Hopping Down the Furry Widdle Bunny Trail

I’ve been working in (open) secrecy for nearly a month on a project. It’s been years since I last did a Furry Widdle Bunny comic and nearly a decade since I drew a comic strip! I’ve decided to restart it as a weekly 3-panel strip starting in October!

Now, by “restart”, I mean quite plainly to start over, as though none of the strips or associated comics ever happened. The same characters will be reintroduced, and in time the situations will all be restored, but I wanted to take the opportunity to start it all from scratch as a semi-linear narrative. If all goes as planned, the earlier stuff should still fit into the timeline as extras. Well, the strips and “Furry Widdle Bunny” 1, at any rate. The “New Corporate Policy” issues were always a bit in their own weird space.

I feel like there are maybe two people who remember what I’m talking about, here…

Anyway, the new strip is going to be in color, so one of my pre-production steps is to make color guides. I’ve started, of course, with Simon.

Simon looks very weird to me in color, yet.

I’m probably not going to talk overmuch about it here. There will be a new site launched to host the strip, and I’ll provide a link when it’s up. I just thought I’d share this because I’m all excited. 🙂

If you are interested in seeing more info about the process of getting the new strip up and running, I’ll be posting updates to Hula Cat Comics.

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I’m Not Buying What You’re Selling

I don’t trust people readily. In fact, it takes years for me to trust people enough to put myself in a position to find out if I can really trust them.

So when a guy with a clipboard, no vehicle, and a custom polo shirt knocks on my door and wants to offer a quote for any old house project I have in mind, my answer is a decisive “Um” followed by shutting and locking the door. The shirt screamed scam to me; any company that could afford a company polo with a nice embroidered logo that doesn’t bunch the fabric — well, they aren’t small enough to need to send someone hoofing around a lower-middle class village.

Out of curiosity, I looked them up. Lo! the Google returned with a lengthy list of complaints.

So now I’m feeling all smart, when really I just ran into a rare alignment of reality and my natural paranoia.

The Rabbit King

The Rabbit King, by Rafer Roberts
Character from “Plastic Farm”

It’s No Fun Unless You Feel Like You Have Stomach Flu

My dad’s three brothers were all alcoholic, and although he never had a problem leaving the hooch alone he displayed traits of what used to be called an alcoholic personality. I saw signs of it in my own behavior, so when I went off to college I was in no hurry to sample the boozohol.

I accidentally had some freshman year, when someone — of course — spiked the alcohol-free punch bowl at a Halloween party with vodka. I realized what had happened when I suddenly felt comfortable in the crowd of strangers. Friends got me back to my dorm room, and that was the last I had anything to do with demon liquor or parties for some time.

Incidentally, I was a pretty big buzz kill on my hall that first year. When a bunch of the guys chipped in to hire a stripper, I refused to join in. It’s not that I was so moral or lacked raging late-adolescent hormones; I had pretty limited funds and needed to save them for important things like comics and pinball.

A few years later I was spending the summer in a sublet, working for the university housing department. I’ll have to write about that sometime. It was the best worst job I ever had.

Anyway, one of my housemates went out to a bar once a week with his friends. It sounded pretty fun, and I had begun to think that maybe I could put a cautious toe in the fire water. So one night I tagged along. Well drinks were half a dollar for the first hour we were there, so I tried a vodka Coke.

Ten dollars and a few hours later we staggered home.

Now, I certainly didn’t have 20 tumblers of barely mixed drinks. The price went up at regular intervals until it hit two dollars a glass, I think. I don’t know for sure how much I had, but it was enough that I just remember really enjoying myself. Maybe eight?

At any rate, I was drunk enough that when everyone else jumped in a fountain I realized that my shoes would get wet but not that my shoes could be removed.

The next morning I reported to work bright, early, and nauseous. My assignment that day turned out to be cleaning refrigerators that students had rented. These had been sitting in a storeroom for month, unplugged and doors shut. Cracking these open was like inviting a new and horrific curse of the pharaohs with every unit. The stench ran straight up my nostrils, grabbed my throbbing brain, and threw it around my skull like a terrier with a rat.

I don’t believe in divine justice, but as a fan of old horror comics I appreciate blatant lessons. It was a long time before I drank again, and I’ve never drunk myself sick since. Stupid, yes. Never sick.

Film Diary: July

The yearly count is up to 249 now. That’s a lot of movies. I’m so far ahead of schedule now that I don’t even try to squeeze in movies anymore, and yet I saw 26 this month. One of them I saw twice, because “The Frozen Dead” was so nuts that I had to show it to Tim and Dave at our mini movie marathon the following week.

I’m finally done with the BBS box set. Great films, but so downbeat. “The King of Marvin Gardens” was probably my favorite of the bunch, but that’s like choosing a best depression. Fortunately I had Stephen Chow’s 2-part Monkey saga “A Chinese Odyssey” to revive me with fart jokes and wire-fu.

My recommendations from the month’s viewing would be “The Secret World of Arrietty”, Studio Ghibli’s gorgeous adaptation of The Borrowers; “Under the Skin”, an art house sci-fi film that’s very near to very good; and “Holy Flame of the Martial World”, which lowered the sanity bar for Shaw Brothers films so far that sewer lines had to be moved (it has a disco ball of death!).

Arachnoquake (2012)
Attack of the Monsters (1969)
The Bay (2012)
Best Friends Forever (2013)
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box (1994)
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1994)
The Eagle (2011)
Entity (2012)
The Frozen Dead (1966)
Gamera (1965)
Grave Encounters (2011)
Grave Encounters 2 (2012)
Haunt (2013)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983)
Intruder (1989)
The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
The King’s Speech (2010)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Ninja III: The Domination (1984)
The Perfect Host (2010)
Perfect Stranger (2007)
Ponyo (2008)
The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)
Stitches (2012)
Thale (2012)
Under the Skin (2013)