sorry double post, I didn't think it posted so I hit the button again.

Thanks for the comments guys, and I have to say I agree with most of that. It was a difficult one to do because I had so much set up to do with the first strip (main character, his profession, his death, heaven, a line for heaven, a line for hell, main character's personality). Basically it's structured as two punchlines, the Bolton joke being the first and the lawyer one being the second. Though it isn't a traditional lawyer joke in the sense I'm not making fun of lawyers I'm making fun of the predjudice lawyers sometimes face (made clear in a few more strips when the lawyer gets in). Hopefully I'll figure it out with some more practice.

As to making it more topical, I'm sure that'll sneak in from time to time but the strips I love, and the ones I want to evoke, have a sort of timeless quality to them (Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot) even when they're being topical.  So working with my limitations (inexperience being primary) I decided that I'd do a sunday strip every week with a few (hopefully six just to get a feel for the timeline) normal strips thrown in, and use the sunday strip as a setup for the rest of the week's strips. An experiment, but I want to see if I can make it work for me.

I won't be looking to do anything with it until I have a couple of months of backlog, but I do like the work.

Joakim, I was going to type another (probably overlong) post about what I meant about male instincts and patterns of behaviour but I decided against it. I have a different opinion than yours and I think both (and many other) viewpoints are equally valid and deserve to be expressed rather than repressed. My whole point is that different viewpoints are good for society, good for children's development, and a good way to get different people with different viewpoints to enjoy reading. Getting into specifics would be counter productive in that I don't think it's proper to determine what is 'good' for boys or girls to read. My basic problem is women (mothers, educators, writers, publishers, librarians) deciding what boys 'should' like and then being surprised when boys reject that and in this case choose not to read.

There's a book - How To Eat Fried Worms - which (and it's been a long while since I read it but I did read it many times) is a good example of what I'm talking about: Boys doing stupid boy stuff (eating worms), bonding due to a silly bet and gross out humour, and I'm pretty sure there wasn't a main female character in the book (other than the protagonist's mom), the boys aren't presented as stupid, they disobey their parents mildly. They get into a lot of mischief, but are still presented as good boys and they don't really learn a moral lesson (and maybe that's just me but books that lectured me in the last chapter never got read again) but it was a great illustration of standing up for yourself and fitting in without giving up who you are. It felt right to me, and I related to it because of that. It wasn't for boys and girls, it was a book for boys. Not that girls couldn't read and enjoy it, since it was well written but I'm not sure girls would have related to that kind of guy-centric stupidity and how it sometimes works in forming a friendship (every girl I knew in school would read the title and say; "Oh, gross!" and pretend to gag then put the book down. It wasn't for them and wasn't meant to be for them).

They made a movie based on the book a few years ago and I was very reluctant to see it because I was worried that it might update the story and in doing so take away that bonding experience and make the story something completely different by adding a primary female character (as in change the gender of either the protagonist or the antagonist, which would completely change the story). They did add a girl, however they made her peripheral to the plot even though she was in a lot of scenes. An inclusion that wasn't really an inclusion. It retained a lot, but unfortunately wasn't a great movie.

Oh by the way, did anyone else notice Tom's last post sounded like he was stoned?

Well... I AM on Spring Break this week, so anything's possible... (I mean, probable...)  The "Wake&Bake" is probably one of my favorite activities.

The "Wake&Bake" is probably one of my favorite activities.

No that can't be possible.  You are a professional musician.  They never do that kind of stuff.

In these hard economic times I have 7 small words (with apologies to Peter Tosh):

Legalize it, and I will advertise it!

Getting another 1-800 business idea, Geoff?

1-800-768-4323

I'd make a fortune.