As promised, I’m posting this week’s cartoon a day early to make up for having nothing new last week. It wasn’t intentional, but it seems appropriate that this cartoon was posted on the last day of Gay Pride month.
I’ll preface this commentary with the standard disclaimer for morons who accidentally stumble across this comic with all its “words” and “satire.” Phelps is a bigoted asshole. The homophobic, racist, and anti-semitic things he says in this comic are meant to make fun of him. I in no way intended to perpetuate the long-standing stereotypes that Mexicans steal pants and Jews control the weather. I hope you imaginary morons are happy, making me write all that.
This comic didn’t work out entirely as I had planned. I originally intended it to be a direct parody of “Green Eggs and Ham,” with Hughie asking Phelps if he hates a series of things more than gays. They were universally loathed items like rainy days and ugly babies. It ended up being way too involved and took something like 12 panels to get to the point. That’s just way too long, even for Big Fat Whale, one of the most long-winded comic strips in the universe. In the process of editing it down to 8 panels, it morphed into this, mostly because of the rhyming couplets. I haven’t decided if that’s a good or bad thing.
I obviously didn’t try too hard to make the rhyming perfect. Poetry is garbage. It is just prose with parts missing. The one exception is for lyrics. Guitars and a beat can improve even a 14-year-old girl’s quatrain about unicorns.
The other problem I had with this comic was drawing in the style of Dr. Seuss books. I tried faithfully recreating the iconic look of those beloved books for the first panel, but after two hours I said to myself, “Brian, fuck this shit. Draw it free hand. No one reads your comic for that squiggly garbage you call ‘drawing.’ That way we’ll have time to watch Keith Foulke take a big dump on the Red Sox recent winning binge.” And I could not argue with that, because I love myself and everything I say more than anything in the world.
I’ll close with a gentle reminder to everyone within the confines of I-495 that they should attend tonight’s or tomorrow’s Comedy Bronze show. I wrote a sketch and will stink up the joint as words dribble out of my mouth-hole. Click the ad in the upper right for tickets and details.