Episode 52: Dale Has Insights!

When my uncle read this page, he noted that he too was a “Trekkie”, and that he didn’t know that Dale and I enjoyed the show as well. When I think about it, I’m not sure why anyone would NOT be a “Trekkie”. The original was groundbreaking, and every iteration has been fun and creative, and each one has had its own strengths. I particularly liked “Next Generation”.

I have been off social media for the most part, for a little over a month. This page has been finished and ready for over a week, but I am just now getting this post out.

I have been busy, though. My son Nathaniel and I have been taking a stand-up comedy workshop at a local comedy club. It has been a lot of fun. As I have mentioned, I am a ventriloquist, mostly a children’s entertainer. But as a way to broaden my abilities, I have decided to fly solo for this class - no puppets. I am committed to developing a short set of straight ahead stand-up. It has been a fun challenge. Nathaniel and I have taken comedy classes together before, and it’s always fun and rewarding, but I have always clung to what I knew and have always used a puppet and worked on my regular act in the class. I have a lot of admiration for real stand-up, and I am excited about trying it.

On that subject, stand-up comedy, I have been playing with an idea, a comic strip, for a couple of years now. I call it “StandUp Comics”. Clever no?

I have also been using a more traditional, multi-panel layout for this strip. Plus, I have been thinking about my process, as I always do, and wanted to try using a computer font instead of hand-lettering.

I was unsure about it after I finished it. So I posted this experiment on Facebook, and got some good responses:

”The Unified Theory of Mister Pitts” page was done entirely with traditional tools.

The “StandUp Comics” page was done partly with pencil, pen, and ink on bristol board, and partly in Adobe Illustrator (a very old version on my very old Mac).

I have also been studying “The WebComics Handbook” by Brad Guigar. In the book, and in his podcast with Dave Kellett, he makes the point that comics are often read on small screens these days, so adapting to that reality might be a good idea. Substack offers a ‘gallery’ option with as many as nine pieces allowed. So I broke this strip up into six panels and here’s that experiment - the gallery: