If I hadn’t wanted to move ahead in time a bit I would have made comics of the process of cleaning out the secret bunker. On some level I feel like we missed out on a fair amount of Thomas and Alex getting to know each other. Sometimes though I just want to skip a bit and end up regretting it a later. If I could make these faster I would certainly be tempted to go even more granular with it and I’m not sure how much of that sort of thing even the most dedicated readers would tolerate. There are so many plot points I have set up that I have the conclusions for, but I don’t want to cheat myself, or anyone else, of the journey. I know that we are trained from an early age to expect everything to have a certain type of narrative structure and just skip to the high points, but I like reading, and making, all the in between stuff that makes up the day to day drudgery of an existence. I’m sure that has contributed greatly to my continual lack of popularity, but if I wanted to do whatever someone else prescribed I would just go work for someone else.

When I started doing comics everyone was constantly telling everyone else what to do. It was a endless barrage of hot takes and criticism. People who didn’t make anything themselves farmed drama from artists as much as they could before they finally got wise and quit responding. Then the internet moved on to anti-feminism, and atheism, and men’s rights, and incels, and on and on in an endless parade of mounting misery. To some degree the comic is this little haven of the past, stuck now in a time that was only starting to become something awful. Should I live long enough to get the comic into the age of collapse I think I’ll gloss over as much as I can. Maybe I’ll let Marbleton, Kansas stay a place where cooler heads prevailed and plain common sense won the day. A place on the windswept prairies that somehow managed to stay a little apart from the decay that came to the world. Like Jo once said of movies “a beautiful lie”.

If you’d like to contribute to this beautiful lie please do so with the links above. I know not what the future holds for any of us, but I hope to see you here again on Monday. If so, I will tell you more sweet lies that hopefully reflect a little truth.

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Hey Jackie, panel 3 says cabbinets. I can’t wait for the rest of the story.

Listen, I’m also fond of another webcomic that has been on the same *day* for over 6 years. The titular character in Girl Genius had her 18th birthday over 20 years ago, and (so far as I know) is still 18. Even slice-of-life has enough fascinating detail to hold attention for years. I don’t mind spending years with this cast.

…Some-days I wish I was a poet, + could relate my feelings 100% to someone else.

Barring that…

From about the 1940s to the 1970s, a cartoonist and/or a fine art painter, named Walt Kelly, did a comic strip named, “Pogo”.

To me: Walt Kelly, using [furry genre]-like animals, did: humor, + philosophy, + light humor, in ways that astound me.

He also did 12 in. across[?], Sunday cartoon strips, that, to me, rival some of the fine art painters of his time.

He loved his characters, + his art, + his storytelling, in a way, that a fellow cartoonist said something like: “Walt Kelly’s “Pogo”, is not his daily work, it’s his daily meditation”.

I greatly adore Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and I also greatly adore your comic, Between Failures.

I like the friendships of your B.F. characters, + the way they interact with each other.

[I like your art as well].

Granted, likely no one will give me a magic wand, so that I can be magicked into a world, where Pogo’s world, or Between Failure’s world, will actually exist.

So since I don’t think I will get to live in either of those comics in real life, I am very happy to enjoy Walt Kelly’s works, and Jackie Wohlenhaus’ works, in the ways that are available.

Thank you…very much Jackie, for providing us with Between Failures.

I loved Pogo when I was much younger than no. I started reading in the late 50’s/early 60’s. At one point I had a nearly complete collection of the reprint books. But much-reread books had a way of getting scattered around the house and disappear intp what are in effect secret place, and I have no idea where they are now that I have moved.

I loved the Thinking Contest. It was one of the first to get lost.

“Rife with all manner of secrets”?

So, Peyton Place on the Prarie then?

“all the in between stuff that makes up the day to day drudgery of an existence. I’m sure that has contributed greatly to my continual lack of popularity”

In my writing I’ve found that the day-to-day drudgery is essential. At least, some of it is. What people do and think when they aren’t attending to the suspenseful plot is an essential mechanism for discovering and presenting chatacter.

While I am trying to present what a scene is about, I include a lot od details about where they are walking through, what they are doing while talking, etc. Most of this is not relevant to the main plot, but it does inform me and the reader who tbey are. And even when I and the reader are focused on the main plot, and sometimes waiting for the next plot-driving action, this information does inform the reader, almost unaware.

I would never leave these incidental details out. Unless I’m truly bored writing it, which is likely happens at the same places the reader will be bored, in which case I should leave it out.

Of course I have an advantage over you. I’m not writing a serial that is published as I am writing it. I have all the benefit of having hindsight, being able to write out of order, and being able to revise early parts of the story to match later parts.

There’s an excess of tits in this page and I’m here for it. Sometimes I’m on Patreon for it too lol.

“excess of tits”

No such thing…

depends on if we’re talking quantity or volume. I certainly don’t think an excess of quantity exists, but as a member of the medium-is-premium team, I do think an excess of volume is certainly a metric that can be found

not a metric I see outside of specific illustrative art or certain pornstars, mind you

well shoot, if you like writing about “all the in between stuff that makes up the day to day”, you should have named the comic after that or something :P

I tried to warn everyone.

I actually enjoy that myself, I suspect most people do too. That said, nothing is stopping you from doing recap pages as well. Small intervals of pages where one character asks about what happened in the stuff that was skipped.

It’s even narratively intefesting because it’s less about what happened and more about what stuck out for the person whom was asked to recap.

2596 Remnants.

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