War Games - Finale

Never underestimate insane cartoons.  Or moderately sociopathic immortal time-traversing klepto siblings.

And that's it!  One more strip to go to wrap things up, then the (probably) last Walters File!  

I'm going to be out of town for a couple days, and I'm anticipating that the final strip will be a little late getting posted.  I'll do my best to have it ready for your viewing pleasure at some point on Tuesday.

Plans this weekend involve a further progression toward my quiet exodus from society.  Here's hoping things pan out.

War Games - Part 4

This shit took me forever.  Sorry I'm posting later in the day than usual.  Man... I never thought I'd need a break from drawing comics!  

Looking forward to this weekend.  Happy Mother's Day to all you mom's out there!

Starting next week: action, and lots of it!

Aftermath - Part 2

It's fun, sometimes, when dialogue isn't necessary.

Back when I used to party (and when I had friends), usually I was the one who woke up around dawn on the bathroom floor.  It's just so nice and cold there, you know?

There's a trend in comics (and sometimes even webcomics) to have superheroes that are outside of the social "norm" (and I use that term as loosely as possible), and by that I mean Muslim superheroes, gay superheroes and so on.  The part that amuses me is, generally, when a gay superhero shows up in comics, she's a lesbian.  Right, because we're supposed to believe that you're featuring a lesbian superhero because you're standing up for the rights of lesbians, and not at all because you're catering to your male-dominated audience who wants to see pictures of girls kissing.  Compare the ratio of gay female characters to gay male characters.

What's more, generally when a male superhero comes out, it tends to be a character most readers could care less about.  Northstar, anybody?

I'm not claiming to be breaking any new ground here, of course.  Just an observation.  There are a few exceptions, of course.  And, to be fair, especially in the past year or two, comic writers finally seem to be getting wise to the lopsided representation of homosexual supers, and we're starting to see a lot more male couples.  I just read that, in X-Factor, Shatterstar and Rictor have gotten together.  Coincidentally, I also heard the title was cancelled this year.

I have / had a homophobic friend who's favorite character was Shatterstar.  I wonder if I should tell him? :-)

Re-Reallocation

This Thursday, on Halloween, Super U. is hitting its 100th strip.  I think that's pretty cool.  To celebrate the event, I'm offering up a strip that's a brief interlude; maybe a portent of things to come. 

As of last Friday, I deactivated my Facebook page.  I assume this means that the Super U. fan page on Facebook is also gone (I don't know, but if it's still there, somebody let me know, okay?  I told Jason the page was all his now, if it still exists).  I left the "like button" here on the site, and, of course, if you're interested in promoting the comic on Facebook yourself, you merely need to share the link; there's even a button to do that right below every post.

I've been actively promoting the comic on Facebook for almost two years, and it has really gotten me absolutely nowhere.  I've had more success half-ass promoting it with Google+ and Twitter than I ever have from Facebook.  The reason for this is pretty clear: my stuff was never able to branch out beyond people I personally know and reach a wider audience.

That's not the real reason I'm ditching Facebook, though.  The real reason is much more personal.  Without even considering the negative effects I think social media can have on the way we interact as a society, I just grew sick and tired of Facebook etiquette, especially, especially the fishing.

Person I know:  Oh, doom and gloom.  Agony.  I'm never going to recover from this awful tragedy that just happened.

Me:  What's wrong?  What happened?

Person I know:  ...

My imagination is far too active to be able to handle this sort of thing, especially when it's coming from someone I care about.  I fill in the blanks.  The worst part is, I think people who do this are well-aware that they're baiting others, and purposefully don't indulge them with the rest of the information simply because they enjoy others worrying about them helplessly.  They're not interested in anything but your unquestioning sympathy.  They just want your sad face emoji comment.  That's not social interaction, that's sociopathic.

One time, because of the vagueness of somebody's unthoughtful statement, I was even convinced a relative had died, and had to call all over the place at like 1:00 in the morning to get the answer, setting off a chain of events that... well, you can probably imagine.  It was not pretty.  In the end the person who had died was someone I never even met, and certainly not related.

Then of course, there's the thing every week where I get my numbers back from Facebook, and they'd be like, "This week your stuff reached 142 people!  2 of them liked it."

It goes even further beyond that, but I'm leaving it there.  I'm done talking about Facebook.  If you're interested in following the comic in some other fashion, remember I'm still posting updates on Google+ and Twitter.  I highly recommend either of those over Facebook, by the way.

