I know everyone was expecting wackiness up in the ballroom, and we’ll get back to that, but I thought it was time to check in with some of the other team members for a bit. I know this page isn’t rip-roaring hilarious and crammed full of jokes, but sometimes you got to do a little setup – besides those pages with 10+ panels are killing me. I like drawing a bit bigger than those tight pages allow for.

The crossed balloon tails is a cardinal no-no for cartooning, but I was sort of writing this page as I drew it. Oh well, no Eisner for me.

So anyone planning on playing any Diablo III this week? I was originally going to take the week off of work when it came out, but I’m not sure this version is going to push all the same buttons that D2 did, seeing as I’m an egregious min/maxer. Still should be awesome, hopefully next week’s comic won’t be all stick figures. Can’t decide what class to play first though. Barb or Wiz. Maybe Demon Hunter. Or Monk. Or Witchdoctor. :P

I figure that working in a comic book shop, restocking, opening boxes, Sydney’s had her share of papercuts, and of course she conveys her dislike of them in her usual subdued fashion. Fortunately she has remarkable recovery time.

Yeah, and 13 panels on a page? Definitely not the ideal way to do a comic page. I could almost break out each row and post it as a separate strip M-Th or something. Well, we got through all the orbs anyway, maybe I can decompress just a little.

I got some fan art from AndyO! of TMI Comic, which is often a little NSFW so use your own judgement. I’m sure more than a few of you already read it. When the comic that showed Sydney’s predilection for spicy food came up, there were a few who noted the similarity with Ace.

Today, known locally as Quatro de Mayo – I say locally when really I mean that I say that and no one else does, is also known as “May the 4th be with you,” which slowly seems to be turning into an internet geek holiday. That suits me fine cause it’s also my birthday. I only mention it cause I turned 40 this year, and I only mention that, not because I want you all to have the image of me in a wheelchair with an IV drip and an oxygen tank, but because I randomly realized I’m only a few years younger than Sydney’s dad, which is… weird. I guess because I’ve never had adult hobbies like watching sports and… I don’t know… drinking beer, I’ve never felt like an adult, but realizing that I could have a kid that’s old enough to drink is a little jarring.

Don’t worry though, I’m not a decrepit old man quite yet. In fact if I can find the time I’m going to try and get into the 1,000lb club, (combined bench, squat, and deadlift)

Saturday is free comic book day, swing by and support your local retailer.

Today is also The Avengers day, at least for Americans. Mostly I’m posting this because I thought it’d be fun to have an Avengers thread. Don’t spoil anything! You can hide spoilery comments by using the spoilers tag: <spoiler>Spoilers go here</spoiler> It will look like this The Hulk is Bruce Banner Click to read it.

Here’s the vote incentive for May – Sydney by Fred Perry of Gold Digger fame. Normally I’d prefer to do my own art but I had a few other projects relating to the comic take up some of what little spare time I have, and Gold Digger has been hugely influential on both the art and writing for my own comic. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that for a stretch of time, Gold Digger was the only thing that kept me coming back to comic stores. I don’t know if I ever would have done Grrl Power without it.

So give me a vote and check it out.

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Sydney’s obviously spent some time testing out the orbs, but as we see on this page, that sometimes proved hard to do without drawing attention to herself. She knows their basic functions but still has a lot to learn.

Speaking of learning, you guys get to suffer along with me while I try my hand at different angles. That low shot of Max isn’t terrible but it could be better. I think I spent about an hour on the pencils for just that panel and her mouth still looks a little weird. Oh well, learn by doing.

This week’s superhero fix to tide you over till next Monday is the League of Super Redundant Heroes. Basically, there’s heroes, then there’s sidekicks, then there’s the guys that didn’t quite make sidekick, and then there’s these guys.

We already knew that the orbs grant her powers, I mean, she’s the main character of a superhero comic. Whatever you thought was in the tube, it was obvious it let her hang with supers, but for all the Archon people knew, the tube just contained the holy Spork that Jesus used at the last supper, and it only grants the power to eat both soup and meatballs with the same utensil, or the dying flatus of Gogmagog or something.

And don’t worry, I’m not going to reveal an orb per page for the next 6 weeks. We’ll get through them faster than that.

Oh, and I meant to post this originally with the comic, but it was 1:30 am when I did and I forgot, but if you’re looking for some other amusing superhero webcomics to fill the week long gap between updates here, I’ve been enjoying Love and Capes. It’s got a nice toony art style and is cute and funny, sort of a super hero romantic comedy, lots of referenced to super hero tropes, definitely worth checking out. I have plenty more to recommend but I’ll stick to one a week for a while (when I remember) since some of them have decent sized archives.

Also, I realize after seeing the page fresh after spending all weekend nose down in it that Maxima’s waist and hips are way too small. That’s a bad art habit of mine, I need to keep an eye on that. It’s weird how some artists have blind spots for proportion when looking at their own art, I’m sure you can think of plenty of examples.

So here they are. I know after all the buildup the reveal is going to be a letdown to some, but this is what they’ve always been. It’s interesting to finally see them though, even for me – this is basically the first time I’ve ever drawn them. Of course, revealing what they actually do should be fairly amusing, and will happen quickly over the next few pages. Then her meeting the rest of the team, then… arrg, I wish I could draw this thing faster. :P Speaking of which, it’s ridiculous it’s taken this long to get to. 86 pages and a year and a half just to get the tube open? As some of you know, I had Sydney’s powers listed in her bio on the cast page for several months, cause the reveal was always “soon.” Hopefully things will start moving a little faster now, but it’s a balance of getting in those little moments of character development, jokes and keeping the story moving.

This page, being the big reveal, is unfortunately a little short on content and jokes, but we’ll… uh, call that pacing. It would be nice to be able to say I got lots done on the next page since this one didn’t take quite as long to draw, but that didn’t happen. I did get some banners made up that I’ve been meaning to, it occurs to me I should make a page with all that stuff on it in case anyone wants to grab stuff to link back to this page with. That’s another project for the upcoming weeks.

When I drew the tube, I didn’t pay much attention its size, but now looking at the orbs, I’m not sure they would have fit in the thing. There’s 7 of them (hopefully I haven’t forgotten one, hah) and they’re about the size of a tennis or baseball. Each time I draw the tube its size is a bit different though… the version on this page seems especially skinny, but we’ll say they just barely fit.

There were quite a few good ideas bandied about in the comments (lots of really silly ones too of course) but more than one person suggested the tube was full of gaming dice. I really liked that idea. So much so I almost started trying to figure out how I could merge the idea with everything else I had planned – baseball sized dice, one of each kind, etc., but it would have changed things too much. Still, I could easily do a whole other comic around that idea.

Thanks for all the TWC votes guys. Hitting #1 and even holding it for a couple of days isn’t something I thought would ever happen. I thought I’d be at this for years before even getting into the top 100. It’s quite a feat given the sheer number of webcomics out there and the size of their audiences’s. I’m glad you find my daydreams as amusing as I do.

I updated the webpage in an attempt to make the comments column a bit wider so that the page wouldn’t get quite as tall. It takes a lot of scrolling when a page starts to fill up. Let me know if this explodes anything. I tested it in Chrome, FF, IE 9 and IE9 compatibility mode. Looked ok to me.