Well, and there we have it.  The lesson learned?  None, as per usual.  NZ couldn’t end any other way.

And so it is done.  That is that, and all that.  It’s a sad day, but hey, I’ll be back doing something.  Red, Bloo, Alice, Janick and the Professor will hang around in my head and I’m sure they’ll return one day in some form, someplace.

I will, of course, post here and at @SteveComics anything I get up to.  I’m too fidgety to do nothing for very long.

Until then!

- Steve

Here it is, the 2nd-to-last Negative Zen comic.  A cliffhanger!  Who will win!?  Will the Mayor of Guinville reliquish power even if he loses?  Has the author even decided who wins yet?  Only time will tell!

“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”

I’m not sure the Mayor quite understood that little bit.  Or Red, for that matter.

Then again…

Red, you turncoat!

Adelies are the most amusing kind of penguins, if you ask me.  Allow me to gratuitously quote from the Wikipedia article on them:

Specifics of their behaviour were documented extensively by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (a survivor of Robert Falcon Scott’s fateful final journey to the South Pole) in his book The Worst Journey in the World. Cherry-Garrard noted: “They are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children or like old men, full of their own importance.”Certain displays of their selfishness were commented upon by George Murray Levick, a Royal Navy Surgeon-Lieutenant and scientist who also accompanied Scott on his ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition 1910, during his surveying of penguins in the Antarctic: “At the place where they most often went in [the water], a long terrace of ice about six feet in height ran for some hundreds of yards along the edge of the water, and here, just as on the sea-ice, crowds would stand near the brink. When they had succeeded in pushing one of their number over, all would crane their necks over the edge, and when they saw the pioneer safe in the water, the rest followed.”

It was observed how the penguin’s intrigue could also put them in harm’s way, which Scott found a particular nuisance:

“The great trouble with [the dog teams] has been due to the fatuous conduct of the penguins. Groups of these have been constantly leaping on to our [ice] floe. From the moment of landing on their feet their whole attitude expressed devouring curiosity and a pig-headed disregard for their own safety. They waddle forward, poking their heads to and fro in their usually absurd way, in spite of a string of howling dogs straining to get at them. “Hulloa!” they seem to say, “here’s a game – what do all you ridiculous things want?” And they come a few steps nearer. The dogs make a rush as far as their harness or leashes allow. The penguins are not daunted in the least, but their ruffs go up and they squawk with semblance of anger.”

Regularly this attitude lead to the demise of an Adélie penguin, “Then the final fatal steps forward are taken and they come within reach. There is a spring, a squawk, a horrid red patch on the snow, and the incident is closed.”

Others on the mission to the South Pole were more receptive of this element of the Adélies’ intrigue. Cherry-Garrard:

“Meares and Dimitri exercised the dog-teams out upon the larger floes when we were held up for any length of time. One day a team was tethered by the side of the ship, and a penguin sighted them and hurried from afar off. The dogs became frantic with excitement as he neared them: he supposed it was a greeting, and the louder they barked and the more they strained at their ropes, the faster he bustled to meet them. He was extremely angry with a man who went and saved him from a very sudden end, clinging to his trousers with his beak, and furiously beating his shins with his flippers.”

This was an occurrence of some regularity, “It was not an uncommon sight to see a little Adélie penguin standing within a few inches of the nose of a dog which was almost frantic with desire and passion.”

Due to their obstinate personality traits Cherry-Garrard held the birds in great regard, “Whatever [an Adélie] penguin does has individuality, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He cannot fly away. And because he is quaint in all that he does, but still more because he is fighting against bigger odds than any other bird, and fighting always with the most gallant pluck.”

Outside of “The West Wing”, I can’t think of a single time that being super smart has ever helped a candidate win office.

Their *people* can be super smart, but the candidate…?  I dunno…

In other news, it looks like they somehow managed to find some digs for a campaign HQ of some sort.

Can’t go wrong with a deal like that.  Well, you probably can, but since Alice’s campaign budget right now consists of those fish bones that are still sitting outside her place, this is as good as its gonna get.

I’m not sure what exactly I’ll do when NZ is done.  I’ve already had second thoughts about doing it, but that’s pretty normal.  I’ll probably take a couple weeks and think about it.

Alice is back!

On another note, I’ve been doing Negative Zen, in (I think) 4 different incarnations for… many years now.  It’s time for me to move on and do something other than web comics in general.  As such, this storyline (which has, right now, 8 parts) will be the last one for NZ.  I’ll miss Bloo, Red, Alice, the Professor and all the rest as much as I miss my other characters I’ve had throughout the years, but, all good things must eventually come to an end.

Cya Thursday!

Well, at least he gets something out of it…

If you remember from previous comics, Red has an alien implant in his beak…