Crustacean Singles: March 2024

2024-03-31

2024-03-30

Creighton about

A distant stick figure walks with a walking stick. You can't make this stuff up. There are the sorts of rocks a glacier might have left behind a long time ago. Caption: "Creighton Splatt, who knows a thing or two but can't recall which, wants to be your friend but doesn't want to go to your thing."

Nothing can be allowed to interfere with foggy morning strolls.

2024-03-29

Juice is back! ...in book form

Top has a director pointing a finger and saying "Annnd cut to commercial." Below this, a frame contains the commercial (advertisement) where a smiling person holds a large book "Juiceposting" and a bottle of juice ("Juice that makes you respond to adverts") and says, "Do you like juice? Do you like books? Do you like juice that makes you read a book about juice that makes you read a book et cetera? Of course you do! Great news: JUICE BOOK (ko-fi.com/CrustaceanSingles)". PAY WHAT YOU WANT!

GET IT HERE

2024-03-28

Something to pass the time

Panel 1 of 2: Top caption: "Orlo Cube discovers who's been leaving the mysterious papers," Pictured: Orlo Cube approaches a figure with a hat and scarf obscuring their face, crouching next to a gravestone, leaving a helium balloon tied to a rock which rock holds in place a sheet of paper covered in writing. The gravestone reads "In loving mermy" and the balloon is printed "get well soon". Panel 2 of 2: Orlo seen from the back watches the mysterious figure run away. While fleeing, the figure shouts "Everybody needs a hobby! Bye!" Bottom caption: "but is hardly closer to a resolution."

Does this count as advancing the plot?

2024-03-27

The people were astonished at this doctrine

The top half of the image is text containing prose as follows: Mrs. Finnikin said, "Father! There you are! I passed by the parsonage to bring you a loaf of bread—I always bake too much—and, well, I was looking for you and—" "Thank you, that was very kind," said Codspittle. She ignored this; something else troubled her. "Yes, but Father, does the Church know they've sent you to such a dilapidated dwelling?" The bottom half of the image is a comic, with the Reverend Codspittle (who is secretly the being Amunizuwrim) wearing a broad black hat and a dark burgundy jacket and saying, "The comforts of this world offer no rest to me." to Mrs. Finnikin. The latter wears a handkerchief over her head, large glasses, and a dress with a subtle floral print. She looks perhaps stunned at what Codspittle has said and replies, "...I see."

The people were astonished at this doctrine.
(This one won't make sense, let alone have a chance at amusing, unless you've read last Wednesday's comic.)
(And yes, putting so many words in a comic is frowned upon, but this is how I wanted it & also getting in trouble is made up.)

2024-03-26

Perilously close

A stick figure in a wide-brimmed sun hat stands on lumpy ground amidst thin growths growing up to shin height. She holds a garden hoe over one shoulder. Caption: "Mimsy Plinth, whom all birds trust implicitly, is perilously close to discovering the secret of true and abiding happiness."

2024-03-25

Cannot dance

Deadly on the dance floor.

2024-03-24

A real person with real feelings

Top caption: "Get to know Blatherford B. Bartleby Blackenspiel Bertram Burroughsby a little before asking the inevitable question. You'll get a better answer." Illustration of a stick figure in one of those medium-brimmed hats with the butt shape on top. I don't know what those are called. The person walks with a cane against a background of hills and a little pond with a single duck floating on it.

2024-03-23

Why, dog, why?

Top caption: "Somewhere out there, Margo Thrombosia knows, is a dog or dogs that wouldn't like her, and this certainty preoccupies and saddens Margo every day." Pictured: Margo, wearing a lime green beanie, crouches on a low stool and holds her head in her hands with a distraught expression.

2024-03-22

That's odd

Top caption: "Orlo Cube keeps finding sheets of paper in odd places. Printed on each is a name and an enigmatic description." Pictured: Orlo, wearing a top hat the brim of which conceals his tipped head's eyes from our perspective, holds up a sandwich, slightly separating the upper from lower healves. Inside the sandwich is a folded paper with visible words "is a snail, by the way." The rest is obscured by the top bread. Orlo frowns. Bottom caption: "Orlo has no idea who these people are or what any of it could mean."

2024-03-21

Growing things

A stick figure kneels on the ground to examine some young plants. Atop the tallest leaf, a snail has climbed and its weight is bending the leaf over. The figure looks on in wonder. Caption: "Clarence Squaredon, apprentice groundskeeper until last Tuesday, cannot bear to thin the seedlings."

Time to find a new future. Again.

2024-03-20

A messenger of sorts

Pictured: an awkward person wears a sort of dark cowl and a broad black hat, looking upward like a subject in an El Greco painting, and holds a thick book under one arm. "The Reverend Codspittle so badly wants to be a shining example of the goodness of which human beings are capable. But Codspittle is in fact Amunizuwrim, an actual angelic being in a disguise that feels increasingly constrictive and unconvincing."

2024-03-19

Remaining

A stick figure in a floppy blue-green hat stands slightly slumped in front of a patch of tall, slender plants, perhaps bamboo. One of her hands rests on a hip, while the other hangs loosely. Caption: "Mimsy Plinth, whose footfall strikes fear into the hearts of worms, feels the world leaving her behind. She'll not go chasing after it, so she'll make the best of the emptying existence around her."

This is by no means the last we'll see of our friend Mimsy Plinth.