Pliable

I think I can pretty much declare at this point that I'm around 85% back to my original comic style.  It's taken a long time to undo the damage that caricaturing did to my work, not to say I didn't learn a lot from it.  I was fortunate to work with other caricaturists that strongly-emphasized cartooning over exaggeration, and my cartooning skills improved quite a bit because of it.  For example, I knocked out that Spaz pic there in the third panel in no time at all.  Don't get me wrong: I love cartoons, and I think caricatures are pretty cool, too.  And like I said before, initially when I began Super U. I think I was trying to emulate the style of other webcomics.  I certainly don't knock cartooning and caricaturing.  They both take an incredible amount of practice and skill to do right.  But recently, I found a picture I did of Raine a few years ago, and I got a little upset, because I knew I couldn't draw it that well anymore.  I will get there again, and soon.

The last strip, this one and probably the next few all deal with the wrap-up / fallout after Justice's capture, Rex Ruthless' demise and Aiden's death and subsequent ressurection.  This little action-run has been fun, but it can't be punches to the face all the time.  Don't worry, I will endeavor to continue delivering the funny, even if I'm only using humor to disguise my true intentions of making you find yourself compelled to learn more about these characters.

Hey, that gives me a cool idea!  I'm going to put a poll up on the bottom of the site for you to vote for some of your characters.  Who do you want to see more of?

As always, thanks for your support, and please keep sharing Super U. with your friends!  I've made it easier to follow me on Facebook and Twitter with the new buttons there on the top, and to share things you like on your social media of choice.  Tune in for next week's blog as I think I might discuss how freaking amazing Grand Theft Auto 5 is.

It Comes to a Head

I worked on this on pretty much the entire day.  I thought I was trying to get these done quicker!  Still, I'm really happy with how it turned out.  

You can look at this strip and compare it to pretty much any strip prior, and see how much better it looks.  Why?  Because I Photoshopped it.  Sure, I put considerable effort into shadowing and line-work, and my style has gravitated even further toward my comic roots as I continue to undo the damage caricaturing did to my art-style, but aside from those things, I literally just moved a couple sliders around in Photoshop and got this amazing finished product.  It's really quite sad, but that's how the game is played.  You don't actually have to be very talented to make something look amazing in Photoshop.  Artists these days, or what passes for artists, can perform in a couple clicks what it would take a skilled traditional artist a lot of forethought and technique to accomplish.

So why did I use Photoshop on it?  Because it made the strip look better, and what's more, you can no longer include yourself in the world of professional artists if you don't know how to use Photoshop.  It's really very unfortunate.  But being that I don't enjoy painting (and I'm not particularly good at it), and having to produce artwork so quickly, it's the only logical option.

I'd love to draw this stuff by hand and just go to town with some Prismacolor markers, but that just isn't in the budget.  I mean, we're talking like 4 bucks a marker.  Sucks to that.

Maybe I shouldn't belittle my efforts.  It's probably a bad idea.  I don't want other people to know how easy it is to make things look amazing in Photoshop, because the world needs more artists; the real kind.

When not drawing or house-cleaning (and sometimes during house-cleaning), I've been watching a lot of programs lately involving people travelling to all corners of the Earth, doing astonishing things and seeing amazing places.  And up until recently, I had become once again heavily embroiled in Skyrim.

I realized I was trying to live vicariously through these people (and these characters).

There's still so, so much beauty left in the world, and I want very badly to experience it firsthand, but to do so requires money and freedom from obligations, both of which I have in short supply.

I still haven't given up hope that I'll soon be relocating, where I can live a life that more closely resembles my ideal one.  But I think about Kyoto and British Columbia and the Himalayas and the Alps and New Zealand, and I get very sad, because I know I'll never see them.

God, but I get mopey, don't I?  Sorry.  Occasionally I remember that this is a blog page, and I just start dumping out all the stuff that's been weighing heavily on my brain.

No more of that.  Gotta keep it professional.  Stiff upper lip, and all that.

Please help spread the Super U. love and share stuff with your friends, especially the geeky ones.

The Walters Files: Spaz

Sorry this one's getting posted so late in the evening!  Been outta town all day.

Spaz is my mom's favorite character of mine.  I conceived him long, long ago, probably on a paper restaurant menu.  He's the character I would draw on all the fogged-up car windows, homework assignments and grocery store freezer doors of the places I went.  I actually officially named him and decided what his abilities were shortly before the movie The Mask came out, and I remember the first time I saw the trailer for The Mask on television, I was like "...Shit."  But I think that happens to everybody who has been doing comics for a long time.  There's always one great name you conceived of entirely on your own, or one great character that you think is your most original, and then at some point you encounter that character in some other incarnation in some other comic or something, and you realize your idea wasn't as original as you thought it was.

Truth be told, I may have been inspired by the trading card of the short-lived Marvel character Slapstick; I can't remember if I saw that card before I created Spaz or not.  I never read or saw anything with Slapstick in it beyond that trading card (or, for that matter, anything with The Mask).  I'd already had the character's look down, but I can't say with 100% certainty that I wasn't inspired by that picture of Slapstick with a mallet in his hand.  Mallets aren't  actually Spaz's thing, anyway.  Spaz is really inspired by Bugs Bunny, which is pretty easy to see in that strip I did called the Bugs Bunny Effect, where he talks Chance into walking off a ledge.  I've always upheld that if I had three wishes, one of them would be to have the "Bugs Bunny Effect" on people.  I mean, I wouldn't talk people into walking off ledges, but still.... Well, probably I wouldn't, anyway.

