Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2000 7:23 am
Ah, my golem!<P>*checks the J-Walkin cast page*<P>My my, a distinct resemblance... even moreso with the Green Guy's Evil Clone! Good lord, this keeps happening to me, heh.<P>Actually, the golem is... well... he's just this guy, you know?<P>Thanks for reminding me, I'll update the cast page now.<P>***<P>Anyway, influences! I'll just get this down now, so there'll be fewer suspicions <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/biggrin.gif"><P>Well! Um.<P>Web-comics-wise, well, it was after several months of reading Ghostz, Sinfest and Sluggy, and a few weeks of Exploitation Now, that I decided 'Hey, I reckon maybe I could turn those old Riboflavin comics of mine into an online strip...'. Raile has slight echoes of, uh, the floppy-haired moogle guy from Exploitation Now, (name escapes me ATM) but actually I created him about 4 or 5 years ago. Same with Riboflavin.<P>RL-comics-wise, well, after reading a lot of Calvin & Hobbes, I noticed that continuing the characters' conversation past the punchline was a very effective method, heh (eg, those times when Calvin is chatting about his philosophy to Hobbes, and squeezes one more 'Yes, I don't see why I haven't been given the Nobel prize yet' sort of comment after Hobbes makes his quip. Scott McCloud would explain it better, no doubt <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/wink.gif"> ). So anyway, I do that whenever it's required, and it seems to smooth the worse episodes over a bit <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/tongue. ... Riboflavin and Folate' started out as parodies of any little comic which tries putting an unpleasant agenda before entertainment and/or thought-provocation. Perhaps something you'd find in a... Christian newspaper, or something. Or an 'amusing' illustration in a science textbook, or a just-say-no kind of leaflet (note the 'Don't use drugs, kids' message hidden in the laughs at the end of the Cubic Zirconium strip). Nothing as extreme as Jack Chick, but the kind of gentle, badly-drawn propaganda you come across in day-to-day life. Eventually they just became generic superheroes who happened to be suspiciously preachy after they'd tripped up the jewel-thief. 'Megapower' came from trying to think of the most redundant name for a power that I could think of, coupled with the least effective sound-effects and graphics I could manage ('zappo' indeed). This is probably because I created Riboflavin during my absurdist phase in the 9th grade, and it stuck <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/biggrin ... boflavin's big influences, amongst other things, are 'The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco', a terrific book by John Birmingham about a share-house in the suburbs of Brisbane (I don't know if any online stores carry it, unfortunately, but I whole-heartedly recommend it anyway), Mallrats (yes, the Kevin Smith movie no-one likes. Personally, Chasing Amy is the one I don't like), and, somehow, the middle stretch of 'The Fragile' by NIN (simply because whenever I imagine something dramatic happening in the strip, I have 'La Mer' and 'The Great Below' playing in the background).<P>Later on there are a few other things (The look of the Kaisho is taken from when Ren's head split into two laughing hemispheres in the Happy Helmet episode of Ren & Stimpy, but, uh, you haven't seen the Kaisho yet. Wait 'til January), but such things don't really change the way I write or think about the strip, just the way I design the characters and write their dialogue.<P>Well, enough from me.<P>Oh look, a Grinch making-of is on TV. Hand me my gun, damonk...<P>------------------
<A HREF="http://riboflavin.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>http://riboflavin.keenspace.com</A> -- It's ugly and annoying. Just like you.
<A HREF="http://riboflavin.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>http://riboflavin.keenspace.com</A> -- It's ugly and annoying. Just like you.