2024-03-18

Kurt McGurth

I guess this is a thing I am doing now?

CrustaceanSingles presents: Dramatis Personae

2024-03-17

All was not lost

A person stands under the leafy canopy of tall, graceful trees. The person wears a top hat and, for the viewer's sake, a small cross-section inside the hat is shown: atop the wearer's head inside the top hat, a tiny bowler hat is also worn. Top caption: "All was not lost, thought Orlo. There was still the Secret of the Inner Hat."

Every echo, every shadow seemed to tremble in the mysterious presence of its hidden possibility.

2024-03-16

Positive

A doctor (wearing a nametag "Doctor Doctor MD") holds a clipboard and addressed a person with a snake biting their head who is sitting (the person, not the snake; the snake is just hanging there off the head) on an examination table. The doctor says, "You tested positive." In an inset frame in the bottom right, we zoom in on the snake and top of the person's head; the snake looks alarmed and says, "Oh no."

2024-03-15

Pipe dream again

2024-03-14

Cavorting cattle

Two cows stand on their hind legs and act as jesters; one wears the classic hat with three curved tails and bells at the tips and holds a tambourine, while the other prances in a pointed hat and long curl-toed shoes. Caption: "Cow fools."

2024-03-13

A collection

Dangerously wrong ideas, yes, but not particularly dangerous game.

2024-03-12

Bona fides

A patient sits on an examination table and asks, "You keep saying 'neuronurgy'... Are you even a real doctor?" The person in a white doctor's coat glances over a clipboard held up in one hand and replies, "No, but I did minor in impostor studies." On the wall in the background, a flier reading "Pls join study" with otherwise illegible text is pinned. Below that, another reads "Supporte greup" (support group). To the right, a medical diagram poster has a stick figure with superimposed brain and nervous system. The poster is labeled in some sort of pseudo-Dutch and French hybrid: "De broens & de neurfs of de huemmeun / Wat is de broen? En mizurabbel piel of neurns."

2024-03-11

Soup that makes you act weird

One person says to another, "You've been acting so weird ever since you started eating that soup all the time. What *is* it?" The other, holding a steaming cup, grins a little manically and says, "The guy who sells it out of his van calls it 'Bolivian Marching Chowder'."

The name of the soup has been an intrusive thought running through my head for days, so this is mostly an attempt to exorcise it.

2024-03-10

Not just because

A demonic figure, in the form of a corrupted member of the Ophanim with two wheel-like bands of eyes but with a chaotic mass of tentacles growing from the bottom, says, "I'm not just saying this because I'm a demon. I really do think you should kill your neighbors."

2024-03-09

But how

One person, standing on the floor, looks up in confusion at someone else who is walking on the ceiling. The first asks, "How are you doing that?" The other replies, "The trick is, I'm not. I'm only pretending."

2024-03-08

Thank you for being here

In the hollow of a low hill still ensconced in shadow as the dawn breaks in the sky beyond, Grambo crouches next to a round bird and says, "The bad news is, it's another day. / The good news is, we've still got each other."

2024-03-07

Guaranteed

This spiritual continuation of today's comic has been lingering in my mind all day, insisting upon itself. I'm supposed to keep this kind of thing on my ko-fi and then link to it on all the platforms, but then the algorithm punishes me for encouraging you go offsite and anyway, this is important enough* that I want everyone to see it.

* No I'm not a paid shill for the Cloaca-Industrial Complex & I can't believe you would accuse me of that.

Why can't my life be simple

I think about this conversation a lot.

2024-03-06

Shortcut

A strange, antlered quadruped with the face of a human stick figure stands at the start of a path into a dark forest and says, "Would you say anyone knows you took a shortcut through the forest today?"

Reusing art with new writing is better than posting a rerun is better than posting nothing is better than trying to force it when it's not possible (???)

See the origin of the character here (it's the same drawing)

2024-03-05

The plan

Top caption: There is no plan. A person stretches out on a couch (you may know it as a sofa. Or a chesterfield? Does anyone really say that?), content and relaxed. Bottom caption: Everything is going according to plan.

2024-03-04

Weird dream

One person sits in a cage suspended by a chain over a fire. They are smiling and saying, "And then when the dream ended, here I was, telling you about it." The person they're speaking to, presumably their captor, listens with a perplexed expression and folded arms.

I have been on the phone all day trying to get my first delivery of the latest & greatest injectable bone-hurting juice (MS drug) without spending eight thousand freedom bucks a month (and yes it is very messed up that my auditory processing disorder and I just had to power through the very inaccessible medium of highly compressed audio in this twenty-first century) and so anyway, to conclude this oversharing rant, here is some nonsense straight from my drafting notebook.

2024-03-03

Welcome to Hell!

2024-03-02

Cool accent

   Real things people have said to me: "It sounds like you're an American who grew up at an embassy in Europe or something. / Is that a Canadian dialect? / Are you from one of those little islands off the coast of New England...? / It's gotta be one of the Commonwealth countries, right?"
   (It's currently *mostly* hyperarticulation to compensate for the brain damage.)
   (For the record, I don't really mind. I have a linguistics background & a front-row seat to witness a very interesting catastrophe.)

2024-03-01

It's getting away

A person sits on the ground in an approximately meditative pose, eyes shut serenely, and says, "Is your stream of consciousness running? / Better go catch it!" A bird sitting on a rock listens, confused.

I think I'd like a refund on these meditation lessons.