest to get strips out next week on time, but it ain't gonna be easy; my kid's got the entire week off of school for Fall Break (which, apparently, is a thing), so I'm not going to have the free time.  Really, my productivity depends on her temperament and level of ambition.  Plus Thanksgiving and everything.  I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading!  Bonus points for sharing!

Serendipitous

While this is hilarious to me, there's a chance you won't get it, in which event I would direct you to this:

That strip, of course, can also be found in the book that I happen to be selling.

Also for your purchasing pleasure is various merchandise.  Give 'em a look-see.  Don't see anything you like?  Tell me what you want to see, and I'll make it for you.  Hats, different shirts, coffee mugs... it can probably be done.

Shanna (AKA ShitKicker) is one of my favorite characters, and has been around nearly since I started drawing comics.  In the initial incarnation of my comic from long ago, I'd always intended for Shanna to eventually hook up with the character that would eventually evolve to become Aiden.  Maybe that will still happen... who knows?  Right now I'm enjoying playing with the Aiden / Raine love / hate relationship, and Shanna seems to have found a lot of common ground with Scumbag; they both love punk rock, they're both outcasts / rebels, they both resort to violence, etc...

Also, in case you were wondering why Daemon isn't all shadowed-up in the second panel, it's because he's actually dead, and it's hard to use powers when you're dead.

Hypomania

No time for blog today, Dr. Jones!  I just finished this one up; spent some time last night hanging with the wiz on her birthday instead of working on the comic.  Now I gotta take off again and go and pick up the shorty from school.

Don't forget that today's the last day you can vote for your favorite character on the poll at the bottom of the site!

Thanks for reading, and remember, sharing is caring!

Super U. Strip #71: Roommates

Super U. Strip #62: Locution

Super U. Strip #55: Avicide

The Walters Files: Scumbag

Scumbag is one of the newer characters in the lineup.  My obvious inspirations for Scumbag are Johnny Napalm (I think his name was) from Guitar Hero and, more awesomely, Vivian from the Young Ones.  I have lots of cool plans for Scumbag concerning his powers and background, but, for now, I'm holding those cards close to the vest.
A while ago, when I was making comics and stuff with my primary characters, I asked myself, "Why do superhero teams always live together?"  Honestly, I think the real reason they often do is because it's convenient for the writer.  I came up with the idea that my characters were in a band together, were broke, and had to live and travel together.  It made me reconsider and slim up my character roster (because some characters simply didn't fit the concept), and some characters were essentially "combined" to form Scumbag, just as I did with Aiden.
Well, that idea was short-lived, but Scumbag survived the process, and now he lives on at Super U.

Super U. Strip #44: Random Encounter

Roommates

This is how much of a geek I am: I have a list of who is a roommate with whom.  "Whom," right? Or just "who?"  I don't remember.  It's almost 3:00 AM and I just finished this, and I'm definitely not thinking straight.  There was probably going to be some dialogue in this one, but I forgot what it was.  Something to the effect of Bobby Rocket vowing to hunt them all down and kill them one-by-one, I think.

There's a lot characters in this one I haven't used in a while... and some not much at all, really.  Bobby was a last-minute edition to the list of students; I needed somebody to balance out the Combat Education teams.  He's heavily-based off of an old role-playing character of mine who was sort of like a 50's greaser meets a pyromaniac.  

I have too many damn characters.

I had to go with something a little "light-hearted" for this week, because starting next week, shit gets real.  Pretty much.

There's still one strip before the end of Chapter 2 that I have no idea what I'm going to do with.  Maybe that one will be less real.

Locution

Click to Enlarge

After all the crazy stuff going on in Super U. lately, I remembered suddenly that, oh yeah, these are students going to superhero college!  Maybe it's time they get back in class.

Welcome, by the way, to the first Thursday edition of Super U.!  Remember, the comic is now posted twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we still have Saturday Super Stories, too.

Advertising still seems to be going really well.  Like, yesterday we had 84 page views.  We didn't even post anything yesterday!  The ads have already been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, which is rad.  So, sorry to keep repeating myself here, but for all newcomers to the site, please check out The Archives over yonder to help you get caught up.

Also you can Bookface and the Google and even the U-tubez.  Help me spread some Super U. love!  Thanks!

-Matt

Avicide

I'm still trying to find the middle-ground between artwork that most resembles my own "style," a more simplified "cartoon-style version" of it that works well and can be drawn quickly in Illustrator, and what continues to be enjoyable to work on by the time I've gotten to panel three and it's 2:00 in the morning.  I'm not quite there yet, but I think I'm getting closer.

Time to insert the comic, methinks.

(It was tricky inserting humor into this one.)

