First of all: Hi, welcome to my new comic! I've never done this sort of thing before, but... I am now. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but hadn't done it until now (of course).

So why did I wait until now? It started when I learned that my high school was going to offer a new class this year where I could work on pretty much any project I want, as long as it's hard yet doable within a semester. So, now I'm doing something I probably would have tried anyway, but with some class time to do it, the support of classmates, a teacher, and some other people, and I get class credit for it. I think that's a pretty sweet deal. The only problem is that I can't do a half-assed job, or my project won't be "a stretch". That means that if I start to suck real bad between now and June, you (the reader) has license to email me and tell me exactly what they think of me and my web comic.

What does this mean for my comic as far as creative control? Actually, surprisingly little. I'm not the sort of person that's comfortable making lewd sex jokes. I do have a tendency to cuss mildly in my writing, though. Some of it may be censored, but I don't want it to be. Either way, in June I'll be on my own.

This comic might be very confusing to a lot of people. It's hard for me to tell, because everybody that I can show my comics to usually know me and my interests too well to be able to catch obscure references and inside jokes that well. So: I had this idea, where instead of showing me-me, I would depict myself as four different characters. These characters were based on the Dungeons and Dragons character alignments--good, evil, lawful and chaotic. Then, I decided that I would have these characters represent me when I work on the webcomic, in cyberspace or some crap. So, the guy in orange is the good Josh, the guy in the green polo shirt is the lawful Josh, and the guy in the nasty sweater is the chaotic Josh.

Even if what I just said really did help clear things up some, you probably still have one question left: "What's up with the purple guy, and why is he cussing? And where's the fourth guy?" Well... that IS the fourth guy. I know... he looks like a purple lump of something that isn't a Josh. See, I figured that the evil part of me wasn't the sort of character that would actually do anything. I'm more of a loud jackass when I'm mad. Therefore, Evil Josh is a bottle of some spirit (like a poe from the Zelda games) that yells and makes noise all the time. If the text bubble that covers his bottom half wasn't so high, the fact that it's a bottle and not a plastic bag (as a friend suggested) might be more obvious. I have a tendency not to mess with that sort of stuff after I finish it, though. I may have to change this habit.

If you don't get the punchline, read this, especially where it starts talking about how the automation system works.

Originally, I was going to have a follow-up to this comic, one that would explain all of this. I decided not to run it, though, because it looked like ass. Only half a year ago, I would have been perfectly content drawing in pencil and coloring it in Photoshop (as I did in this case). It did not work. I don't think I will ever be able to make it work. Unless I get desparate (doubtful), I will likely never run it. I may even tell you what other mysteries it contains at some later date, however!

This comic, you may notice, was not drawn on paper at all. I bought myself a wacom tablet for Christmas ($300 bucks = spendy!), and this was my second product. My first looks horrid (almost as bad as the other comic I already mentioned), and may never be ran. Some things I like about this one are the backgrounds (that HTML's from slashdot.org, if you couldn't tell), the cardboard boxes, and the art in general. It has a quality that reminds me of A Lesson is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible that I like. It's probably how I colored over the lines. That takes ages, though, and I like coloring behind the lines better. One thing I don't like is the perspective. It's weird in this one. That and the strange idea I probably didn't execute very well (as I feel like I have to explain it). Oh, well. I'm here to learn, aren't I? :)

I'll type more next weekend... when this shindig really begins.