Episodes 256-258

Read the comics: 256, 257, and 258.

Back from Omegacon - Wednesday's strip will go up later this evening. In the meantime, here's an "official" post about the strips for the past couple of days. (The Comic Feed now shows up through E258, and the web version is current through 258 as well.)

These strips dive deeply into my personal realms of geek - Neil Gaiman's Sandman series brought me back into the comic fandom years ago, and you may have noticed by now that I'm a big "Matrix" fan.

What's interesting (to me, anyway) is that the makers of the Matrix were also big Sandman fans - their "Morpheus" was named for Gaiman's Morpheus. There was also a lot of imagery and theming lifted from Morrison's Invisibles series. If you're interested in learning more about that, here's an interview with Morrison himself.

It only seemed fair to give Gaiman's Morpheus a chance to take a harsh look at his namesake.

In the area of "production notes", Matrix Morpheus is wearing the wrong pants - the lighting in my workshop isn't the greatest and I realized only in post that his pants weren't quite the correct shade of purple. That's fixed in later strips; just pretend you didn't notice/read this.

Gaiman's Morpheus is a very tall individual - to reflect this in mini-figure format I added some "tooth" bricks to the bottom of his feet. It created a nice "boot" look, and gave GM a bit of a height advantage over MM.

Episode 252

Read the comic here.

Okay, some of you have wondered what the giant phone and call from Morpheus could possibly have to do with the plot. Well, I'm not telling. At least, not today.

No, today I've decided to go for the cheap out using a joke about Daylight Savings.

But at least that joke ties into the (possibly) plot relevant Matrix stuff.

Things will make more sense by the end of the week. Hopefully.

Workbench

I had a request in comments yesterday to create a page showing what I'm currently working on in the Workshop. Not a bad idea at all. Sadly, I know that the odds of me keeping such a page up-to-date is somewhere between slim and very unlikely indeed. But here in the Blog? Well, I could see that happening.

So, here's a teaser pic of a couple of in-progress projects. They're not on the workbench in this shot (I had to clear that for Comic photos) but you get the idea.


I'm currently working on several prop-sized comicbook-themed models. Look for a grand unveiling of a new feature in early December, most likely.

Speaking of LEGO, I realized there was a nice themed part that'd work well in the logo for November. Too bad I don't own it!

That's The LEGO Turkey. It was last seen in an expensive Belville Princess Castle set back in 1999. Now selling for $35+ on the secondary market. That's one pricey piece of plastic!

Of course, even if I did have it, it'd have the same problems as the Giant LEGO phone - Belville accessories are much too large for Minifigs to interact with comfortably. (In other words: That's a Turkey the Size of MAN.)

The drumsticks did survive going mainstream,though. They've been a frequent accessory in the Viking sets in recent years, and I'm pretty sure they show up in next year's Castle offerings as well.

Here's to hoping the rest of the bird is re-released as well.

Episode 251

Read the comic here.

In the Matrix movie, Morpheus has a long speech for Neo once he finally gets him on the phone: Yes. I've been looking for you, Neo. I don't know if you're ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately, you and I have run out of time. They're coming for you, Neo, and I don't know what they're going to do.

If only Keanu had more dialog than "Whoah", he might have come back with "Sorry, wrong number."

But that would have been a much shorter movie.

Episode 250

Read the comic here.

Two hundred and fifty strips. I'm somewhat surprised I've made it this far. In many ways I'm still finding my footing with this strip, finding the voice I want things to have. But I think I'm getting closer to to my goals. Thank you to all who make the strip a daily stop, either through the RSS feeds or from just an old fashioned page browse.

Today's strip (complete with Giant Rotary Phone) should help those few readers who aren't Matrix-junkies clue in on the past couple of strips. If you didn't catch the "Neo" reference, don't feel bad. Obviously Whiskey didn't either.

(For the curious, check the blog comments for those previous strips to learn more about why the Giant Rotary Phone is a Giant Rotary Phone and not something more in-scale.)

It may be worth pointing out that Morpheus was one of the very first "concept characters" for the Brick House, the name this comic started out under. I've had a mini-figure built and ready for action for over a year now. Somehow I doubt Morpheus is going to remain "just" a voice on the phone...

Episode 248

Read the comic here.

My wife was proof-reading the strip last night when she noticed.

"That's a huge phone!"

I blame LEGO for never producing a phone accessory correctly in scale with their mini-figures. Of course, these days a 1x1 black tile could double for a cell phone with reasonably accuracy. But if you want Old School Rotary Action, you've got to go with the pre-printed 1x1 slope and the giant handset. You just gotta.

I'm not terribly pleased with Mary Sue's line of "Did anyone notice that phone being there before now?" I needed to address the fact that this mysterious phone just appeared, and a mere "where'd the phone come from?" didn't seem to have the right weight to it. Eh, tomorrow this strip will be in the archives and I can move past it.

But if anyone has a suggestion as to a better line, post it here and I'll consider correcting the strip.