I think I'm failing in my attempt to keep this blog professional, because I need to dump on you again.  This is the best place I can do it; I'm not about to do it on Facebook, and there are scant few people I can talk to about this sort of thing, yet things need to be said so I can get said things off my chest.  You are in no way compelled to read any of it.  In fact, I'll make it tiny, so you're even less inclined to.

A person I know once declared, "If you don't like where you live, leave."  I understand the sentiment behind that statement, but frankly it makes me furious.  At the risk of being a hypocrite and putting some of my "bizness" on the internet, I have to say that statement does not apply to me.  I do not like living in Florida.  I don't like being in tourist / vacation / retirement hell, where it is sweltering most days of the year and you feel like you need a cold shower after every time you spend more than five minutes outdoors.  Where it seems your only employment options are in the "hospitality industry."  Where there is no culture.  None, unless you consider driving a poorly tricked-out (read:. loud muffler and mismatched oversized spoiler) Honda Civic and blaring reggaeton "culture."

And yet I cannot leave.  I'm trapped here.  We came here out of necessity, because we had to save ourselves from financial ruin and we knew there were jobs for us down here.  Yet now that we have gotten ourselves on our feet, more or less, I'm faced with the fact that my wife isn't inclined to pick up and move and find another job.  I can't really blame her.  Her bringing in the stable income (which is also significantly more than mine), I'm not in the position to make financially responsible, life-changing choices that affect my whole family.

What's more, I somehow have managed to be an extremely unqualified person to be hired for, well, just about anything.  The odds that I'll find a job somewhere great somewhere else in the world, and essentially reversing my role in the family with my wife's, are pretty much zero.  I'm still confused how this happened; I guess I'd always assumed growing up that being smart and a talented artist would see me through.

Possibly some of that is that I have a need to be creative at a job, and cannot be happy in a job otherwise, and yet I have incredibly high and specific standards that don't allow me to be content at most jobs that would otherwise be available to me.  Having a pretty low self-esteem, I really have no clue where those standards came from.  I suppose it could be fear, too, that I'll waste away designing logos or web pages or digitally-painting grass for a year, and being stuck behind a computer day in and day out.

I can't consider going to school to improve my situation.  My wife and I still have her school-debt to deal with, and I'm not about to add to that shit.  Plus, and possibly this is just the realist (read: pessimist) in me, the likelihood that I'll build up tons of debt and get some degree and then find myself right back to exactly where I am now is pretty high.  Most of my peers have degrees in art, even master's degrees, and have way more impressive resumes than my own... and they're stuck in down in the trenches with me.

Up until recently, I had been entertaining the idea of relocating my family to Portland, Oregon.  Strong art and music scene, good place to raise a child (because, fuck, I do not want to raise my daughter in the piss-hole state), pretty chill in comparison to other large cities, moderate weather...
But I just don't think it's going to happen.  My wife's current job will ultimately become something substantial, and I'll be both happy for her and slip a little further down the spiral at the same time.

I'm told, "that's what they make anti-depressants for."  I understand, now, why people take them.  They spend their entire lives being told they can do and be whatever they want, and then they become a responsible adult with a family and realize that they're no longer able make choices for themselves, but for their children.  That all of their friends are gone.  That they're in a situation they are powerless to responsibly change, and all of their dreams are just dreams, and all they can do for the rest of their lives is cope.

Wow, sorry.  That was a bit more venting than I intended.

Super U. Caricatures!

So, between my birthday and a couple days of crippling depression (possibly related), the strip didn't get done this week.  I didn't even get past the preliminary drawing stage.  But I wanted to give you something, at least, so I cleaned a few of these up for your viewing pleasure.

If you didn't know, I do caricatures at Disney World.  So I'm sure you can imagine how many of these I have floating around.

It's always weird to draw Raine smiling.  That one in the middle is Time Lass.  You've met her already, but you'll be seeing a lot more of her in the strips to come.  And last but not least, of course, is Scumbag.

Despite have a pretty shitty birthday, I did have a good weekend prior to it.  My wife and I had some awesome sushi and I finally got to see the Hobbit.

What are your thoughts on the Hobbit?  I really enjoyed it.  Admittedly it was much different than the previous movies, and felt directed toward a younger audience, but that shouldn't be at all surprising, considering that's exactly how the books compare.  I thought they did an amazing job with the Dwarves, and I was really pleased with dude-face they got to play Bilbo whose name escapes me at the moment.  Martin Freeman.

Anyway, I just sat here for a half an hour thinking of something insightful to say.  I got nothin'.

Random Encounter

I've got nothing "profound" to blog about today, so on with the funny!  Oh, wait.  One thing.  This whole Black Friday starting on Thanksgiving thing?  It sickens me.  I feel terrible for the poor bastards that have to cut their holiday short, the most important holiday in many respects, just to go and work through the entire evening, being screamed at by belligerent, nuts-o shoppers.  I'll be doing my shopping the same place I've done it the last few years now.  Amazon.

