Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Norbert and Billy 9 & 10




Billy is sent to the the slammer, but this gray-bar hotel seems strangely familiar...

4 comments:

Tom Moon said...

Continued great installments on both your and Scott's part! So inspiring to see people who can actually DO this stuff! I can only talk and dream about it.

Umm... "restaurant" is misspelled
...and "vertical" is misspelled in Cork.

Spellchecker Tom
(Hey, I gotta contribute SOMEHOW!)

Scotty Buncake said...

Agggh! Dammit, you're right Tom! I Hate you! I Thank you! I'll change that right away. Grrr.

Keep it up Ronnie. Wait, you did these already in '92 right? Keep posting. Then when you run out we look forward to new ones or a new character. Isn't strip drawing fun? (No, not 'strip' drawing Ellis. Come on!)

(Oh, and shut up Jeff. Damn your attitude.)

Surly Bird said...

Thanks for catching that, Tom. I will fix my error as well. I have to correct a strip from a few days ago, to boot.

Strips *are* fun, Scott. I am actually gonna start a new strip with my buddy, Josh. We are batting a bunch of ideas around based on the 'Tink' character. I'm debating on whether I want to go the web comic route (ala "PVP") or just focus on making a comic book. Something about the book format has lasting appeal. You get more real estate for the art with a book, but you can't beat the web for immediacy and cost-effectiveness. Part of me thinks I could do it in the comic book format and deconstruct it as a web comic. Then, if people like it, I have the comic-book ready to go (maybe pitch it as enhanced version of the strip). I really, really like your double-decker, Sunday-funnies format with "Cork." It might be the best compromise of all the formats I'm mulling over. What do you guys think?

And I kind of want to revive 'Norbert and Billy' in some way. I miss writing a snarky, trouble-making character like Billy. I ended up punting at the end of the strip to get it done for submission and in doing so, I merged in characters from another stip I was doing at my local newspaper to try and tie the two separate strips together. The result made no sense and I just kind of gave up afterwards. It would be nice to take another crack at things.

rickart said...

I say do both... which is to say, draw your strip in a format you like but keep in mind that you will eventually collect them into a book or comic book. That's what Kurtz does. The web version of the PvP strip is sort of the advertising for the books, t-shirts, plush toys, etc. that he sells. It's been a good gig for him and he doesn't need to make his strips at a postage stamp size to be printed in newspapers.