Delinquent behavior

So very sorry about no comic this past Friday. I was stuck at the office until late, late, late the night before and had to turn around and go in early the next day. By the time I got home, I was totally wiped out. Hope today's strip makes up for it.

Hey, today marks the 3-year anniversary of the comic! On Monday, January 20 2003, this strip first appeared online. Yay.

In related news, as of this weekend, webcomic site SuburbanTribe.net overtook Finnish Heavy Metal band website SuburbanTribe.com in Google search results for the phrase "Suburban Tribe." Yay.

My ten year old nephew, Dalton, has created his own comic and asked if I would post it for everyone to see. He spent an entire weekend creating these six pages. Click on the images below to read and enjoy the adventures of Trent, Brent and The Mail Lady in Ultimate Comedy Holidays 2006. Maybe now Scott McCloud will link to this site.

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Art you never get to see, and a couple of links...

First of all, Tauhid Bondia's on-again, off-again Spells & Whistles is on again in a new format, and it looks quite nice. Check it out, along with his other comics.

I also get a pretty damn fair amount of traffic from webstrip Beaver & Steve, in spite of my never linking to James Turner's quirky, funny and addicitve comic. Click and enjoy.

I wish I could publish my strip in just pencils. I'm never satisfied with my inking, and I always found pencil lines much more interesting. Whenever I especially like a strip's pencils, I'll scan it before I ink it. Here's some pencils from recent episodes that I was especially proud of (Click for larger versions):

Note to self: Jessica needs a makeover.

I spent an extra hour trying to get a good likeness of Sarah Michelle Gellar for this strip, for all the good it did. Then I realized that I should've drawn Kristen Bell, because I was really showing my (Alan's) age.

Finally, here's two finished panels from the upcoming full-color Suburban Tribe print comic:

With a special guest appearance by...

Today's strip features Dave Cooke, who won a guest appearance in last Fall's pledge drive. Dave has just played a crucial role in the current storyline (keep an eye on that package Carol is holding over the coming weeks).

Dave is a grad student studying Physics at UC-Berkeley, hence today's punchline. Take a bow, Dave! I hope I did you justice.

Drinking with the Fishes

Llywelyn Graeme made a pilgrimage (his words, not mine) to Louisville from Beijing, China to claim his grand prize from last fall's pledge drive: A night out at Tribe hangouts Clifton's Pizza and the Irish Rover with ElJefe (aka Skip Peters) and ElMacho (aka Dave Jablonski).

Llywelyn is a government employee and he came equipped with an envelope full of foreign money which of course impressed the shit out of us civilians. (Some of this stuff, such as the Chinese currency, literally wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. He gave us a 250-dinar note from Iraq, with Sadaam Hussein's picture on it. Worth 17 cents, but endless amusement.)

The amount of knowledge about various and sundry obscure political and geographical facts presented at the table (by all participants) was truly mind-boggling. Example: Did you know that the capital of Lesotho is Maseru? I sure as hell did not. Someone said "Lesotho" and I thought we were talking about Superman villains. It's amazing what human beings can learn when regimented and outdated school systems aren't trying to force dusty, crappy encyclopedias down their throats.

Pictures from the evening below. Click on them to view larger photos. I forgot my digital camera, so please excuse the disposable Kodak technology.

My wife Eve, Me and Llywelyn Graeme outside Clifton's Pizza.

Bill ("Skip/ElJefe") and Jeremy ("Dave/ElMacho") caught in a familiar pose.

Jeremy, Brad ("Tetsubeav") and Llywelyn want to shove money down my pants. (like they had to ask.)

"People call us Aarron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons."

All of this is going straight up my nose!

Upon being told that Llywelyn came all the way from Beijing to drink at the Rover, Ireland ex-pat and Irish Rover owner Micheal Reidy said, "Funniest looking Chinaman I ever saw."

Easing back into things

Happy New Year, everyone. Ye gods, was 2005 a boner or what? Good riddance. The wife and I spent all day today cleaning out the house of various unused and unwanted items and putting away the Christmas decorations as well as doing some home improvement. We are "go" for 2006.

I have a head count of 8 people total for the grand prize night out this Saturday night. If you are local and want to come along, drop me an email no later than this Friday night, January 6.

Some cool stuff I got for Christmas:

1. Mission Hill on DVD - 4 episodes left and I'll have watched the entire series. It is smart and funny and I like it a lot. Glad I never saw it before now, or I might not have created this strip.

2. 1 pair of lounge pants, 1 set of boxers and 1 hooded sweatshirt, all emblazoned with the Guinness logo. Plus, one case of Guinness. - If I were an alcoholic, would everyone had gotten all of these for me? I think not.

3. Bone: One Volume Edition - Never read Bone before, but I know enough about it to know that this is a sure thing.

4. Some badly needed new shoes - Women care about shoes so men don't have to.

5. The Essential Neil Diamond - Yes, really.

Bitchin' movies I saw while I was on break:

King Kong - Liked it a lot, but a little excessive.

Walk the Line - Liked it a lot, but why do all gifted artists turn to drugs because they can't handle all the effing money? Poor babies.

Chronicles of Narnia - Liked it much more than I thought I would. No, I never read the book.

New Year 2006 Resolutions:

1. Suburban Tribe goes to print - I am currently collecting the last 2 story arcs into one real, honest-to-god 36-page print comic. It will be full color, 300 dpi and available through Comixpress, and I'll be using it as a promotional tool for myself and the strip. If this comes out well, I'll look into getting more Suburban Tribe collections into print.

2. Going to the dentist - Haven't been for a while.

That's all I've got, really. I would say "Exercise more", but I'd rather spend my free time making comics.