Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Would you like to see today's Distinguished Gentlemen strip? It's another one that I'm proud of:
That line in the bottom panel, spoken by the penguin in the distressing font? That may be the greatest piece of dialogue I will ever write. I seriously think that I am just BRINGING IT with these recent strips, I am so happy with the work I've been doing.

Which is why it's so disappointing when they get shoved into a tiny space in the newspaper, barely readable at all. Monday's Ghost Monkey strip was printed so freaking small. It angered me, that something I put a lot of effort and love into, was made to look almost like an afterthought, like "oh we have this little tiny bit of space left so let's just throw this stupid comic strip in there." I know that's not what it is, I know the guy who does the page layouts has to deal with the articles and ads that HAVE to be a specific size on the page (its the ads which keep the paper going) and that he doesn't really have a whole lot of time to sit and come up with a layout that's nice and balanced, pleasing to the eye. But, you know, it still kind of hurts, especially because of the detail I've been throwing into these lately. I just have no control over it. But hey, that's why they're all online too!

Of course, there have been other strips in the past which were printed pretty huge, which is awesome. And, regardless of size issues, I've heard that the comics have been getting praise, and I've heard some funny stories too. Apparently a friend of mine that works in the library on campus has people occasionally come up to him and ask what my comics mean. And David told me a story the other night about how he watched a guy open up the paper to the page that last week's Distinguished Gentlemen was on, stare at it for a long time, and then slowly smile. Heh.

Anyways, onto better things. I accomplished a lot yesterday. For one thing, after a few excruciating hours, I got my vinyl sign cut out for Embrace Infection:
It'll be going vertically on one of the gallery walls, most likely.

On top of that, I received my postcards for the show. I only ordered 50, which was barely enough. I distributed about 30 or so throughout the art building on campus and handed out quite a few too. Today I mailed a couple to some good friends. ADVERTISING. Finally, I picked 10 of the 12 prints to hang and dropped them off to be professionally mounted. Next Sunday is when I'll be hanging the pieces.

To sum things up: SHIT IS GETTING REAL, DAWG.

Oh, and that comic I was working on, that I talked so much about earlier this week and last? I uh, stopped. The story got too far away from me. So I'm setting it aside. What was it that I said in that one entry? That I hoped it wouldn't get scrapped or something?

Oops.

But hey, at least I've got a thrilling story going with the Distinguished Gentlemen being chased by a giant fire-breathing penguin in Antarctica, right?

[Brett]