I hope you're digging this story arc.  There's a few more weeks of it.

 

Closure

Here's strip #39, the last strip of the first chapter.  Today Super U. celebrates its 40-week anniversary.  I want to take the time again to thank all of you who are still reading the comic, and for your efforts in helping me to spread the word about this silly little thing I do every week.

Growing up I started a lot of projects like this.  But this is the first time, really, that I've completed one.  And that feels pretty good.  Sure, back in Junior High I made a few Raine and friends comic books, but they were all like 8 pages long.  At least if I compiled Super U. so far into a book, I could get a good 13 pages out of it.  So... that's an improvement.

Next week I'll send out the first two animatics.  Don't forget, if you've got a YouTube or Google account you can subscribe to the Super U. YouTube channel (you can join this site too hint hint), and same as always, please help me share those links on your social networking sites of choice.

Depending on how fast I get the ball rolling, maybe I'll be able to put up more than just two every week.  They don't take me too long to make, at the moment; the length of the hiatus depends more on how quickly I can get established on those other sites and to explore a new format and yadda yadda yadda... we've been over this.

Decided to go with Playstation Plus, which is a membership you pay for that gives you a lot of rewards for doing so.  Back in the day I didn't think it was all that worth it at the time, but now there's a lot of good "free" games that are worth entirely more than the subscription fee.

Like Gotham City Impostors.  I'm actually enjoying it, despite the fact that it's a multiplayer game and all you do, really, is shoot each other a lot.  The aspect of having crude "Bat-gadgets" really changes to the dynamic.  But the part that I especially appreciate is that, unlike, say, Call of Duty, a lot of the stress of trying to stay alive is gone.  Why?  Because everybody is dying all the time.  Even the people who are a lot better than you.  Half the time, when you get killed, and your screen shows you the person who did it, and their character is gloating, they get shot in the back mid-sentence.  "Ha ha ha!  You're a waste of bullets, you - - GAAAH!"  It's hilarious.  Also, I have yet to kill a single teammate so far.  Maybe the friendly-fire damage is toned down, or it doesn't exist, I'm not sure, but that's my kind of shooter: when you're not so confused that you're embarrassing yourself by killing your buddies all the time.

So... stay tuned for Chapter 2, and in the meantime enjoy some musical comic strips.

Thanks again,
Matt

This "Dangerous Room" story arc was fun, but man, it took like 20 weeks to get through!  I can't wait to get back to the stupid!

Patagia

The pen on my graphics tablet no longer works.  Usually I would scan in my sketch and "ink" it using the pen and tablet.  Now I have to use a mouse, effectively drawing with it, and that can be pretty difficult.  So this week's strip sees a lot more cutting and pasting and manipulation than previous strips.
I considered going black and white with the strip, mostly relying on my hand-drawn stuff, until I can afford a new tablet.  But after looking at the sketches I've put together, I realized none of them are good enough to just scan in and make a panel out of.  All of them were created with the intent of being sketches, not finished products, and it will likely be more work to redraw them all (I've worked pretty far ahead) than it would be just to use the mouse to ink them.
So if it seems the strip is lacking in artistic quality for a while, there's why.  On the other hand, I haven't had any feedback one way or the other when I've put more / less work artistically into a strip, so maybe it doesn't make a difference to you guys?  I don't know.


Anyhoo, I haven't ranted in a while, but after yesterday's events, I thought it was about time.


So I was so glad to hear that Scott Walker survived the recall election in Wisconsin.  After all, everybody knows that teachers and firemen are already filthy rich, and don't need anybody's support.  Honestly, I can't wait for the middle class to just go away, already.  Won't it be refreshing when we can just do away with unions entirely, and the line can be easily drawn between wealth and poverty?  I mean, if you aren't rich already, then obviously you haven't been trying hard enough.
Also, its "Gay Days" at Disney currently, as happens every year.  Usually there are these planes that fly around all year long that sky-write messages about how much Jesus loves me.  But since it's Gay Days, the planes now fly around toting large banners warning us about the dangers of allowing these gays to come to Disney.  I'm so thankful they're doing this.  I never would have known it was so dangerous to have gay people around if they hadn't told me.
And have you seen all these "God Hates Fags" T-shirts lately on the internet, and all these adorable little children wearing them?  Brought to you by the same upstanding folks that go and protest at soldier's funerals, no doubt.  Obviously these fine people are doing the Lord's work.
It seems to me America is certainly moving in the right direction.  God bless us.  Well, except the fags, obviously.  And the socialist-nazi liberals.


(...That was satire, by the way.  Don't kill me.)

Bonus points to the first person who leaves a comment explaining Hydro's bandage.