Well well well…who’da thunk it?
Well, that’s enough Miffy for now. This strip took two weeks, and I almost scrapped it because I couldn’t get panel 4 right.
How about spending some time with our main characters again? Maybe we can usher in the New Year in a properly silly fashion.
Hey! It’s Christmas Eve! Have yourself a merry little festive holiday time!
Oh, and hey! Isn’t that Emily, from the cool strip Black Ball, serving up ice cream?
So, there’s two of them?
In panel 4, I think that’s in-the-moment Miffy ‘looking back’ at herself bidding her sister goodbye. Of course, the concept of sisterhood is even more fluid in G,K than most places…..
As usual, Pops, you are absolutely correct. It s in-the-moment-Miffy looking back.
It’s my fault for not making panel 4 clearer. It was supposed to be the ghost of Phyl Sampson comforting a distraught Miffy. But try as I might, I couldn’t draw it. At one point I was just going to publish the strip with a written description instead of a drawing.
And yes, sisterhood is very fluid in the GK universe.
I caught on right away. You’re being too hard on yourself again. 🙂
Thank you, Uncle Delta (something I picked up from MJ). It still bugs me when I get a panel so wrong. Better luck next time.
Have to admit, I don’t understand that
My fault. I’m sorry.
Panel 4 (see above) was supposed to be much clearer. It’s Miffy remembering the ghost of her sister Phyl bidding her goodbye for the moment.
The two things I unsuccessfully tried to show in this strip were 1) Miffy is Phyl Sampson’s sister, and 2) Miffy is not really a Venusian Cat Queen.
Well you nailed the panel, great expressions, near Pre-Raphaelite composition, few words. Well done for sticking with it Charlie. Heave a great Christmas, it’s ending for us hear in muggy Borneo. Chris (I’m tired of being “Anonymous”.
Happy Muggy Christmas Chris!
And thank you for those kind words. I’m kind of happy with the picture (Pre-Raphaelite? High praise indeed!), but it wasn’t anywhere near what I wanted to convey.Oh well, time to move on.
I think you’ll be happy with what’s coming your way in 2019.
Miffy modeled on Jane Burden Morris? Sorry, I don’t see it. Maybe the Cherry Obscuro composition, though, maybe. To me, it just looks like Charlie, and that is high praise in itself.
I’m unsure if I should comment on this.
I’ve gotten the feeling several times that killing off Phyl right at the start of a story arc that you’d already planned out, and were rather excited about, has bothered you since you did it. It led to some really amazing emotional story-telling, sometimes years apart in real time, but it keeps coming back to … haunt you, so to speak. I’ve never gotten any traction on why you felt so compelled to do that, and have speculated uselessly about it often enough. For the Groovy universe it has had a multitude of effects on the various people it has affected (which is to say nearly all of them), sometimes dramatic ones.
I just feel, sometimes, like you hurt yourself somehow and I’m not sure if that’s a rational or comprehensible reaction on my part.
This webcomic is rather strongly focused, one way and another, on families (blood or not) and how the members interact. I love what you do. I have to hope that you do too, given that such rewards as you receive are almost entirely non-material.
Oh Tru, you should comment on anything and everything. Seriously.
I hadn’t really thought about it at the time. I really had no idea of the consequences Phyl’s death would bring.
It was one of those things where I was writing a story, and suddenly I realized “oh hell, Phyl just died.” It wasn’t planned. It just felt so right that I had to go with it.
I’ve spoken before about how it feels like the characters write some of their scenes. This was one of those times (realizing Reade was trans was another, as was Anya and Jacob).
I think Phyl’s death worked on a deeper level than I realized at the time. Groovy, Kinda actually happened shortly after my wife passed away without any warning. I think that jumping back into comics was a way of dealing with that, and with my new reality (single parent, etc.). And I’m sure Phyl’s passing was my brain’s way of dealing with issues I consciously had no idea were going on.
Phyl’s death has bothered me from time to time. I really wish I could’ve done the memorial service. I wish my Artist’s Block (that really manifests itself with longer storylines…look how many stories I’ve just “dropped” halfway through) hadn’t kept me from going further. Maybe I would’ve achieved some sort of closure or something. Who knows.
When you say “hurt yourself,” how do you mean? Storywise? Overall I wish I hadn’t created her like that. I was working out something from long ago, and she really didn’t fit in the way she was. Besides, we already had Edison. But I don’t think she died because of that. There were dozens of other ways I could’ve dealt with her. Like I said, it just came to me and I felt I had to report what happened.
I guess Phyl’s death was a big stone thrown into the G,K pond, and we’re still rocking on the ripples.
You bring up a good point: G,K is about families and relationships. That’s what I love most in stories-how everyone gets along (or doesn’t) with one another. That, and making a world that I’d like to live in.
I do love this comic. Most of all I love these crazy people and the way they love each other.
And I love you guys. You keep me going. Really.
When I’m working on a really good page, or drawing something cool, I often think: “Oh, I can’t wait to see what they think about THIS.”
And when I can’t draw it’s doubly frustrating, because I want to make a comic and I want to share it with all of you.
I never so much as considered that Miffy was human. So congrats on taking me completely by surprise, sir. 🙂 I’ve said it several times – she is a cat!
Will we ever discover just how she came to be how she is now? From the dialog above, I assume Phyl had something to do with it. Though who knows – sisters can do lots of stuff that needs to be forgiven.
And no, killing Phyl off didn’t hurt the comic – far from it. I’m not sure exactly what I meant by it, except that I felt/feel that it caused you pain.
It occurs to me that any memorial service to Phyl would have been full of the full gamut of emotional reactions, up to and including farce. I wish you’d been able to draw it too 🙂
She is a cat, for all intents and purposes. She certainly considers herself a cat.
I may tell The Tale (Tail?) of Miffy someday. Thing is, most people don’t like her, so she needs to appear in small doses. Phyl did have something to do with it. So may Rad Sampson. So may Larry and/or Eleanor, for that matter. Remember, they all had adventures together.
Killing Phyl didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. She was always an underdeveloped character. It only started to hurt when I would feature her in flashbacks and her character would come out more.
Maybe I’ll do a flashback with her sometime.
You’re right about the memorial-there would’ve been a little of everything.