Cole: Comics have lately been taking far longer than expected, so I’ve been itching for a somewhat easier art style. This was my first attempt at something really different, and I can say with some level of confidence that you won’t see this art style reappear any time too soon. It really ended up taking about just as much time to draw, since with so few elements to work with a lot more tweaking and fiddling was necessary to capture what we wanted. Also it’s hard to ignore how eerie it looks. This one’s definitely going back in the drawer until we find a comic idea that’s worthy of this eeriness.

Mark: Firstly, I think it might be good to point out at this juncture that the current workload split between Cole and I is about 90% Cole and 10% me. For example, this idea was the first comic idea I had way back in December, and as such my only role last night was to look at artwork Cole spent hours on and talk about how he should spend more hours tweaking it. This tends to consistently be the case, so we’re both brainstorming ways of reducing his workload, so far unsuccessfully. Secondly, I think that this comic is a good opportunity (since we’ve already linked to it) to talk about Perry Bible Fellowship, which has more or less been the biggest influence at least on me as a strip writer, although (as Cole mentioned) also on the artwork for this particular post. The idea of single, fairly straightforward last panel gags that rely on visual instead of textual humor really appeals to me. Because comics strips are, by nature, short and visual, I think Perry Bible Fellowship, with its minimal dialogue and simple (but hilarious) gags, sums up everything that a comic should be. Of course, I’m sure there will be lots of text and dialogue-centered jokes on this site in the future (we’ve had some already), but there’s something very nice about making a comic strip visual because otherwise I feel like you could just tell a joke. However, there’s obviously a great comic strip tradition that includes a cast of characters or continual stories, and lots of them are incredible (Calvin and Hobbes topping the list, along with any other comic strip list). QGMP probably isn’t going to be that kind of comic, though. At least not for now.

SPECIAL SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE FUTURE: Mark rambles less about non-humorous things. But still probably rambles/uses lots of parentheses.