Children at Play

Author notes

Party Pisser

kingofsnake

on Dec. 13, 2006

Upon re-posting this storyline I came upon a realization. We built this entire storyline around this one comic. This was one of the very first comics we came up with back in 2001, when doing a strip was still just a pipedream. On reposting this storyline I noticed that this was one of the two or three comics I actually still liked. The reason therin, is that we came up with maybe four or five comics for this storyline, and then decided to flesh out an entire storyline around it.

In fact we still do this today (notice the Directors Cut strips) the biggest difference is between then and now these characters stopped being "us" and started being their own characters, they're easier to write for, and often, even if they're talking about nothing, we can do a better job of making it funny. Also, we've gotten better at "playing our hand" which was a big deal at the time. When we started the comic we had a very "set 'em up, knock 'em down" approach, the joke is almost always in the last panel and the strip is built around setting up that joke. Nowadays we write more along the lines of how we would write an animated series. The last panel is less important than the strip as a whole. Look at the last director's cut comic for example: The funniest "line" or "joke" is in panel 6, but the strip as a whole focuses on the running gag of panel 2 and panel 8, and panel 2 of the comic prior to it. Instead of setting up for a joke at the end of that comic, we're setting up for a joke multiple comics from now, but still doing it in away to keep that comic funny. I think we mastered this in a later storyline wherein Ryan is constantly asking permission to deploy his parachute.

Of all the storylines to redo this one is going to be the biggest challenge to bring up to the level I currently hold my work at.


ALL THAT BEING SAID, I really like this comic. This is the reason we did this entire storyline, so Ryan could tell frat-guy stu he was going to pee on him.