There Ain’t No Hole In The Washtub!

Well hello all! I hope everyone out there had a great Christmas and that Santa brought you everything on your wish list. My holiday was pretty low-key this year. Aside from the requisite stuff like wallets, socks, and undies, I got some nice goodies like a beautiful Boston Red Sox zip-up hoodie, LOST season 3 DVD’s, and some paperbacks including a cool H.P. Lovecraft collection (always wanted to read his stuff) and all three of the His Dark Materials books by Philip Pullman. I also got to visit with my brother and his girlfriend who rode up from Pennsylvania. They brought the DVD of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (which was awesome), and they also brought their little black pug (which normally would be really awesome), but sadly the little bugger made me break out in hives wherever he licked me. I guess I’m allergic to pugs now. Cross that breed off the potential purchase list for the future. *sigh*

Anyway, it’s on to 2008 now and on to this week’s Boxcar Astronaut as well. Undeterred by last week’s events, Ben decides to forge ahead and try to put together the model spaceship kit his Grandma sent him last week. I like what’s going here. Kids are kids, and a lot of times they take the easy way out if things don’t go smoothly. If something’s too difficult to put together, they can move on to a new toy or activity without much thought. However, there are those times when kids flick some kind of switch in their heads and decide to try and be a bit more grown up and responsible. There were plenty of times when I would get a model kit or a really challenging G.I. Joe vehicle and I would make a conscious decision to put the thing together no matter how hard or complicated it was. Usually this would result in hours of frustration, a giant mess of glue and parts on the floor/table, and the toy eventually breaking in the end, but it was important that I at least made the effort. More often than nought, Ben falls into the “take the easy way out” category, but this time he’s determined not to let some model spaceship parts beat him.

This particular strip again follows a sort of theme or motif that we’ve gone back to several times. Three panels of an extreme close-up, so as to disguise or mislead the action going on in the punchline panel. Ben’s facial expressions here are outstanding. You can see the sweat, the pain, the frustration, and the determination just oozing out of him. I absolutely love that mangled mass of plastic parts and glue in the last panel. It’s pretty much exactly the way every model kit I ever owned came out in the end. This stip wraps up Marc’s model spacehip arc, so kudos once again to him for the terrific art and writing here. We hope you enjoyed it.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays! This is the last time that I’ll get to blog before Christmas gets here, so on behalf of Marc and the cast of Boxcar Astronaut, I’d like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year! This is the season of gift-giving, and though I may get some goodies from Santa under the tree, one of the best gifts that I received this year has been getting to work on this comic with Marc and hearing words of praise and encouragement from all of you fellow webcomic creators and loyal readers out there.

It’s hard to believe it’s almost been an entire year since the image of Ben sitting in his boxcar spaceship popped into my head…it’s mind-blowing to think about how much time has just flown by. 2007 has been a fun, creative 12 months for me; I’ve learned a lot about the craft of making a comic strip and everything that goes along with it. In the coming year, I want to keep on learning, writing better and funnier strips, and I want to see Boxcar Astronaut grow to the heights that I know it can reach. There are lots of exciting things to come in 2008: Hopefully we’ll have our first print collection available sometime in the new year, there’s a possible trip to the San Diego Comic-Con in the works, changes and upgrades to the website have been discussed, and perhaps even other con appearances are on the horizon (in the Northeast, anyway).

While we’re on the subject of Holiday cheer, this week’s strip definitely has a Christmas feel to it. The next few strips all have a similar thread, actually. We’ve taken the boys out of the backyard temporarily so they can play with Ben’s shiny new model spaceship! (and hey, who’s to say he didn’t get it for Christmas, right?). Now I don’t know about any of you, but when I was a kid, I stayed miles away from model kits. They just never made sense to me. A toy that you had to spend hours and hours gluing together and when all was said and done, you just put it on top of your dresser and stared at it? What was the point? I had zero patience for breaking zillions of tiny plastic pieces off of those annoying molds and meticulously applying decals. Every single model kit I ever attempted ended in disaster, so eventually my parents and relatives adopted a stringent “no models” policy when it came to gift-giving occasions. I was definitely an “instant gratification” type of kid. If a toy didn’t have some rough-and-tumble play value five or ten minutes out of the box, I wanted nothing to do with it. “Some Assembly Required” was the childhood credo I lived by. Models schmodels.

Alas Marc, being the patient, artistic person he is, was obviously a big fan of models and he thought it would make for some great strips. So he whipped up this situation here where the boys look seriously frustrated and bewildered at that massive pile of model pieces that fall out of the spaceship box (love that retro ship design). I think it’s safe to say Ben and Devin are the “instant gratification” type of kids, just like I was! They certainly weren’t expecting to have to work so hard to have a space adventure. So, Marc whipped up this hilarious idea of Devin throwing the box over his head in order to salvage some entertainment out of the situation for Ben and himself. It’s a great moment, and it’s nice to see Devin get a chance to shine here.

Well, that’s all for this week. Again, I’d like to thank all of you who have made it a weekly ritual to check out Boxcar Astronaut, and a great big ‘thank you’ to my creative partner Marc. Thanks man, you’ve helped me make one of my dreams take flight. Congratulations on the start of your family. Merry Christmas everyone!

