One small reason why I took such a long hiatus was because I didn’t know how the hell to end this damn arc. Truth be told, I still don’t. I’m doing as the writers do and letting the characters lead the story. Here’s hoping the results are cool. Anyway, note the TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET reference and my half-assed attempts at background work.

Hi guys! Here’s a new comic for you all to enjoy. Trying new things with my art and attempting to inject more cinematic angles into a fairly un-cinematic comic. I just watched MARS ATTACKS for the first time and liked the way the ships were designed so I yoinked them for the purpose of this comic. Yes, I know. MARS ATTACKS yoinked from PLAN 9. Kind of a cycle, ain’t it?

Still working on the site re-design. It’s almost complete. Still some things here and there I want to tweak..

So, yeah. I decided to jump back into the world of web comics and give Henry another go. Bad idea? Perhaps. Only time will tell if I can stick it out. My priorities back in 2010 were much different. I was very much in it as a fad and hoping to get a lot of attention with little to no effort. These days I want to just draw a goofy comic and make bad music/movie/television references, fame and fortune be damned.

Although if you are in touch with fame and fortune, I’d love to get their numbers and schedule a lunch date ASAP.

Not entirely sold on my new way of drawing this, so we may be in for a lot of tinkering with these new comics.

About a week or so ago I fixed up the CSS on this site and realized something rather important: I miss this comic. A lot has happened since moving out to California and one of those things involved putting an end to writing and drawing this saga of three (or four if you count ID) furry bipeds living together and going on adventures. There was also a wedding and a real “grown up” job that factored into my decision to quit. But now that things have started to settle down a bit more in my life, I have found myself thinking about coming back and starting this up again.

Stupid idea, amirite?

Maybe.

I do have a few concerns about starting up this comic, and they are the main reasons why I’m hesitant about returning. The first concern is that my skill has stagnated a bit. When I quit back in 2010, I was having a tough time getting backgrounds quite the way I liked. I could get all the characters framed up nicely, but then it would take me hours to try and figure out how to make the backgrounds make any sense. The result, of course, being random lines and colors in nonsensical patterns. I also could not figure out how to draw women for the life of me. What made this problematic is that I had added two rather interesting female characters that I wanted to flesh out (Apple and Darla). If you go back through the previous strips, you’ll notice that I cut the corners where I could and relied heavily on copy and paste to eek my way through the strips they made an appearance in. If I came back, I’d definitely need to improve on this or figure out what isn’t “clicking” for me. Kind of daunting, if you ask me.

Another concern – fairly obvious if you have heard me complain about anything lately – is the lack of time. The new job eats up almost all of it, and I have this aspiration to become a writer in the creative sphere. But perhaps comics are where my writing time should be spent. After all, Henry could use a bit more fleshing out in the writing department.

Final concern: all the technical stuff. I’m not very happy with the layout of the comic, other than it’s width of 660px by whatever height. I kind of came up with this layout on the fly and it allowed me to come up with six panels worth of content. Unfortunately, that meant that I couldn’t really get dialog heavy and the jokes kept falling in the “one panel to pause before punchline” thing that has become kind of a cop out. If I were to come back, I’d really need to lock this down or figure out more creative ways to do panels on a strip by strip basis. I could just go the QC route and have long panels going downward until the punchline.

I’m probably over-thinking this.

Short answer: I’m moving and everything is packed up.

Long’ish answer: I’m moving to Los Angeles in a few weeks and I just shipped off half of my cables and “drawy” things. I have a scanner, but it doesn’t do much without the USB cable attachment or the power chord even. In fact, I forgot where I put the scanner. So there you have it, folks! I’m in the transition phase of moving and decided to continue my comic when I get to the new city and rebuild Henry HQ.

Until then, I give you:

Hrm. Took a little longer than expected, but that’s okay. I did draw each panel from scratch, AFTER ALL!

Anyway, I’m undecided about Friday. I’ll keep you posted via twitter.

This is kind of like the internet.

Sorry this was late. Tried to draw the last three panels tonight but got distracted by…stuff.

See you Monday.

Metric has been my music of choice these days while I draw. I’d marry Emily Haines in a heartbeat. So much love. She doesn’t even realize.

Oh crap, now I’m sad. At least I get to see Zooey Deschanel later today.

Here’s a comic.

See you Wednesday.

Once again, by the time you’re reading this comic I should have precious precious booze in my mouth. It’s been a tiring week.

As always, vote for my comic on the right menu and get me ever closer to the number one spot. I will do something special if I reach #1, and I’ll do something marginally *less* special if I make it to #2.

My spider sense is tingling and it’s telling me that there’s going to be some cameos in the next strip, as in…people I know.

See you Monday.