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2023-12-31

Ah, yes...

 

Grambo's young friend stands behind him and says, "Grambo, I'm dying to know—what's the deal with you and puddles? Is it the ephemerality? Reflectivity? A fond memory? What am I missing?" Grambo, sitting in a puddle and leaning back contentedly, says, "Ah, yes, I remember puddles..."

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2023-12-30

Who goes there?

 

The image is divided into two tall vertical panels. On the left, Grambo stands confidently with hands on hips facing right and says, "I have defeated every mirror I've ever seen." Facing left in the right panel, a near-mirror image folds arms and has a sterner expression, saying, "But not every reflection." Both speech bubbles cross the borders of either vertical panel. The left panel is flat grey while the right panel is full of black and white static noise.

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2023-12-29

In confidence, with confidence

 

Grambo gazes down at a puddle next to which he kneels. Whether to his own reflection or to the puddle or both, he says, "I feel like I can tell you anything."

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2023-12-28

No mind

 

Grambo lies on his back in a puddle and looks up at the sky, slightly angling his head back as though speaking to the round bird perched in a branch nearby. "My mind has determined that there is no such thing as my mind. / That seems very advanced for a nonexistent thing to figure out." Nearby, a snake looks on with a question mark above its head.

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2023-12-27

Danger from below

 

A balloon floats into the sky, approaching two clouds with worried faces. One says, "Don't let it touch you! It has ground germs!"

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2023-12-26

We've got a lot to be thankful for

Meanwhile, in the sky,

A sky with fluffy white clouds, all having smiling pleasant faces. One says, "I'm grateful for good friends and the time I get to spend with them." Another on the periphery says, "I'm glad no one's found out about that thing I did."

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2023-12-25

Cherishing the onion

 

Grambo sits in a puddle and cradles a large purple onion in a blanket, smiling down at it. His round bird friend sits on a rock next to him and the onion. Two dark clouds look on from above, somewhat skeptical. A star shines overhead, pale blue.

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2023-12-24

Didn't you hear?

 

Grambo sits on a stone; a snaggle of snakes goes past. One raises its head and says, "Didn't you hear?" Grambo replies, "Hearing is not understanding."

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2023-12-23

Season speculation

 

Crambo sits on a roof, grabbing a ventilation pipe and looking forlorn. An attic window shows a skull sitting on a table looking out. A top caption reads, "Is that Father Crambo? About to enter your home at night by unconventional means?" And Crambo says, "No, just looking for my sandwich. Also, don't call me that. I am not your dad."

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2023-12-22

Do you?

 

A surreal scene: Grambo sits in a giant teacup, looking alert and uncomfortable. The round bird perches on the teacup's handle. In the background, ancient Greek columns grow like trees, branching into canopies of roofs where they haven't broken. A thought bubble at the bottom: "Every time I think I understand what's happening to me, I soon after realize Ek msn't nvin cloak." (That last bit is a garbled version of "I wasn't even close".)

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2023-12-21

Exploration and discovery

 

Grambo looks over a low ridge at a dramatic waterfall and says, "A sideways puddle? Now I've seen it all!"

This will be difficult to sit in, but Grambo likes a challenge.

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2023-12-20

Not from around here

 

A very round stick figure crouches oddly on a lumpy protuberance of land next to a pond, pointing at Grambo who is sitting in the pond, and says, "You're not from around here, are you?" Grambo holds his chin thoughtfully and says, "No, I think I'm from a pointier here."

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2023-12-19

Can you believe this guy?

 

Grambo looks up at some churlish clouds and asks them, "Do you take requests? Because some puddle would really hit the spot." Elsewhere in the sky, a bird clings to the end of a kite string as a strong wind pulls the kite and the bird.

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2023-12-18

Contemplate that onion

 

In a strange grocery store with uncanny growth climbing the shelves, Grambo and accompanying young person are shopping. Grambo holds a purple onion and looks at it intently. The young person holds up a basket laden with produce and a jar and says, "Grambo, come on. If you need to keep contemplating that onion, just put it in the basket and let's buy it."

Can anyone really own an onion, though?

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2023-12-17

Grambo walks in the woods

 

Spread across four panels: "I am Grambo!" says Grambo, glancing up at a round bird perched on a low branch. He plucks the bird from tree at though it were a fruit and holds it gently in his hand. "Nobody can ever take that from me!" he adds. The bird looks up at him and says, "True but tautological. If they did, you would no longer be Grambo." Grambo brings the bird up to his face and gives it a big smooch on the beak. END

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2023-12-16

The naming of beings

A gigantic grublike creature approaches Grambo (who is standing in a puddle) and says, "Hi! What's your name?" Grambo considers this and says, "Hmmm... No, I don't think it is."

 

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2023-12-15

Who is that?

