Since it was published Thursday afternoon, here I will share with you the first Distinguished Gentlemen strip:

This is the first Distinguished Gentlemen strip I've done since...late high school, early college, I think? I had made a stab at doing a webcomic, and you can still find all those strips online, but please don't. They're appalling. I created these guys out of the blue my senior year of high school in a painting which now hangs (appropriately, I think) over my brother's toilet in his house. They are very endearing to me for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.

These strips are a different beast from the Exciting Tales! stuff, because there's an arc, with each story being (I think) four strips. This one and the second one were also absolutely tough to draw. Then I spent a long time hitting my head on a wall trying to figure out how to do the third one when I had a breakthrough. I gave it an interesting layout, but it'll be a couple more weeks before you get to see it.

I'm still ahead on the strips, yes, but gosh, it's turning into a grind. I know I could move faster, but I have to work to motivate myself sometimes, especially since I'm just going back and forth between them and Embrace Infection, having difficulty sometimes in determining which is the higher priority.

But they're still getting done, and I refuse to resort to Jim Davis-levels of awful laziness. Though I do kind of want to do a Garfield or Family Circus parody at some point. I just finished penciling a tribute strip to Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland earlier this afternoon, but maybe only three people total will get that. Still, though, I'm learning with each strip I draw and I feel like I'll soon find a happy method of working where I can provide good quality comics without breaking my back over it.

I hope.

(I also want to do a tribute to George Herriman's Krazy Kat)

[Brett]