"Mulberry's Surrogate Family" Talkback

[Peter Paltridge]

Maybe you can chalk it up to holiday business, but the CD administrative folk still hadn't finished the code for the Kristmas Klassics section of the archives by the time this needed to go up. Thusly, it's here. It works, but in ugly skeleton form.

http://bilateralwarp.com/control_fil...e=1&seriesID=8

Mulberry's first Christmas story is getting repeated this week (she's not getting one this year). Inside joke tipoff: most of the family members depicted in this story are based on members of my actual family, and many of the things they say are things those family members have actually said. Everything in the dinner table scene is true. Honest.

This is only a year old, but already, I'm cringing when I look at it. I go through several phases with most of my work: first I love it, then I hate it, then gradually I start to love it again. Right now, I only see the art flaws that I've been working on since this was drawn. Look at all those blasted stubby arms and legs. THERE ARE STUBBY ARMS AND LEGS ON EVERY PAGE and I hate it.

I tried to touch this up a bit before I released it again--I changed a few pieces of dialogue to make them funnier and fixed a couple of arms, but it was a light fixing job. There wasn't time to overhaul the whole thing, and due to the way the pages were stored (I don't work with layers) most of the drawing errors couldn't be fixed. And it still has no satisfying ending.

There was a page 28 when this was on the site last year, but it was just a quick drawing of all the characters in the story wishing the readers a Merry Christmas. When I looked through this again I decided to lop that off, but I never figured out what the true ending would be. The scene with Gretchen has to be the makeshift ending, I guess.

I also wanted to make the "Allison Mack Wallpaper" panel on page 20 bigger, so you could tell who it was a little easier, but I couldn't find the original screencap to revise it with. (Note: Don't let any of this discourage you; read and comment anyway!)

[J. B. Warner]

What is it about your storywriting style that always makes me bust up laughing? Great stuff!