RELATED STRIPS: strip 187, strip 188, strip 189, strip 190, strip 207, strip 208, strip 209, strip 210, strip 211, strip 212, strip 213, strip 214, and strip 215.
The Mac Files
Here's the movie the wombat has been making for the past few months. A compromise of the wombat's dark and gritty crime drama, and the McDonald Corporation's desire for
a follow up to their previous movie tie-in "Mac & Me". The result is basically the X-Files. Constable (or Special Agent in this Movie) Big Mac fills in for Mulder while
Early Bird Fills in for Scully (and Early Bird was a red head, so that worked out perfectly in my favor).
Those first three panels took a while to get done, as I put quite a bit of effort into them to make them look as good as possible. Not that I don't TRY with the strip
in general, but I felt that in this case if the first three panels didn't really pop, then the whole point would be lost. I decided to represent the movie by showing
"stills" with excerpts from the script in the letterbox above instead of the typical word balloon. Again, this separates these three panels from the typical strip...I
think. I'm worried it's a little tough to read. What say you internets? Does it work? Can you read it?
Since last I posted a few things have happened; 1) I went to Anime Central, 2) my day job went through a fairly successful merger, and 3) I saw "The Avengers".
Anime Central, or ACEN when great. I only sold a couple books, but I gave out quite a few of my cards promoting the sight and quite a few Neil of Approvals for some
great costumes. If you're reading this because you met me at ACEN, welcome. Despite the poor book sales, I did make up for it with quite a few sales of the prints that
I made of my illustrations of a Rocket Fish and of Wiener Dogs Roasting Hotdogs. So that made me feel good. I realized, though, that I need a better display than just
laying my stuff out on the table so I'm working on that for the next con I'll be doing.
As for the rest of Anime Central...well...to be perfectly honest, I'm not really that big of a fan of Anime in general. I don't hate it, I've just never really gotten
into anything in that genre. Though that kind of worked to my advantage as I wasn't tempted to leave my table and go look at other things. Though I did look around once
and ended up buying a new hat. I wear a bowler now, bowlers are cool.
Oh...I should also use this forum to publicly thank my table neighbor, Jennifer Yung. We took turns watching each other's tables in the case of bathroom breaks and
such. She was a very nice young lady with some really good art.
As for number two...I won't go into it much here. I really don't like talking (or thinking for that matter) about my 9 to 5 during my off time (I find it just makes it
seem to last even longer then the hours I'm actually there). But we recently went through a merger and, so far, everything went smoothly and my place in the company is
secure...so that's good.
"The Avengers", I said it on my Facebook/Twitter, but I'll say it again here. If you're a movie executive, I don't care if Joss Whedon tells you he's going to film his
own poop for two hours, you give him money and whatever else he needs, because he'll find a way to make the poop entertaining as hell...and then he'll kill it. I'll try
to be mostly spoiler free in case you're one of the three people who didn't see it this weekend (believe it or not, I know a couple people who are waiting to see it
(for various reasons (mostly valid))), but I will say that it feels like a Joss Whedon movie without feeling out of place of what has come before. And if you've enjoyed
any of the previous films that lead into this one (Thor, Captain America, Ironman), then you should appreciate this payoff.
Upcoming Comic Conventions - I've recently signed up for CYPHAN in July. It's more of a Sci-Fi themed show, but hopefully I'll find some new readers for the strip
there. Also Ernie Hudson is the guest of honor. After this, my next show isn't until Detroit Fanfare in October.
Copyright 2010 Neil Bryer.
Contact: Neil Bryer