Explaining Spaz in a way that would work in a world full of superheroes took some thinking.  I believe over the years I've concocted a pretty cool origin for him.  Even Walters only has it partially right.  In previous versions of my comic, Spaz and Trash were created by my main villain.  In the Super-U niverse, I guess we'll just have to wait and see who created them this time around (because even I can't say for sure).  Was it E.P.I.C. / Rex Ruthless?  Maybe, but probably not; that's not really his thing.  But Rex sure knew about them enough from the get-go to know he could exploit them, which suggests they still hail from nefarious beginnings.

Chapter 3 Begins... Now!

Clickify to Enlargicate

It's been a long time... but Chapter 3 is here!  

Thanks to all of you for your patience, especially to those of you who watched and shared the movies and stayed tuned during the hiatus.

After you read the comic, remember to vote for Super U. in the Top Web Comics 100.  That button to the left over there.  It's at number #896 right now, and there's only 12 days left to vote on it!  I don't, like, win anything, but it would be pretty good exposure and nice to have as bragging rights.

While you're at it, you can Like the comic on Facebook, too.  The button right above the last button.

And since we're on the topic of things you should do, you should also browse my wares in the Super U. Store or check out my book.  If there's any merchandise you want to see that I don't offer, tell me what you're interested in seeing and I can probably make it for you.  Also, I believe starting tomorrow, all the prices in the Super U. Store have will drop again.

So, yesterday was my daughter's first day of kindergarten... her first day of school of any kind, really.  I'm already tired of talking about it, but it seemed to go pretty well (on her end, anyway).  It was a strange sensation, yesterday, being home alone with my dog and cat and nobody else.  I've been the one home with her in the daytime for the majority of the last 5 1/2 years, and for the last several months I've been a "stay-at-home dad."  I took the opportunity to finish the comic, so I wouldn't have to be up all night finishing it like I've done in the past.  Today... I don't know.  I suppose I should clean things?  I do have to go grocery shopping.  It will be strange doing so and not misplacing my daughter every five minutes.

I was considering taking this opportunity to get a new job, but I'm not sure.  I would only have something like 5 hours to work, and that's if the job was close (and the only things close are chain restaurants and frickin' WalMart, none of those job being in any way desirable).  But there is a library in town; maybe I'll see if they need some help.

I'll be busy with the comic again, but I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm still open to do any commission work, if you guys are interested.  Contact me, and we can discuss details.  You can even pay via the Donate button here on the site.  Also, if you buy a book, send it to me and I'll sketch on the first page for you and then send it back to you.

Super U. Strip #76: Archrival - Part 4

Here's the last three movies!  They've been a ton of fun to make, and they gave me the time needed to put together ideas for Chapter 3 while still putting out some content.  I had hopes I could drum up a small YouTube audience with these, but no such luck.  For the most part, not even some of my regular readers seem to watch them (but some of you do, of course, and I thank you profusely).  So, while they've been fun, I don't think I'll be doing them anymore.  That, and I've about exhausted my iTunes music library making them.

Next Tuesday, Chapter 3 begins!  The very first strip will be done in Illustrator as usual, but after that point they will all be done (hopefully) in Manga Studio.  That means they will have a different look, one that will more closely-resemble my hand drawn artwork, and with any luck that will be a good thing.  The reason for the art-style switch should become apparent on Thursday, because, as I've done several times before, I'm incorporating the style-shift to accompany the story.  Beyond that, I can say no more... you'll just have to wait and see.

Seriously though, you guys, I need help.  If you don't want to buy merchandise or whatever, I'm totally cool with that.  I'm not keen on soliciting my friends, anyway.  But it's free to share the comic with your friends.  And all of you goomba friends of mine who don't read the comic?  You guys are mean and unsupportive.

I figured out a way to put these directly from YouTube onto the site here at Blogspot again.  Before I would just click "Share to Blogspot," but they removed that option on YouTube (so much for this whole "one-Google thing...).  But I realized if I put the address for the movie directly into the... well, the point is, here they are, more or less how I want them to be.

So, without further ado, I give you the Archrival: Part 4,5 and 6!

Super U. Strip #73: Archrival - Part 1

Super U. Strip #71: Roommates

Super U. Strip #44: Random Encounter

Archrival: Part 4

I did warn you about the change of atmosphere.

Only two strips left until the dramatic conclusion of Chapter 2.  And when I say dramatic, what I mean is you will hate me for the ending I have planned.

