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!
