80 Page Giant is the comics blog I contribute to. Check it out here:

http://80pagegiant.blogspot.com.au/

Yes, this is a seriously weak blog post. But maybe if you read my awesome 80 Page Giant articles you’ll see why this blog is so weak! Maybe not…

–Andrew S.
(Maybe it actually has more to do with my crushed ego and stuff… I dunno.)

This is somewhat old news, but I finally got around to taking photos of my brand new A-3 scanner! It’s awesome.

It’s a FileScan 1600XL from Microtek. And it’s an amazing little machine. It’s so quiet, it’s so fast! It’s awesome. I moved my desktop tower so that I’d have easier access to it so I can really casually scan anything I want while sitting at my computer. IT’s great.

This change in my desk settup also had an unforseen consequence. My new scanner is not just popular with me. It’s popular with my cat.

–Andrew S.
(The song referenced in today’s strip is Gotye’s “Learnalittlegivin’andlovin’”. Here, watch it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkONn8tadp4 )

It seems that I’ve been cancelled from the Townsville Bulletin. Damn.

So if today’s strip is a little bit… sparse you might have an idea why. I wasn’t massively up to sitting at the drawing board today.

–Andrew S.

I live in a coastal town, which means I’m always close to the beach. Which means I can, in theory, go swimming all the time. There is a few problems with this. First of all there’s toursits — being a true blue Aussie boy, I hate tourists. And tourists love swimming at the beach.

The next problem is sunburn. The sun is hot and high in Townsville. In fact Townsville is the skin cancer capitol of the world. No shittin’, it really is. So what does that mean? Well it means if you go swiming you will broil and blister.

There’s other problems like jellyfish and sharks and rip tides, but generally you can avoid them pretty easy if you just know how. Which is one of the reasons we Aussies hate tourists. They’re always doing stupid things and getting eaten by crocodiles, or stung by jellyfish.

So when I go swimming, I go swimming at night. It avoids the sun, and the tourists, and better yet, all the jellyfish are asleep!

–Andrew S.
(Disclaimer: Actual jellyfish are nocturnal.)

(Disclaimer 2: Actually, I don’t know shit about jellyfish.)

So basically this week’s strip was meant to be last week’s… and it wasn’t meant to be two pages long. But the rhythm of the sequence of events required an extra scene and an extra-long strip. Man I love webcomics. I can play so much with the structure of things.

–Andrew S.

This was one of the hardest strips for me to draw, ever. My back is fuckin’ killing me. So enjoy!

When I was writing the final line for this strip I decided I wanted to make it more Australianised. So I started to look for Aussie insults/slang on the web, as I sometimes do, to inspire me. Originally he’d said something about Gnomes being jerks, but that’s pretty American. So anyway, long story short I decided to look up Paul Keating.

And I found this awesome (and old) website:

http://www.webcity.com.au/keating/

Since then I’ve been watching Paul Keating on youtube and stuff. IT’s amazing how much more… interesting… Australia politics used to be. Keating, say what you will about him otherwise, sure made Australian politics exciting and verbally interesting.

–Andrew S.

Merry Christmas everybody! It’ll be after Christmas by the time we speak again!

–Andrew S.

So something a little strange happenned to me the other day.

A group of people I’d never met before stopped outside of my house, came out of their car and gave me a Christmas hamper. That is — a pre-packaged ‘basket’ (in this case a box) of goods given as a gift. I’d never met these people before, I think that’s an important detail. People I’d never met before came and gave me — and my family — a Christmas hamper.

They told me that it was ‘from their church’. Fortunately, using my incredibly quick wits I’d already guessed they must have been from a Christian group, so this didn’t shock or horrify me.

I guess they’d decided that we looked kinda pathetic — my mum actually took it as a little hit to her pride. Me? Me I found it kinda heartwarming. People I didn’t know gave me a gift! That’s neat. For the whole day I didn’t really know how to react. It’s very rare that people randomly do nice things for me, especially people I don’t know. So I was just, really kinda happy about it. Not exactly drifting on cloud 9… but maybe somewhere around cloud 4.

My mum was away for the weekend, so I waited until she got home before we finally openned the Christmas hamper and had a look at what was inside.

There is a dark side to it though.

See the problem is that these were people I didn’t know. I’d never met these people before — I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned, so what that means is that the gift they gave me was… really non-specific. There was a tonne of stuff in it, but a lot of it was stuff we weren’t that interested in. Mango juice? Ew. So we took the stuff we wanted out of the hamper and then donated the rest of it to a charity that makes Christmas hampers.

Yup, that’s right, we took the random gift we were given and reused part of it so it could be a random gift for someone else.

Christmas is a magical time.
–Andrew S.

PS: As a bonus, here’s this card that was included with the hamper:

So it’s December. That means it’s almost Christmas.

It’s the time of year that you’re constantly told to remember the REAL meaning of Christmas. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about. What is the real meaning of Christmas?

Well duh, the real meaning of Christmas is simple — it’s all about converting dirty heathans and unbelievers to Christianity! And in the spirit of that I present you, Mr. Ministry Man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKfRyLbt-QE

This is a choose-your-own-adventure Youtube journey based around a Christian man trying to show you that god exists based on logic and rationality. It’s… kind of an hilarious train wreck, because… well… just watch it. It’s hilariously stupid.

Now I’m an aetheist. I don’t believe in any of this nonsense, but doesn’t that mean I shouldn’t be linking to you to a Christian who might try and teach you about god? Maybe. But I really don’t think these videos are going to convince ANYONE that god exists.

But dammit, this is Christmas. If you can’t enjoy a Christian vainly and very earnestly trying to prove an irrational believe through rational thought at Christmas time when can you enjoy it? Say hello to Mr. Ministry Man for me, and enjoy his earnest nonsense!

–Andrew S.
(Spoilers: He conflates ‘absolute morality’ as being equivalent to scientific principles like physics, and his entire argument is based on this.)

Normally when I create my comic strips the way it works in this — I create a rough on an a4 sheet of paper, then I pencil in the strip on a larger, a3 sheet of paper. Part of the pencilling process is measuring the panel borders, and of course marking in the lines where the text will go. After I’m finished the pencilling I ink — usually inking each panel in turn as the pencilling is finished, rather than pencilling a full page. The guidelines for the text are one of the most time consuming parts of this process.

So this page is an experiment. I didn’t bother to do any guidelines for the text, and I didn’t do an a4 rough copy either. This strip was drawn straight onto the page as a finished work. (Well, sorta… I did pencils, then inks, as normal.)

I won’t be doing this again in the near future, but I thought it would be fun to experiment in this way for an interlude.

–Andrew S.