Here at the end of Chapter 3 I had to censor what is thus far the most offensive thing I’ve seen in the archive. It truly puts all the other stuff to shame. What’s incredible about it is that this strip doesn’t contain a single homophobic slur. Instead, Harvest has tasked me with removing just an absolutely horrendous turn-of-phrase. I for one, am impressed.
Then we wrap things up with Jess’ second comic and a second Josh appearance? Were they dating? I feel like they were dating. Is this based on something I was there for? I have no recollection.
No new posts next week, but come back on September 19th for The Cancelled Years. In my head I’ve built it up as a good chapter. It probably is not.
For an exact idea when these strips were being released, remember that Hellboy was new, and in theaters. We were living in that bizarre pre-MCU phase where there were a billion comic book movies and exactly zero of them hold up as good in either a legitimate or just-fun way. Do we think at some point we will have culturally soured on the MCU, or is it just Star Wars now, and I’m the only one who will tire of it, while the internet screams on forever?
There is a strip somewhere in the archive- I weirdly don’t think it has passed by on Rad Internet Site, but it also references SotN. It’s the only strip to feature our friend Dan, who I reunited with to play Guild Wars for some time after the strip ended, along with his young ward and my now ex-wife. Those were absolutely great times. I’d love to sink into an MMO like that again. I just don’t see one coming.
So we’ve passed the point where I did the dramatic post-high-school haircut. Jess was the only one who wanted to redraw me and put it in the strip. I didn’t, as the redesign I had done in year 2 was not met well by Harvest or our sole reader, Dana. But bless her for doing that. I just wish I could remember who the second newcomer was supposed to be.
Two strips coming at you tomorrow, then it’s on to Chapter 4 starting the 19th!
Hey, one I was willing to censor out an R word instead of skipping entirely!Deep cut 20 years later. I remember Alucard specifically because we had that one friend who wanted to literally marry a copy of Symphony of the Night.I know that the guy on the left is based on a person named Josh. I have no idea who the guy on the right was.
Harvest used the correct version of “their” but blew it on “diameter,” “girth,” and “exaggeration.” All three of thsse words will lead your street-level pervert right to the heart of where it’s at in that strip.
Then we’ve got a bad buildup followed by a super-hot-original-take on Superman. So this chapter is sputtering rapidly to its end. Harvest gets a big break in the next chapter when I go stupid with a long story arc that I’m excited to revisit, mainly because I recall being a time of energetic creative output for me. (I had nothing else to do.)
Non-spon-con for the McDonalds on Long Pond Rd. Plymouth MA. Your friend will fight them tooth and nail to make sure you don’t get his second soda, included free with his family meal he’s having by himself. RIP Dustin.I am literally admitting to being lazy making the strip from inside the strip. I am a horror master.Fresh ideas, fresh ideas, fresh ideas!
It was a guest strip week back in whatever month this was in 04. Gina getting devil powers played well into other continuity. I’m retroactively deciding that the whip she has out of nowhere is also the devil tail. It doesn’t answer the question of where she got it, but kind of a cool detail.
The third strip was by our friend Jess, if I recall correctly. It’s great because it’s all the classic Flatliner notes- Harvest hitting a girl, Harvest hurting a child, a throwaway panel at the end, the works! I should have stolen the It’s Over! panel and just put that up as a final comic when this thing did eventually drizzle out. That would have been smart.
I can’t read this sign, either. Curse this digital high def age we live in!The devil lore in Flatliner grows increasingly complexThat is definitely more of a punch than a push.
I don’t think I put a lot of thought into the other staff at Flynn’s at any point in episode one. Like, whether they existed at all. I suppose that if they did exist there is more opportunity for comedy than if they did not. It also justifies the “series of lockers” and the reality of the situation is intensely important. There can’t be a “series” of lockers for a place that employs one person. That would make no sense, and our alive puppet world would begin to fall apart.
Important to note that the apron is not getting washed after the shift, and we are very sure it was not washed before it, either. The signs and posted scream big-time wavy-blue-line-through-purple design that all disposable beverage cups had from 1984-1996.
Much like Flatliner, I’m not doing much reading ahead. I’m being re-introduced to my own work as I write these posts. So, I don’t know what the hell is up with the spacing at the end of the page. Why is it blank? Is there a big chunk of text up top next time? No one wants to find out!
I guess that even on the occasional glance back into these folders all these years ago I never made this far into a re-read. The San Francisco thing is definitely Harvest saying “gay is hilarious” which comes off at lot less homophobic than most of the comics I skipped. Seeing as there’s nothing actually hateful or judgy, I’m not going to censor or eliminate the strip.
