Author notes

Coping Mechanisms reboot

xailenrath

on Jan. 21, 2019

I rebooted the concept of "Coping Mechanisms" years after that first version.
this version is from around 2013.
Charlie was traded out for another background character of mine from a previous endeavor, named Elliot Buck and his little robot helpers.

I went with the name Coping Mechanism, even though I have already used that name.
(Me and my OCD recycling of characters, names and situations…)

Anyway, re-using that name, the premise of the strip is that a genius inventor has gone through some series of tragedies at a young age, and, for a time, withdrew from society and social interactions and dove into inventing his little robots. He is "better" now, but still has had sort of a "failure to relaunch".
He's young, wealthy enough (due to winning a lawsuit and patenting a random mechanical part that wound up being pretty beneficial to modern life) and, for the most part, stable, but, his mom and friends are trying to get him to stop resting on his laurels/hiding from the world/being a slacker and get back into social society, start dating again, and, though he doesn't 'need' the money, get a job, perhaps at a robotics lab somewhere… y'know, a sciencey job he will "like"… to keep his idle hands busy before he dives into a spiral.

Here we meet (or at least see the proto for the character designs of) Elliot Buck, our protagonist.
His first robot, Clark. The backside of his 4th robot, Murdock…
and his neighbor, Kenny, whom, it must be understood, he's probably having his first real conversation with.

Also a nod or two to another comic project of mine, as Elliot is receiving a package (possibly more robot parts) from Xailenrath Omniversal. (You'll find out about them later on when I post that particular aborted comic.)
I've also decided that his mom, Natalie, works for XO. That way, no one sees it as weird that she has a pink AI robot that her son made for her as a Christmas present, as a personal assistant.

I was also experimenting with a weird Photoshop coloring technique that I think kinda worked. I scribbled out about 8 comics for this in a spiral notebook before starting it, but this was the only one that got finished.
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