I got such a great response to my previous Bioshock comic that I decided to do another one. Due to budget constraints, I’ve had to cut back on my gaming habit. The withdrawl seems to have minfested itself as a compulsion to draw comics about the games I wish I was playing.
I honestly don’t know why 2K Games allowed the “Capture the Sister” mode in the game to begin with. Okay, so it was Digital Extremes that did the multiplayer, but whatever. The object of the game is still to kidnap a small girl. I know it’s part of the storyline and within the context of the game’s world it makes perfect sense. You don’t even do anything to the child other than shove her down a hole in the wall … okay, even THAT doesn’t sound right. But have critics of videogames ever needed a reason to take things out of context?
The fervor over violence in videogames, labeled by some as “murder simulators”, has kind of subsided to a low rumbling over the last few years. People have had other things to worry about. But it’s something like this that I can see igniting a whole new firestorm of controversy. Luckily, the headlines of “Highest Selling Xbox Game is Kidnapping Simulator” have yet to surface, but it might not be far off.
If you look toward the top of your screen, you should notice the new Fan Art tab. It’s a place where I’ve decided to link work I’ve done for other comics, whether they wanted it or not.
While we’re on the topic, if any of YOU want something specific drawn, I’m always up for a good ol’ fashioned commission. Drop me a line through the Contact tab (boy, I got a tab for everything!). Conversely, if anyone out there wants to draw me some fan art, it would certainly be my honor to immortalize you on this webpage. I actually have a few pieces lying around the house from conventions past, but most of them involve hot turkey-on-turkey action. So it may be best for all concerned if those stay boxed up.
My pals over at Caf-fiends posted my fan art over at their site. You should check it out before I hijack your computer and force the browser to their page. That’s not a threat. I’m just saying I know some guys who know some guys who know some Russians.
A little while ago, my buddy over at The System got reviewed by Luprand’s Webcomic Musings. I read it, chuckled, and thought to myself that I should put my comic out there and get some reviews of my own. The initial plan was to wait for it to get so popular that people would just start publishing their own reviews hoping that the mere mention of Less Than Three would lure in some unsuspecting Googlers to their page. Seems that might take a bit longer than I had anticipated, so I started offering up my site directly to critics.
Well, Luprand was kind enough to accept my neck on his chopping block. And boy, did his keen axe cut me to the quick. He didn’t really have anything positive to say. Mostly, he took offense at the amount of poop and sex jokes that are peppered throughout the archive, claiming that I make the NSFW tag “so inadequate”.
Really? I know I’ve pushed the limits on some fronts (honestly, outside of the Peanuts, Family Circus, Mary Worth cycle, what cartoonist hasn’t?) and the comic has been pulled from print on threeseparateoccasions. But still, for the most part I like to think I keep things pretty clean around here. There’s never been any foul language, any violence depicted is cartoonish at worst, and the sex is kept off panel or under the sheets. At most, I’d say it’s PG-13.
On the plus side, he does get the numerous literary references I drop throughout the dialogue and titles. As a fellow English B.A. it doesn’t surprise me and I applaud his ability to jump over Steinbeck to get to Robert Burns on the Of Mice and Men reference. Seriously, the thought of Fudgie O’Pussenstein being in any way associated with Scotland’s Favourite Son had me guffawing quite hardily.
Ah well, he didn’t give me the worst score possible. I did better than Crooked Gremlins. He reserved the worst of his vitriolfor them. Though I think I rank just a bit higher, I’m still in the same category. Honestly, it’s hard to tell. I wish he had delved deeper into the technical aspects of the comic, but he either did not have the time, or just considered my comic unworthy of further criticism.
Sorry about the hiatus. But I didn’t have access to my computer for a while and I didn’t have the foresight to make a few comics in advance. Things will return to normal starting next Monday.
In the mean time, enjoy some pictures from Halloween! We used to do a haunted house for the neighborhood kids years ago but had sort of given it up. Schedules just never seemed to synch up like they used to. This year, my parents insisted we restart the tradition. So, I dug out the old props and came up with a pretty kick-ass design. We had blacklights, strobes, fog machines, severed limbs, the whole nine yards! Attendence was sparse due to weather and the fact that we hadn’t done it in a while. But we instilled enough terror in those that came to create nightmares for years to come! All in all, a huge success. Now we wait for the lawsuits.
