From time to time when I sit down to draw strips I’ve had issues where I have to be funny on demand… I have ideas for where I want to take the stories and various plot threads but getting there and doing so in a three or four panels that end in a punchline has been trying for the better part of a year.

For a long while I’ve been in a funk. I haven’t been excited about sitting down to do the comic for a few months and I’ve just been doing the comic because I’m expected to. I want to be excited to do something that takes me as long as Zombie Roomie does.

So I’m going to take a break for a week or more to rethink how I approach the comic (format/designs/etc.).

The current plan is to work in a more long form format. I enjoy telling the story of Zombie Roomie but trying to do so in a gag-a-day/strip format has been getting difficult.

I’m looking at other comics in the same vein and seeing how they do it. There will still be humor in the comic, it’s just that every strip wont just be played for comedy as the punch/beat.

It’s my birthday today so you guys get a comic!

Well, you would have gotten a comic anyway since it’s Friday…

If you’re wondering who Ringo is check out the first year’s Christmas story.

To really get this strip you have to have seen Silence of the Lambs. Here’s the relevant scene:

Monsieur Jean-Paul Baptiste was jailed a while ago.

For those of you new to Zombie Roomie or those who have forgotten Jean-Paul Baptiste is a bokor who informed George he didn’t have a soul, which lead him on a wild goose chase around the world.

I figured it was time enough for someone to mention the obvious…

I also figured it was time to address some of John’s safety measures for living with a zombie…

The current plan, which may change by the time I get to it, is to have George and Hunter leave on Friday and the start of the throwdown to start the following Monday. I’m not sure if I’ll do it, but my plan for the fight strips is to try out a different coloring method. There are a few ideas I’ve been toying with and something like I’ve got in mind for the fight is the perfect opportunity to try something out.

I’ve been in an art funk for a while and I think experimentation will help get me out of it.

I’m not going to lie… this wasn’t the strip I intended to do for today.

I had an idea the day before and when I sat down to do this, I had totally forgotten it. I’m hoping I piece it back together in some form for next week, so instead I just got John off of the toilet.

The fact that the elf, who I’m going to call Mistletoe, was a huge Hunter the Zombie Hunter fan has been one of the parts that I wanted to bring into this arc, that’s one of the reasons for Hunter’s return… When Satan was asked to help out with the Zombie Santa bit, the elves found out about Hunter’s eternal damnation and they asked for him to be a part of the operation… as a public face or what have you.

Also, this has nothing to do with the current story, but in thinking and discussing John’s character with other creators of late… I’ve realized I’ve made him too much of the loser character. This has to do with making sure he’s not a Mary Sue character, but I want to make him more relatable and “win” more than he has in the past. So, that’s something I’m going to work on… I just wanted you guys to know it’s something I’ve been thinking about.

So Hunter comes back to Zombie Roomie, but he’s very influenced by Spawn– the Todd McFarlane created superhero.

I wanted to have Hunter come back and he’d be more of a bad ass than his scaredy cat former self, but to do so I had to come up with something. I was and am a big comic dork, go with it, and in the 90′s I was really into Image comics. Spawn, Wild C.A.T.s, Youngblood, Savage Dragon, etc… I had them all on my pull list.

The connection here is Spawn, or Al Simmons, was sent to Hell and later returned to Earth as a Hell Spawn. He had a symbiotic suit and a limited amount of demonic power.

So, thinking about Hunter being in Hell and coming back to Earth with powers given to him by the Devil, I had to make the connection. He wont look like a copy cat, but I thought it was needed to have the direct reference in today’s comic. He’ll just have inherited the demonic power so he’d actually be able to hunt zombies now if that’s something he’d be interested in.

Hunter’s reintroduction will take a few stories for a turn that should be fun, including how Glenda will react to having him back on the mortal plane.

I’d do some linking to illustrate what various things were to those of you who aren’t initiated in twenty year old comics, but today the internet is being all goofy and shutting down sites and blacking out things, so it’s more of a pain than it’s worth. I’m not a fan of the SOPA stuff, but I’m not getting behind this form of slacktivision.

Shortly after I came up with the bit about Satan being involved, I came up with the idea of including Rudolph.

The REIGNDEER bit and this gag was the clincher.

When he’s outdoors he’ll be much more fiery… ’cause you know… he’d set the apartment on fire if he wasn’t careful.

And I do plan on having him out of doors when George is going after Zombie Santa.

So yeah, John hadn’t been in this arc very much so I decided to use him for the butt of a joke…

Satan will bring some back up for George next week and maybe next Friday we’ll start on the journey to stopping Zombie Santa.

I’ve got an homage or two planned for the reintroductions of a couple characters and another character from the first Christmas arc will return as well.

So there was a hidden clause in George’s contract when he was hired to do the Hunter show.

That’s where the deal with the Devil occurred… even if George wasn’t able to do the dive due to accidental roomie shooting… he still signed the contract.

The whole Santa/Satan thing is pretty goofy, but let’s go with it as I’ve got some fun stuff that will stem from it.

Enter the Devil…

The last time we saw he was at the end of the George and Hunter television show arc. I said earlier that we would be having more and more callbacks to Zombie Roomie history, and this is just the start of them.

I have had a lot of things to draw from to shape where I’m taking this story and the Devil’s reappearance was always planned for this arc after his exit at the end of the Hunter bit.

If you guys could see the various notepad files I have saved on my computer you’d see so many ideas that I’d like to get to in the comic… it’s just coming up with the funny bits to move the story from A to B so I can do them.

That’s the hard part.