3rd Party Fantasy

Author notes

#25 Other Skills

Evil Emperor Nick

on Feb. 9, 2006

I got my first review on TWC the other day, thank you Dripp for that, in which was said “….Reminds me of a third-rate 8-Bit Theater, but still pretty amusing.”……..which suddenly makes me wonder if I was far to subtle when naming this comic. That aside though I was given two of five stars which means I was rated sub-par but consistently amusing, which is fine with me because I feel the best issues of this comic are ahead. Admittedly because I started it thinking it would be 4-5 issues for fun before I killed off Gil and Vance (Who didn’t have names or defined personalities at that point) I feel the first 20 issues or so were pretty rough and lacked a lot consistency, and if you comparing me to 8-bit I think at issue 24 they were are a roughly similar place in the learning curve figuring out what worked and what didn't. (No I'm not saying 8-bit comic was or wasn't better, that is up to the you readers, I'm just saying he was clearly still learning at issue 25 when you see how much better the comic got just 100 issues later and that I was learning too when I started this comic and still am.)I hope that by issue 50 that standing will be a little higher as the series starts to pull together. So here is hoping the best is yet to come.

rant

Yesterday I got the perhaps inevitable “Good God, Nick” comment about my rants. It wasn’t accompanied by a 5 but instead the statement “I stopped half way through the second paragraph”, so while I take it as a compliment anytime I coax comic book style expression out of people, I’m forced to assume it wasn’t really a favorable response to my rant.

This reminds me of some advice I once read about writing called the Sandwich Test. It goes something like this: When you are writing pretend you are a little hungry and there is a sandwich waiting for you down stairs, and ask yourself would you keep reading this or go get the sandwich? If at any point you would go get that sandwich odds are, you suck. If you want people to actually pay for your work then you should replace the word ‘sandwich’ with ‘sex’ and run this test again. Right now I place myself at about the level where I’d choose my writing over a ‘twinky’ and I think I’m getting close to a ‘mystery meat’ rating.

So why am I writing all this stuff? Because I love writing? Because I love humor? Because I love twinkies? No because I want to get better. My hero on this subject is “Dave Barry”. Dave author of the book Big Trouble and about 40,000 columns. He wrote a very successful column for the Mimi Herald where he tastefully gave social commentary and observation on things such as ‘Boogers Jokes’.

So what makes a good rant/column? Usually fining a subject that is totally ridiculous, and then talking about it in mock seriousness using words like ‘craptacular’ where applicable and you might just end up with comic genius.

Example:

“I recently saw a demonstration of the new kitten powered engine developed by a scientist in china Dr. Py Fow Tsu. (His other invention of note was the first successful cow/platypus hybrid, the platacow, claiming the combination of a platypus and cow would increase the range of the Chinese cowpult but 30% in the next Olympic games and allow nations to start raising sea beef.) The mower could mow a whole football field on as little a three kittens though Dr Tsu claims with the proper breeds it could run on as little as two and a half kittens. While still and experimental technology Dr. Tsu feels that with the governments help kitten powered vehicles could be in the public market as soon as 2012. Several Chinese restaurant owners have expressed concerns that kitten based technology could have negative effects on their restaurants and some critics claim that kitten energy sources would never be able to replace traditional dinosaur energy. Chinese officials however remain optimistic and are already looking into offering kitten at gas stations in preparation for the change in an attempt to stay ahead of the technology curve.

This is not china’s first foray into the controversial kitten technoloy, in late 2003 the Chinese were reportedly experimenting with kitten based weaponry and some state officials are concerned that this new kitten based fuel could be secretly used to create Kittens of Mass Destruction. The ministry of ridiculous rumors however flatly denied any such KMD applications were intended at this time but maintained that should neighboring countries continue to research baby based weaponry it will be forced to advance KMD’s for purposes of mutual destruction. Kitten weaponry in China dates back to about eleven hundred BC when a bag full of kittens became a popular weapon among the peasant. The emperor would later ban bags of kittens and ordered his cooks to develop popular cat based dishes in an attempt to disarm the populous nonetheless kittens were still used up into 1600's when they were briefly replaced with puppies. In the 1700's kitten weaponry began slowly advancing as china became exposed to new breeds of cats from the west which peeked during WWII with the invention of the self launching ballistic kittens with sad eyes. After the war China abandoned all kitten based weaponry as part of the peace process in exchange for the Europe admitting the China was actually west of them not east. However rumors of certain tabby experiments have circulated through the spy community continuously since that time.

When asked about this leading officials only responded with “There doing what now? Crapfreakingtacular!” However several movie stars said they would be interested in buying kitten powered vehicles but only if they were extremely large and shiny. Economists worry that this could have a destabilizing influence on the martial arts film industry if controversy continues and speculate that this might also might push stocks either up or down.”

Well I hope that amusing, have fun and remember to buy only the new hybrid gas kitten vehicles, I’m off to have a sandwich.