Sorry about the delay…
Today’s strip is brought to you through the genius of Vas Littlecrow Wojtanowicz, of Rasputin Barxotka fame. Not only does she produce a fine webcomic (check it out!), she was the only one who figured out how to get the strip posted.
Vas, thank you. I owe you dinner and a big box of kittens.
Update: So, I’ve spent the last 12 hours moving into the new place. Carrying box after box of books. Anyway, I’m exhausted, and won’t be able to give you Wednesday’s strip. I apologize. I did, however, make a sketch of Stephanie wearing kitty makeup, which I think was way too adorable to pass up.
Thanks for your patience! Friday, back to Larry and Stephanie and…well, you’ll just have to wait and see.
And for those who celebrate it, Happy Hallow e’en! 
I was glad to help!
Who is that? When we last saw Edison, she was in a limo with the librarian clown lady, but we just left her with Pye and the android chick at the library.
Sorry for the confusion-I skipped ahead in the timeline.
Stephanie and Larry and Anya were in the library before Anya’s date with Edison. They left, so now I wanted to show the next morning, after the date, with Anya and Edison.
One of the many problems with multiple story lines.
I love how you depict their mouths and smiles. I love how hips are wide and bits of flab show around necks and waistbands. I am astonished at how well you focus on how real women look. My wife and I approve.
I love the attention to detail. Its everything about comic art I like and enough realism that makes it that much easier to connect to the characters themselves.
A) Love the bookends of the comic, after a good night sleep I got a hearty laugh out of them.
B) The fading out from sex is depicted pretty well here, like Edison and Larry’s scene.
C) There is however a touch of creepiness having a grandmother type picture on the wall looking down and smiling.
D) A thank you to Vas for helping Charlie out getting this comic to post.
That’s it for me, I have to work now. Have a wonderful day guys!
Aw, you guys, thank you! I feel terrible, not getting a new strip up this week. But it’s been so crazy, with all the moving-the apartment has trails running around the boxes and bookshelves, and it’ll take weeks to sort everything out.
I started one last night, but it just wasn’t written well, and I couldn’t stay awake long enough to finish it. I’ll rewrite it and put it up tonight, I hope.
I’m glad you and your wife approve! I really like how real women look, and they’re so much more fun to draw. Plus, it’s like writing-this is how they actually look, and while I try not to have them say things they wouldn’t, I don’t want to draw them the way they aren’t.
Eleanor might be a bit offended to having her picture called “grandmotherly,” which is funny, ’cause if you read “Lyssa and the Pirates,” you’ll see a sexy picture of Eleanor’s grandma in the foyer.
I am sure I will when I get the copy. 😉
I just finished drawing a picture on the inside of the front cover (I’m doing original drawings in all the books I ship out) and I’ll take it to the Post Office tomorrow. Promise!
I concur, please do not rush. I ordered it last week and saw specifically that this would take a bit of time.
Please don’t rush anything to print on our account! I look forward to seeing your next post when you are ready to share it. Go get a few boxes unpacked to find the soap and toilet paper first!
I was also going to throw in a small “however” as a little tease of good fun and comic appreciation. Eleanor and Edison are so womanly and so realistically in their mid-to-late 30s (well, granted a tiny bit of extra perkiness by artistic license?), but Larry looks like what every 39 year old male engineer wishes he could look like. Not that it is a bad thing for two mature women to want to cavort with a man who looks half their age…
Correction, “Anya” not “Eleanor”…
Well, Eleanor does too, sort of. Not in the first strip, since I was so out of practice then. But She’ll show up sometime, and we’ll see…
And Larry does look a little better than the usual 39 year old engineer, in my experience. He does have a bit more hair than I did at that age, for one thing.
I have a feeling Edison and Anya will age the poor boy soon enough.
This comment thread got me thinking about Larry as a somewhat older yet still authentic and attractive man. This is purely fan-fic to discuss, so I hope you will not be offended if your readers share “what ifs” about your marvelous characters.
Larry’s hair whipping about when he and Stephanie went out for a drive leads me to suspect he could have quite the widow’s peak developing in his hair. Despite his muscular chest and abs, there is always that bit of waistline flab that may not go away, and upper arms are very hard to maintain (sarcopenia and all) with aging.
Well, that is just my “what if,” and my wife was less kind in suggesting “what ifs” for “older Larry” including poking parts of me I prefer not to have poked. Let’s just say I am not going to play the part of Larry in any upcoming movie – in her opinion. I like the part I play right now anyway! 🙂
Maybe some of your 40-something women readers have some thoughts on Larry? I mean he does look better than I did at 39, so maybe I am jealous?
