Comic for Wednesday, Jan 19, 2011

Commentary

Posted January 19, 2011 at 1:00 am
AUGH! KITTY FLASHBACK! KITTY FLASHBACK!

I wanted this comic to reveal that George is a community college freshman, but I had trouble finding a way to smoothly sneak that into his panel five dialogue. One version of the script had all that information in there, but it was clunky as a clunk factory. As such, I settled for merely implying that he's a college student.

Troubled Production

This comic was was a troubled production. Minion left to pursue his dream of owning a camel, Justin got turned into a newt, George got distracted by some Star Wars prequel review videos, Lavos showed up, Kevin forgot to bring marshmallows... it was a nightmare.

Worst of all, however, was that I originally had a very specific referential joke in this comic about Spider-Man 2. The sentiment would have been essentially the same as George's sarcasm in panel four, but I had originally planned to cut away to a panel that directly mocked the movie.

I eventually decided that such a cut away would take us out of this moment between Justin and George, and that it wasn't really proper to the EGS style. It's one thing to do a cut away joke to somewhere else in the EGS world or a fantasy that includes the characters, but to cut away to a movie parody with no aspect of EGS included? Even if it's somehow relevant, that's basically a Family Guy joke.

I'm not saying that to put down Family Guy, mind you. When Family Guy cuts away to a tangential parody that doesn't involve the main characters, it's like a duck flying. When EGS does that, it's like a duck jumping out of a car and into oncoming traffic.

Anyway, taking that out and revising the comic was more difficult than I had anticipated as it instantly smacked me in the face with writer's block. I assumed removing one joke for another in a similar vein would be easy as pie, but it turns out that pies are more difficult than advertised.

As for Spider-Man 2, I still want to draw the cut gag, so I'll wait until I post that to rip that movie a new one.

twitter

rss