Ref: Little St. Nick
Oddly, I really don’t have much to say about this comic. Percy’s going gray!
Character: Percy Whitebucket
The star of the comic; a short young man who aspires to become Santa Claus. An adept inventor who has begun to incorporate alien technology into his designs. Currently a biochem major at Edona College. Dating Nikki. Fun Fact: His middle initials spell “pew”, a smell often associated with mad science.
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I, Sally
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about this arc is because it is showing so much time passing, I can draw characters in lots of different outfits. Percy tends to lack variety other than colors, but Sally has always had a wide wardrobe. You can also see time progress in other ways in this comic, such as Percy’s new glasses. Much more St. Nick-like!
Sally was always meant to have a love interest in Chad, and it was supposed to be shown here but I wound up cutting it for space.
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I, Nikki
Ref: Helping Percy | Teacher | PB&J’s Ice Cream
First, let me get something out of the way before I have to put out fires (again): PANEL 3 IS IN NO WAY A SUBTLE ANNOUNCEMENT OF MY OWN LIFE. I know a few readers who might make that assumption, but no, my wife and I are not expecting.
Panel 1 is sort of my apology to Nikki. Of the original four (Percy, Jorocks, Nikki, Chris), I feel like I’ve kind of developed her character the least, especially since the Tornado! mega-arc. That is one reason why I sent her with Percy to the North Pole (it also just plain made sense given their relationship), and the following story arc was supposed to be Nikki-centric before I decided to end the comic. The dropped arc was going to actually have her change her mind about teaching (there was going to be a bit of social commentary there), her relationship with Percy (early drafts actually had them breaking up, but I dropped that), and would also strengthen Sally’s character, who has been even more neglected than Nikki…
I gave Nikki a haircut and reading glasses to make her appear a little more like Mrs. Claus. She’s still young, but it shows her aging. Watch for other things like this. The article referenced is a real thing, in case you didn’t know. I debated between that and L. Frank Baum’s A Kidnapped Santa Claus.
You can accuse me of playing into stereotypes in Panel 3, but from what I’ve heard from several primary sources (friends that have been pregnant) is that pickle cravings are actually a thing that commonly occurs.
Also, for those of you who like this sort of thing, the scribbles on the board is a font from Blambot, and it does actually say something:
So this one time I had a hamster. She was cute. I liked her. I also like marshmallows, but that’s a different kind of like, you know? And the way I like my wife, that’s totally different from both of those likes. I also like drawing comics. However, I have never drawn my wife, a hamster, or marshmallows in comics. I guess my wife was in that Pokémon comic. The end is now.
Okay, whether by saying something actually gives meaning is open for debate…
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I, Chris
Ref: Computer hackery | And again | Wait a minute, is that…
I’ve been looking forward to this particular “I” comic for a while. Had I the time to continue the comic for year and years and update daily and all that fun stuff, there were several options that I had for Chris. One possibility was that he would become disillusioned with Percy (Ichabod got this story instead), go to work for the CIA, and come back as a friend, only to reveal later that he was a spy. Another option was that he was recruited by the CIA, but wound up filling the same role as he did here. There were a couple of other options as well, but all of them basically involved the CIA singling Chris out as having a lot of potential. This was actually one of the first subplots introduced to Spoofy Randomness, although it was VERY subtle and never really got resolved–this is why the shadowy character didn’t want Chris to get involved! The switch from CIA to NSA was a recent one given current events. Originally, there was going to be a joke about John in there, but he’s mellowed out after his island adventure. I still think he would be outraged at the NSA, though.
And yes, there’s a reason why Sally is particularly interested. The reason is *spoilers*
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I, Matt
This is like a triple dip of fan squee today! The most important of which: the switching of “we” to “I”. If you’ve read Anthem, you can see where this is going. Matt of course continues to geek out with Doctor Who, which as you can see fits perfectly with the Santa Claus mythology (and who says he isn’t, red bicycle when you were twelve). It’s been established that Percy isn’t a Doctor Who fan, but apparently he knows enough Star Trek to paraphrase a quote. I myself am not a Trekkie, so I had to ask friends for a technobabbly Star Trek quote about time travel. Chris gets awesome points for providing me with the quote below:
“A black star of high gravitational attraction began to drag us toward it. It required all warp power in reverse to pull us away from the star but like snapping a rubber band, the breakaway sent us plunging through space and time, out of control to stop here, wherever we are.”
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We Learned About Ourselves
It’s hard to show flight and driving at the same time… And yeah, backgrounds are kinda lame for two reasons. Reason 1: they’re in the Arctic. Not a huge amount of scenery. Reason 2: I don’t have a SketchUp of it.