Good questions, those!
I wanted to do an expectation reversal kind of thing with the characters. I wanted the women to look like real women their age, and make Larry the more buff one.
I do think I kind of went overboard with him. Being the scrawny geek/nerd type that he is, he should be skinnier.
But I thought it’d be nice if the guy was the one with the nice body for a change.
His arms are okay-when I worked in a produce department of a grocery store, there were guys in their 50’s with really ripped arms. And keep in mind that Larry’s gone on a fair number of Adventures, so he probably has to exercise fairly regularly.
And as far as his hair-well, he’s got a whole lot more up front than I did at his age, so I may be living vicariously through him there.
So, readers (you, you, and yes, of course, you), what do you think?
I found you by your Project Wonderful ad on either GWS or QC, can’t remember which, and I’ve archived binged today, getting to the present.
Dangit! Now I have to slog along waiting for the next update! Because you’ve definitely been bookmarked on my webcomix list.
I’ve enjoyed the artwork quite a bit, and have to admit to being a little confused by the storyline from time to time – but a re-read or two will doubtless help with that.
If you think owning your own business is going to give you MORE time to craft your webcomic, then I have to snort in your general direction with high amusement. Business owners (who want to be SUCCESSFUL business owners) tend to put in some serious hours. That said, congrats on that and I hope it works beautifully for you.
p.s. I laughed at the “I see you” in your counter – that’s funny 😀
Don’t tell me that about owning a business! I just want to have money rolling in without working for it, and take lots and lots of vacations in warm, sunny places. Is that too much to ask?
I just spent the last three hours pencilling the latest strip, and I’ll have it up as soon as I can. It’s a full-pager, with Larry, and Stephanie, and-well, I think you’re really going to like it.
Hooray for Vas! And yes, everyone take a moment to go check out the wonderful Rasputin Barxokta.
Ok, is it just me, or is there something super sexual about the two rocks in front of the house?
And Charlie, as you should well know, illustrators don’t get real vacations. Time to come back down to planet Earth, my friend, lol.
First off, Welcome back! And congratulations on the awesome album cover. If you haven’t followed the very funny adventures of those two knuckleheads who star in AndToBeLoved, now’s your chance.
I don’t see the sexual symbolism in the rocks, but then, I don’t spend a lot of time focusing on that (uh-huh). I just went back and looked at the earlier strip and went from there. But, now that you mention it…
And yeah, I’ve kind of given up on the whole vacation thing. Of course, if I had someone to do a guest strip occasionally…
I love your work. The art style is very cool. I particularly like the shading you do.
JPZ made several comments that I agree with. You draw realistic women. Too many artists gloss over their character’s human imperfections.
By the way, this is a very hot page. Anya looks great even when she’s not in her Librarian outfit.
I’ve read a lot of odd books with multiple story lines, so I didn’t find the scene change to be too confusing. Although I did have to reread the bit where the Security let Stephanie know about Phyl. I missed the look they gave her the first time.
As for Odd Reading, something about Eleanor always seems to bring to mind Michael Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius. I hope that doesn’t offend you or sound too weird.
Hah-that’s great! I never thought of that before-they are both Mods, they both abuse substances (and other people), and their morals are questionable even when their aims are noble.
Realistic?
Their faces look like potatoes.
A perfectly fine artistic style, if one likes that sort of thing, but “realistic”? Really?
I’ve never come across anyone before who would stick so persistently to reading a comic that they so obviously dislike. I have to assume it’s so you can get your troll rocks off. I’m really sorry to see it, too, because to date you are the FIRST troll this site has ever seen.
“Realistic” doesn’t only mean “photographic.” He means they aren’t idealized. They’re a bit flabby here and there, and messy. They slump. Sometimes they wear unflattering clothes. Over the course of the last two and a half years I’ve been reading this comic I’ve come to regard Charlie’s art as bordering on genius, given how much he can get across with these “potatoes” you sneer at. (Dan Quayle can be excused – I had to double check how to pluralize potato…)
Sorry, Charlie – This guy’s been downing my re-read. Forgive my trespass.
Nothing to forgive, Tru. No trespass at all.
The Groovy, Kinda comments section is open to everyone. All I ask is that you act like a grown-up, which you did.
To tell you the truth, I hadn’t noticed the potato comment until you replied. I’m more amused by it than anything.
And thank you for those kind words. I try to make my potatoes as expressive as my art skills will allow.
You know, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make their faces look like potatoes at all. I was in the same dilemma as Hamlet. You know, “Tuber or not tuber…”