I can hear very clearly in my head Ryan saying his first speech bubble in his strip. He had this amazing tone that he could muster in a cutting question that both precise and blunt. He could with just a question make your entire existence swirl around you. None of it would make any sense for a quick second. I always actually laughed out loud when he did it to others, ruining his moment.
Yeah, we are probably off on to a big storyline with Gina in the third strip. I think it actually entails two separate arcs that I had convinced myself were two separate stories. We’re also nearing the end of the chapter, so I think we’re starting to taste some long haul fictional continuity. This is great, because real life was very boring by this point.
The bear has been with us since strip one. This is its first dialog.Maybe I lapsed. I haven’t looked at the dates on these recently.I love Gina’s original backgrounds that only get used this one time. Look at mini-Ganondorf!
End of Act One? I divided this thing into acts? I get way more ambitious than I realize. This is a script about a very troubled man who is forced to overcome his prejudice against puppets. The idea that this would be divided into acts is revolting. Nevertheless, it was probably in a style or formatting guide I was poring over at the time so I did that.
Reading a screenplay back page by page is brutal. The spacing and indentations seem to be terribly inefficient. There’s really one bit rolling through the lines here about Marty’s dedication to his crush that he barely knows. On the plus side, the info bursting out of this page makes it a little more plausible that Todd hasn’t heard about Mandy.
Marty is very “in the moment” only when it comes to pretty much everything, and he works singularly to his goals. Sometimes his goal is to do whatever it takes to get Mandy’s attention. Other times it’s double-fisting straight alcohol until his consciousness is obliterated. I think I absolutely nailed down the early-20’s male experience, if I do say so myself.
It’s a pair of Gina’s comics today followed by a grand Ian comeback. There’s a much needed payoff for the long running physical abuse thing. I doubt that’s the end of it because nothing ever ended in Flatliner, but there it is.
Torey-chan was sort of a real person. She was Dave’s sister. We may have met her for all of sixty seconds one time when we briefly lived with him. Harvest let that pretend crush ride from there off into the sunset. He probably talks about Torey-chan to his wife now.
We probably hadn’t seen Ian in like a whole semester because he was either in college a great distance away or Boston which is a place I like to avoid and might as well be a great distance away. That truth about Boston holds up more now that I am an awful Cape Codder. Fortunately there is a lot more Ian for a precious few months when he’s not living in the midwest like some sort of psychopath.
Her alliance with the Bear will make more sense laterThis specific coworker of Gina’s was nicknamed Bunny. She probably appears in the most Flatliner strips without having any idea what Flatliner is out of anyone.These were so long ago that I can only hope this is setting up a storyline that I vaguely remember.
The Liquidator is a harbinger. He sets in motion the whole The Cancelled Years storyline. In real life, he was two people who made me spend a lot of time throwing garbage bags of toys into a storage facility. In this first strip, he’s just a victim of wordplay.
Kristi doesn’t appear in a lot of any other Flatliner strips, but this one certainly is triumph of an entrance a sole appearance. I vaguely recall Harvest daring her to do exactly this to Dana. The idea was not met with so much real-life enthusiasm by Dana.
A detail I missed in the first go around 20 years ago was that Harvest has a life counter in the strip about Gina’s workplace. I don’t know the rules of the video game he’s living in. If I did there certainly would have been a strip where he found a Harvest head and collected it like Mega Man. Thoroughly disappointed in myself for not having done that!
Liquidator, Omen, Whatever.The sound effects Harvest made when describing this were next level disgusting.We only added two letters to his usual catchphrase. How anyone could injure their butt that often was beyond me.
Good lord! I was just thinking about how things were changing so rapidly in the previous post. TS Toys, much like its similarly-abbreviated real world counterpart, is going out of business.
It was truly a wonderful place to work for a college student. The pay was garbage, but the responsibilities were nearly non-existent and the closing was handled like a bonfire. It was incredible. I never quite had a workplace that was both this fun and completely unproductive ever again. I tried to bring some of that element to a few places but that place didn’t just take the cake, it hoarded an entire bakery’s worth in a back room filled with an overstock of products that hadn’t been released yet.
The bulimia strip was really something else. Dana made up and regularly wore a t-shirt that read “Anorexia makes girls pretty” so we gave him a barely-exaggerated strip where he’s cruel to his wife. The drawing Harvest did for that fourth panel, truly disgusting. It was the art used for this chapter’s icon back in the gold-team/rated-arr era. It was not far from still being the artwork today.
Please have a healthy relationship with food, everyone. That means not listening to Dana. It also means not attending any family gathering where your relatives will make food front and center. Any of them. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
He did love Hitler as some kind of a cartoon character, in his eyes.A lot of people asked this. I found it weird.Just a legendary comic from the archive
