Clattertron

[dc]B[/dc]ecause I write and draw a ‘gag a day’ comic, I create topical jokes if I want. Meaning, if I want to whip up a comic referring to something which just happened, or something popular, I can do so.

I’m not locked into a grand story or a world with strict rules which prevents such a thing.¹ This is both a blessing and a curse.

If I didn’t make a ‘gag a day’ comic, what I could write and draw about would be limited, to some extent. I don’t mind limits, usually, when it comes to being creative: most of the hard work is out-of-the-way. The comic (or story or whatever) has to about a certain thing, or can’t be about a certain thing. (“Your comic must include a mermaid.” “OK.”)

This is a fun creative challenge.

Yet, so is the freedom to write about whatever I want.

Case in point, this week’s comic.

I already had a different comic finished and scheduled for yesterday. Then the trailer for the new Star Wars film come out on Friday. After watching the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser trailer a half-dozen times, I decided, “Well, shoot. I need to do a comic about this.”

Because I’ve been working on building a buffer², I’m already working on comics for January.

The problem is, I couldn’t run a comic about the new Star Wars trailer in mid-January. The time was now, not a month from now.³

I hesitated, however. Topical comics and jokes are fun, but a year from now, will they still hold up? The comic I originally planned for yesterday would, as it was a self-contained joke—it didn’t reference a current event.

It came down to, I had an idea for a Star Wars comic. It’s hard not to draw a comic once I have an idea. Being lazy is easy: I already had a comic done, I didn’t need to draw a new one at the last-minute.

But, my gut feeling won out, and I set up camp at a coffee shop until I had this week’s comic finished.

The only snag: because the comics I scheduled for after this week all reference Christmas, I couldn’t simply push everything back by a week. This meant my original comic for yesterday wouldn’t run until January 5^th.

Oh well, the original comic for this week will be just as funny a month from now.

Trust me.

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¹ Nothing against these kind of comics in the least. Some of my favorites are this style.

² Which is easy when you only publish once a week like me. I’m toying with publishing two comics a week in 2015.

³ Like that Simpsons joke, “Here’s your hanging chad sketch, Krusty!”