The Last Days of Milton Hoight, part four

One of the Christmas presents from my folks this year was season six of The Simpsons, and recently I've been digging around the old favorites that I've forgotten about and realizing exactly how much of an influence they are on my writing for this comic and for my writing in general. There are just these scenes that pop into my head from that damned show that express what I am trying to say more succinctly than I could ever say. For example, there's the Timmy O'Toole episode where Homer and Lisa discourse on what it means to be a hero thusly:

Homer: That Timmy's a real hero.
Lisa: How do you mean?
Homer: He fell down a well and can't get out.
Lisa: How does that make him a hero?
Homer: Well, it's more than you did.
Which plays nicely in today's hyperbolic, everyone's a hero world were someone like what's her name, you know, that blonde soldier with the made-for-TV face got "rescued" and was deemed a real hero for getting kidnapped and surviving.

Yes, such a hero. I can remember her name so well.

And then there's Homer and Lisa discussing specious logic when Homer says that while his vigilante party may cause more crimes than they stop, he can prove they've prevented burglaries because no burglaries have occurred since the posse formed.

Lisa: That's specious logic. By that same reasoning I could say this rock prevents tiger attacks.
Homer: How do you mean?
Lisa: Well, you don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: I'd like to buy that rock.

Which predicts the White House's completely backwards, idiotic, and of course specious reasoning for wire tapping. "Well, you don't see any terrorist attacks, do you?"

I'd like to sell George W. Bush a tiger-prevention rock.

Recently, one of the repeated Simpsons episodes was "HOMR" in which Homer discovers a crayon lodged in his brain is the cause of his stupidity. After having it removed, he goes to see a romantic comedy staring Julia Roberts called "Love is Nice". The entire audience is laughing at the following scene, as two men stand at the alter beside Ms. Roberts and a minister performs a wedding ceremony:

Minister: One groom...two grooms? Oh! My medication! (faints)
Kid in Pew: Radical!
Usher: Is that your final answer?

The entire audience bursts into laughter, but Homer sits there puzzled, his face pulled into a contortion of repugnance and confusion.

This is how I felt tonight as that fucking bastard Dennis Miller appeared on The Late Show.

My hatred of Dennis Miller is neither long nor complex, so I'll be as brief as possible: the man is a cunt. He's a right-wing, conservative nut-job in Libertarian clothing, and as a Libertarian, I not only feel he's doing a great disservice to what the party and it's founders (many of whom were America's founding fathers) stand for, but he's also painfully not funny. I watched him once before on Late Show and again on The Daily Show last year and had to do all in my power to choke back the bile rising in my throat. He is an idiot, plain and simple. He's mixing politics with comedy in a way that is as sickening and repugnant as a formulaic Julia Roberts romantic comedy, and if I could repeatedly punch him in the face over and over and over again, have him anally-raped by the ghost of Thomas Jefferson, then pummel him with dodgeballs, force him to watch above-mentioned romantic comedies by wiring his eyes open ala A Clockwork Orange, and then finally have him put out of his misery in the execution style of Jeffrey Dahmer (14" of rusty lead pipe shoved up his ass until it ruptures his internal organs and he bleeds out internally), it would be too good for that unfunny, traitorous son-of-a-bitch. I HATE YOU DENNIS MILLER!

In other news (and as a test to see who actually reads all of my insane rantings), I now have a new jorb, as webcomicing when you have only two readers pays fuck-all and portrait photography doesn't pay much more, at a courthouse that is actually called "The Hall of Justice".

Almost makes me excited about going to work. Almost.

The number of pseudo-political power plays in this comic are starting to turn it into a very wordy comic. I'd like to imagine it's like a taut political thriller with tension dripping from every page. But it's probably a lot more like a Star Wars prequel.

I'm pretty happy with the way this current art style is looking -- it's still a bit 'off', because it just doesn't look right yet, but it's getting closer. The distinction between background and foreground is really jarring in places, particularly the last panel, but other than that most of the problems are in my inability to gauge how the pencils are going to look when they're toned on PotatoShop. That's mostly down to not having done this pencilled style for very long, though I'm happier with some of the shading on this one. Kali's face came out quite well, though her hair seems weird because I messed up the shading on it.

Another couple of strips and I'm off this style again, but I think it's one I'll come back to, either in future Milton Hoight arcs (I think Milton Hoight has seen more art styles than any other type of story in this comic) or in one of the side projects I'm currently planning, which includes, hopefully, a second run of The Magnificent Five, because no-one demanded it. Except me.