Don’t worry, Chris has long underwear. Looks like Matt has another similarity to his Time Lord namesake: resistance to cold. Percy and Nikki’s coats have been seen before, as has Jorocks’. I researched women’s coats for Sally’s; most of what Google Images gave me would not do very well in the “keeping warm” department in a Nebraska winter, let alone the Arctic. (And yes, I’m aware that they would probably need heavier coats than that. ARTISTIC LICENSE.)
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Celebration
First of all: CELEBRATION!
*dances to fun music*
…Erm, where was i? Oh yes, the comic. This one was hard to draw, but fun as well because I get to draw my characters growing up. Graduation hats were invented for the sole purpose to drive amateur artists insane drawing them, I swear… Jorocks and Holly in Panel 2 were also quite difficult, and I actually had my wife look at several different sketches to help me. I also had a hard time with Nikki and Ella; at a wedding girls often do something special with their hair, but how to show that without it looking like a different character in my simple drawing style? Ella in particular; this is actually the first time she hasn’t been drawn upside down in the comic! Eventually I just went with straight hair for Ella and had Nikki let her hair down and curl it a bit on the end. The dresses were also difficult; Nikki’s original dress was hard to tell that it was a nice dress and not just what she would normally wear (the fact that you don’t see the bottom made that difficult), so I made it single-strapped. Matt also almost didn’t make it in the comic (hence why he’s off in the corner) as I accidentally forgot him. Recall that Holly graduated last year and Chris is a year younger.
Graduation cord info: Nikki and Percy both graduated with honors (the medallion), as they are the two in the group that are the most book-smart. (Well, and Nikki was an ed major. And before any of you yell at me, I was an ed major. It’s a lot of work, but most of my ed classes were completion grades.) Sally has a stole from Germany; when I graduated, Doane was trying a new thing of wearing a stole from the country you studied abroad in (this would also explain Sally’s prolonged absence in the comics). I quite enjoyed this, as I studied in Wales and therefore I got to wear a stole with a DRAGON on it. Academic honor societies: Nikki has the education one, Sally the business one, Matt the physics one, and Percy has the biology one and two academic honors ones. Jorocks has none, as his academic progress had some problems… Fun fact: I was supposed to graduate with the education honor cord, but I misplaced the letter saying I could get in and didn’t actually open it until months after graduating. Oops!
My wife and I pulled Nikki’s trick when we got engaged. We got engaged shortly before Doane’s Relay for Life event, so we were with our friends for EIGHT HOURS before we finally decided to tell them. (We were also really tempted to elope while going through the wedding planning process, but what couple isn’t?)
Jorocks in a tux still amuses me. And I couldn’t resist the top hat.
Finally, if you haven’t read Ayn Rand’s Anthem, go to your library and pick it up. It’s a good read, and while this final arc is understandable without it, it will carry more significance if you’ve read it.
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Anthem
The final chapter is starting! This splash page was a lot of fun to do, going back through the archives of the past five years. There is one comic from each story arc in here, as well as a couple bonus things like SR: Scouting. Can you name them all? (I decided not to include reference links on this one a) so that you could try to find them all, and b) ’cause I didn’t want to link to each one.)
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Intermission
Ref: Ayn Rand referenced | Shower needed | The start of Jorocks and Holly | Percy has matured | Holly is serious about Jorocks
Intermission! A brief fun break before THE FINAL ARC.
John Troutman’s Sporkman makes a cameo in Panel 2. I’d been looking for an excuse to cameo Sporkman for a while, as he stars in one of my favorite comics (found here or here). Incidentally, while it is difficult to see in the panel, Sporky and Roark are at the state capitol of Wisconsin in Madison, the city where many Sporkman stories have taken place. Troutcave Comics and Spoofy Randomness actually have a bit of history, with a guest strip of mine appearing in Lit Brick (let’s not discuss my unsuccessful imitation of Troutman’s art style, but hey, Spoofy Randomness cameos!), a tweet of mine wound up inspiring the Knorkman, and I commissioned a Blight Way Lit Brick because that is one of my favorite series. Incidentally, Sporkman’s comment about timelines? The little guy has messed with his timeline more than the Doctor through various reboots and shenanigans, all of which are canon to Sporkman if I understood correctly.
I considered actually showing Nikki in the shower with the anti-fanservice block, but given that I just used that joke last week… Or maybe I just like to tease you guys.
Come back Monday, when Spoofy Randomness: Anthem begins!
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Group Sketch
This is what I was drawing in reference to last week’s sketchbook. Can you name them all without looking? I think I got all of the protagonists except Megan and Chad, but let me know if I forgot anyone else.
I attempted to translate every page of my scrapbook into Japanese. My results may be questionable. I know on my business cards, it says I teach at Johnson Little Bear School. Oops.