Dream A Little Dream…

Hey all, welcome to Boxcar Astronaut’s 40th strip! I’m glad that this one fell on a milestone of sorts because I feel that everything from the concept to the execution is beautifully done. Not to sound cheesey, but I just can’t help but smile when I look at it. It really gives me a warm feeling inside. I’m not sure where I got the idea to show the character’s dreaming, (I think it was at work, of all places), but it really made for a strong Boxcar strip when all was said and done. There’s a lot going on here so I’m going to go panel by panel and gush over what Marc has done with my little idea which, now that I think about it, was relayed in a telephone conversation. Usually I will draw a little four-panel sketch of the strip and show it to Marc, but this time he didn’t even get a chance to look at before pulling the imagery right out of my brain perfectly. Just goes to show you how well we work together creatively.  But, I digress…

First off, we have Ben dreaming that he’s a super-cool space warrior (of course), with a nifty Adam Strange-esque design for his dream avatar. Very dashing! Is Ben imagining himself grown-up here, as a swashbuckling star hero, or could this guy be a character Ben saw in a movie or TV show? Hmmmm. Next, we have Devin, sweetly slumbering in dreamland and battling evil as a cosmically-charged comic book hero! And not just any hero, there’s a name and a story to this guy, thought up by Marc in one of those “I wish I had thought of that!” moments. Folks, meet “Power Boy”, star of his own hit comic and weekly animated series. He fights crime along with his partner, Jigowatt. Yes, that’s right, Power Boy & Jigowatt…“PB&J”. Brilliant!

Then we have Robot, who was the one character that I was struggling to come up with suitable dream material for. I finally settled on a spaceship or flying saucer (you know, because he wants to get off Earth), but I was never really happy with that. Marc came up with the perfect suggesstion for what a Robot’s “dreams” might consist of. Binary code, naturally. ( I love how Robot’s eyes are darked out here, incidentally). Finally, we have my favorite panel, Caveman and Diogee. It’s truly too adorable and funny for words. Honestly, if you can look at the two of them snuggled up together and not smile you have no heart! I told Marc I wanted them to be fighting over a bone in their dream together, so of course Marc kicks the funny quotient up several nothces my making the bone ridiculously huge. Great stuff.

Well, thanks for stopping by and checking out the 40th Boxcar Astronaut webcomic. I hope you like it as much as I do, and we’ll see you for the next 40!

Burnin’ Rubber!

Before I get started on this week’s strip, I’d just like to take a moment to say farewell to one of my childhood icons, one Mr. Evel Knievel. The famous motorcycle-ridin’ daredevil passed away on November 30, at the age of 69 from a terminal lung condition. Evel Knieval was one of the very first pop culture icons (aside from the Sesame Street gang and the Star Wars crew) that I really latched onto as a young whippersnapper. At the age of 4, I must’ve gone through about a hundred of those Evel Knieval toy motorcycles with the little rubber Evel Knievel action figure attatched. I don’t remember actually watching any of his ridiculous bus or canyon-jumping stunts, but like KISS and Star Wars, the guy’s face was plastered absolutely everytwhere in the 1970’s. Evel Knieval was part Elvis, part Stuntman, part lunatic, and all American. Rest in Peace Evel.

This week’s Boxcar strip wraps up the epic three part Tire Swing saga, and it goes out in a blaze of glory…literally! Sometimes the best Boxcar strips are the ones that are banged out in a few minutes, and this one is definitely a shining example of that. I originally did a cute little Diogee physical-gag strip where he discovers the tire swing and gets into some minor hijinks, but a little over a week ago Marc thought the tire swing saga deserved a finale with a little more “oomph”, so we sat down and Marc came up with the idea of the Devin using the tire swing for target practice (a variation on the classic quarterback throwing the ball through the tire), and I suggessted another “Robot one-ups the boys” ending where he vaporizes the poor tire swing.  Sheesh…you’ve really got to feel bad for Ben and Devin at this point, dont you? Robot’s pretty much destroyed everything they own!

My favorite thing about this week’s comic is the third panel. That close-up on Robot’s eyes with the beams coming out is awesomely done in the Mighty Marvel Manner! It looks straight out of a George Perez or Jack Kirby cosmic epic. That smoldering imprint of the tire swing is super-cool as well and as always, Devin’s reaction is simply classic. The facial expressions just keep getting better and better each week.

Well, I hope none of you are too sad to see the tire swing go. Don’t worry too much, Ben and Devin are resourceful kids, they can get another tire! See you next week everyone!

Crisis On Infinite Tire Swings!

Hey kids, seems like the tire swing was a big hit last week! Lots you wrote comments and lit up the tag board to let us know how much seeing one of those brought you back to simpler, happier times. That’s what Boxcar Astronaut is all about! I’m happy to report that there are two more strips in the little saga I’m calling “Crisis on Infinite Tire Swings”, beginning with this week’s little gem.

This particular strip was inspired by a children’s birthday party I attended at my friend Mike’s house back in the summertime. Mike recently moved into a house with a backyard and the previous resident left a tire swing on an absolutely mammoth old tree. I swear, the branch it was tied to must’ve towered 30 feet in the air. Spider-Man himself probably stopped by one day and hung that tire swing! Anyway, my buddy Mike is a very large guy and he was able to push two squealing little kids on the tire swing with one arm. An image instantly popped into my head of Robot pushing Ben or Devin, and the endless disastrous possibilities that action could lead to.

 Originally I had Robot shoving Ben so hard that he smacked directly into the tree, limbs spread out Wile E. Coyote stuck to a cliff-face style, but then Marc came up with the idea of Robot being even more poweful and shooting Ben way off into the horizon. I thought that concept was absolutely hilarious, and as you can see by the finished product, it definitely works out better. I love the trailing scream coming off Ben and the look on poor Devin’s face in the last panel is priceless. Just goes to show you boys and girls, that ago-proverb is true: be careful what you wish for…’cause you just might get it!

See you next week with the final chapter in the epic saga “Crisis on Infinite Tire Swings”, when Diogee becomes an all-powerful cosmic God and threatens to destroy the very fabric of the Universe unless the Caveman from Earth-29 can stop him! (Ok, none of that is going to happen….but it’ll be just as fun, promise!).