 

A stooped little figure with clasped hands and a kind smile approaches Grambo, who is sitting on a tortoise's back. The former says, "Looking into your eyes, I can see that you are suffering greatly but full of compassion." Grambo replies, "You must be mistaking me for someone else! I am only Crambo." The tortoise is about to eat a leaf.

Wait, but I thought—

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2023-12-14

Identity and actions

Grambo (a stick figure with a pointy curling chin or perhaps poorly delineated beard) sits in a puddle, specifically the person who was turning into a puddle in yesterday's comic, with only the top of its formerly human head not yet fully puddle-ified and a half-melted face below that. The puddle says, "You're sitting on me." Grambo turns slightly and says, "No, I'm Grambo."

 

but I get that a lot

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2023-12-13

Lucky

 

Pictured: from the head down to mid-torso, a stick figure; below that, a puddle. The person's face is pleased and surprised. Thought bubble: My wish came true!

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2023-12-12

Same direction

Top text, not contained by a speech bubble, diegetic origins unclear: "Is Grambo following that duck?" Grambo, a stick figure with an upward curling chin or perhaps poorly delineated beard, walks a few paces behind a worried-looking duck. The duck turns its head to look behind itself and asks Grambo, "*Are* you following me?" Grambo replies, "Oh. I think we're just going the same way. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

Straight from an incoherent late-night drafting session (but with illegible scrawl turned to somewhat legible lettering typeface for your convenience).

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2023-12-11

Remember puddles?

 

Panel 1 of 2: A closeup of a worry-faced humanoid creature wringing its chin or maybe poorly delineated beard. "Remember puddles? They don't make them anymore, but—" Panel 2 of 2: Zoomed out from the first panel, we see the creature from the first panel sitting in a puddle facing another humanoid stick figure who leans down and says, "Grambo, you're sitting in a puddle right now."

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2023-12-10

Give it a try sometime

 

A surprised and frustrated person gestures at a wall, which inexplicably has a large puddle on its vertical surface. "How did you manage to get a puddle on the wall?" Another person sitting on the floor smiles and says, "Asking nicely goes a long way."

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2023-12-09

On the move

 

A herd of puddles scrunches impossibly along like inchworms, leaving drips behind them, all in the same direction. Caption: The March of the Puddles.
They're coming for you.

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2023-12-08

Fleetingness

 

A little pond with a smiling face says, "I think it's kind of beautiful to be ephemeral." A little flower growing near it says, "But not so ephemeral that you don't have time to learn fancy words."

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2023-12-07

What's yours?

 Under a cloudy sky, a strange scene unfolds. From background to foreground: a person holds onto the string of a kite, but the kite is on the ground and the person is flying in the sky. A human shape covered in foliage wears a bowler hat and steps into a large puddle or small pond. A bird contentedly holds a slice of pizza in its beak. Bottom caption: Even a day like today is bearable when you carry an exhilarating secret.

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2023-12-06

Welcome

This one has a lot of words at the top: "You think that must be a rejection. Do you feel disappointment? Relief? / But the next morning, you find this on your doorstep. Is it a seed? An egg? A spore? There are no instructions, so you trust it doesn't need any. / You hold it and say to yourself, 'Welcome to the Uncanny Growth.'" The illustration is of a hand holding the aforementioned seed or egg or spore, which is larger than the palm of the hand and has an approximate teardrop shape with ridges, chambers, and a rough or perhaps even serrated texture. Its surface is black and purple.

I know it's too many words, but can we just take a moment to appreciate that this is the closest I have ever come to drawing a cromulent human hand?

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2023-12-05

Application submitted

 

A dense profusion of foliage on thick vines occupies the top and left three quarters of the frame. The bottom right shows a sort of passage into the tangle. One of the branches of the vine has extended and curled at the end. Captions: "You ask to join the Uncanny Growth. It nods a tendril. A voice rustles: 'Thank you for your interest. We'll be in touch."

"Anticlimax doesn't really count as a joke," I tell myself. But I never listen.

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2023-12-04

Join

 

A dense profusion of foliage on thick vines occupies the top and left three quarters of the frame. The bottom right shows a sort of passage into the tangle with superimposed text reading "Join the uncanny growth? Y/N"

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2023-12-03

You've been warned

 

Top caption: Keep your socks dry. Image: two stick figures hide behind rocks, fearful, as a small hovering body of water floats above the ground and drips menacingly. Bottom caption: Levitating puddle is on the hunt.

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2023-12-02

Profundity

A person approaches a puddle from which a second person's head emerges. The first says, "Wow, deep puddle!" The second replies, "No, I'm a disembodied head in a shallow puddle." The first says, "Oh. Sorry?"

 

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2023-12-01

Wallowing

 

A person approaches another person who is in a fetal position lying in a small puddle. "Hey...why are you wallowing in that puddle?" The wallowing person replies sadly, "All the good puddles were too crowded."