Also, *gasp!* An establishing shot?  Varying panel sizes? This comic is getting all professional and stuff.

Not much to report other than that, though.  I've been stuck in the house for a while because my car's got a flat and we're broke. It's nuts out here in Touristopolis for the long weekend, anyway. 

We tried to take the kid out to have some fun this last Sunday at one of those bounce-house places, only to discover upon our arrival that the place was closed.  That went over as well as you might imagine.  Looking into it, I saw that there is a possibility the place is closed while one of their employees is being investigated for something to do with child pornography, so it's probably just as well she couldn't go.

It turned out all right in the end, though.  We took her to a place she could ride on a Ferris Wheel for the first time, and she decided she wanted me to take her on the go-carts, which was pretty bad-ass because A.) my five-year-old daughter loves driving fast in a go-carts B.) I got to drive a go-cart.

But that's all I've got for now.  Thanks for coming to the site, and please share the comic with your friends using one of those handy-dandy social media butttons there.

Archrival - Part 1

This is the first strip of six that ends in the conclusion of Chapter 2.  There's going to be a big change of pace and a difference in atmosphere going on here, and I really hope you all enjoy them just as much.

I'm trying to find ways to shave time off my drawing, so I tried a trick in the second panel that I've seen done in comics like Penny Arcade and PVP.  I don't think it worked out too well actually, but I'm not giving up on it yet; I'll keep toying with ideas to see what works.

So, one of the artists on Strip Search just wrapped up a month-long Kickstarter campaign, in which the result was she made over $86,000 to make a webcomic.  To me this is both awe-inspiring and makes me very sad.  Granted, she had the bonus of having a strong following because of the show, but when you think about the fact that she had just over 1,000 backers, well... I mean, realistically I could get 1,000 followers without the benefit of a reality show, couldn't I?

Kickstarting is something I plan to do in the future, but as of right now I simply don't think anyone would back me.  Ideally I'd first like to have a stronger fan-base to appeal to, but getting to that point has been very difficult.  I need new marketing tricks.

When Chapter 2 comes to a close, I'm going to be just as busy with the comic, if not more so.  I'll be working on improving the Super U-Tube movies and finding ways to monetize them.  I'll be teaching myself a new art program.  I'll be working on compiling Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 into book form, so that when it comes time to start setting up at conventions, I'll actually have some shit to sell.  Oh yeah, and I'll be writing Chapter 3.  

But just like the last "hiatus," I'll be posting new content at least twice a week, and this time I'll continue putting up new Walters Files on Saturdays as well.  I won't leave ya'll hangin.'

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.

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.

 

The Bugs Bunny Effect

Spaz is one of the first characters I can remember creating.  I think it was shortly before the Mask movie came out.  I was too young to know of the comic, and so the movie was my first exposure to the Mask, and I remember after seeing the trailer for the first time being really pissed, because somebody did it before me.  In truth, Spaz was born of my trading card of Slapstick, a short-lived Marvel character, and my desire to have the powers of Bugs Bunny.  I have long said that if I could have three wishes granted, the first would definitely be to have the "Bugs Bunny Effect" on people.  Though, perhaps, minus the cross-dressing.
If you're wondering why Spaz is drawn the way he is, it's because he's a solid-light hologram.  I'm telling you this because I may never get to an origin story for him.  He creates cartoon objects with solid-light, and his "Bugs Bunny Effect" is actually done through light-induced hypnosis.
Yeah, I have spent a lot of time thinking of these things.
Anyway, Spaz has always been a favorite of mine (and my mother's) and he hasn't changed much in like 20 years.  For two decades I've been drawing him on paper restaurant menus and in school notebooks.  So I couldn't pass up the chance to use him in Super U.

I started the Super U. YouTube Channel and uploaded a video of the first strip.  When the "hiatus" begins, I'll put up two of these a week, until we're caught up.  They're kind of lame, for now.  Once I begin working on the new material, they will be created in such a way that they will look better in a movie / animatic format.  Ideally it would be great to re-work the older strips in this way, but I can't.  A good deal of them were created with the newest version of Illustrator, and I don't have that anymore, and so I can't alter them in any way.
To save you time, here's the movie:

I like what just having some music in the background can do.  But like I said, these are going to be a little hokey for a while, but they will get better.  Rather than working in panels, I'll be treating each "panel" as a seperate image, so I can incorporate camera movement and stuff without a loss of text.  In fact, I may do away with the word balloons entirely, and do the dialogue in captions.

Here's today's strip.  It was originally only three panels, but Jason gave me the idea for the last panel.  He suggested Chance fall into Ecstasy's cleavage, but she was knocked out inside her base "off-screen," and Justice was still conveniently laying in the grass.  Plus, this way Chance can get his lucky rock back.

Alternate Title: "Happy Landings"