Hey everyone, Happy Sunday to you all! I’m typing this at almost one in the morning, so I’m not sure how the weather is going to be for the day, but so far the weekend has been great and I hope that Sunday will be a beautiful wrap-up to the Holiday weekend. I got a chance to see some fireworks tonight over a field of tall grass out in the country that was twinkling with hundreds and hundreds of fireflies. It was nature’s own fireworks display! It inspired me to write a strip about Ben and Devin trying to catch some fireflies. I’ll have to try and work out a funny scenario for that one.
Speaking of beautiful scenes, just take a look at that first panel in today’s strip. I absolutely love what Marc did with it. The backlighting from the high sun on the characters on that hill is really, really cool. Its funny how things work out, too. When I wrote this strip and sketched it out, I had always intended for it to be set during the winter on a huge snowbank. I guess I didn’t make that clear enough in the rough format, though, so Marc gave it a summer setting like all the other strips.
“King of the Mountain” was always a game that I associated with the winter and snowbanks, but Marc told me he used to play that with his friends on dirt or grass mounds all the time and it was a universal game for all seasons. The more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. If I found myself on any type of hill with a couple friends around, back in the grade school days, there was going to be some shoving going on, snow or not. It also makes more sense in the context of the current story, with the boys “teaching” Robot about things that little Earth-kids do. It would’ve been pretty jarring to suddenly have a winter scene. Of course, because of that haunting first panel, it’s hard to imagine the strip any other way. Click to check it out!
Before I go, head on over to the main page and check out the new Creators section. You’ll get to learn a little more about Marc and I, as well as see some adorable pictures of us from back in the day! Awwwww……