It's probably a metaphor or something.

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2023-11-30

Doing it

Panel 1 of 2: A cloud with a scowling facial expression looks at a little stick figure, cross-legged and meditative, who is floating nearly at its own level in the sky. The cloud says, "You're doing it wrong". Panel 2 of 2: A closeup on the stick figure, who smiles serenely and raises one hand in a discursive gesture: "How can that be when I am in fact doing it?"

I think it is enough for now.

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2023-11-29

Head in the clouds

 

A stick figure with extremely long legs and arms stands high in the sky, head among the clouds, and thinks, "always got my head in the clouds". The clouds scowl and one says, "We'd really rather you didn't."

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2023-11-28

Communicative intent

 

A puffy cloud bears a passing resemblance to a hand performing a rude gesture involving its middle finger. It also has a face with a grumpy expression and says, "If you choose to interpret my current, purely coincidental form as intentional communication of an idea, that's on you."

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2023-11-27

Angry weather

 

A stick figure wields a net on the end of a very long pole, extending it into a stormy sky with angry-faced grey clouds. A bird with an eyepatch and a prosthetic hook replacing one of its feet perches on a branch nearby and says, "You better hope you don't really get one."

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2023-11-26

I don't appreciate the tone

Two distant stick figures look up at a formation of clouds that appears to resemble letters spelling the word "RIGHT". One says, "Seems sarcastic."

 

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2023-11-25

Heyyy

 

Panel 1 of 2: Two fluffy clouds float near each other in the sky. The one on the left smiles blankly, while the one on the right smiles perhaps a little flirtatiously. Panel 2 of 2: the cloud on the left has opened up its entire side (not its still-smiling mouth) and is devouring the other, whose expression has shifted into alarm.

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2023-11-24

Unexpected and wrong

 

A fluffy cloud rests atop a tree trunk as though it were the tree's cartoonishly drawn foliage. It looks down in confusion. "That can't be right."

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2023-11-23

Drifted

A sad cloud alone in a stormy sky says, "Sorry we drifted apart".

Get it? Because they're clouds? Do you get my joke

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2023-11-22

Mutuality

 

Two clouds next to each other have smaller tufts of cloud between them resembling the smaller trails of thought bubbles in cartooning convention. One looks excited, while the other, skeptical, says, "I don't think it necessarily means we're mutually imaginary."

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2023-11-21

Parade?

 

A cloud wears a ridiculous face disguise of thick glasses with false eyebrows, nose, and mustache. It says, "No, I don't know anything about what happen to that parade. I don't even know what parade is. I am simple cloud."

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2023-11-20

How are you

 

One cloud asks another, "How are you doing?" The other says, "Wrong."

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2023-11-19

Howdy

It's just a cartoonish drawing of a cloud that is shaped like a tall cowboy hat. The cloud has a happy little face. The cloud says, "Howdy".

 

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2023-11-18

Do you think it hurts

One cloud says to another, "Do you think it hurts when you rain away?" The other says, "Or maybe it's nice. Who cares? At least then it's over." An asterisk leads to a footnote reading "Little do they know, they're trapped in the water cycle until the Sun's expansion strips the Earth of its atmosphere and water after billions of years."

 

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2023-11-17

You can't

 

Panel 1 of 2: a bird approaches a large cloud, beginning to land on its surface. The cloud has a face with a bothered, confused expression and says, "Hey. No. You can't do that—". Panel 2 of 2: the bird has fully landed on the cloud and has pulled up a chunk of cloud in its beak. Its head is cocked inquisitively to the side but its expression is unreadable. The cloud's face is now shocked and possibly pained. END

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2023-11-16

Nebulous social status

 

Two stick figures lie on the grass and look up at clouds in a blue sky. One points and says, "That one looks like a friend!" The other says, "You shouldn't form parasocial relationships with clouds."

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2023-11-15

Purists

 

A cloud addresses a hot air balloon (or the person piloting it): "It's hard to argue with results, but you're still not doing it *right*."

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2023-11-14

Posted rules

 

A sign stuck into the ground says "Sky to remain clear at all times". One cloud looks at it worriedly, while another grins and says, "What's city hall gonna do about it?"

I was feeling stuck compulsively making this useless stuff every day. Then I stumbled into an even more specific (constrained) version, like locking myself inside a box inside the cell I'd already locked myself inside. Where do I go from here? What am I doing with my l

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2023-11-13

It's not supposed to do that

 

A cloud with a face is inside a building, floating by a window and looking out at a sky full of gigantic floating stick figures. "The sky is doing that thing wrong again."

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2023-11-12

That cloud looks like

 

A cloud has sprouted legs and walks upon the earth, crushing one member of a picnic as two others run away. The cloud says, "Now who looks like a slumpy muddle?"

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