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2023-09-30

In accordance with the prophecy

A parent or guardian reaches out a hand to a small child and says, "Come on, Omen. Let's go." A bystander asks, "You named your kid 'Omen'?" The first says, "No, a warlock did." Possibly unrelated but probably not unimportant: two faint pointy-eared creatures observe the exchange from behind some bushes.

 

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2023-09-29

Do be do be do

A spiritual seeker kneels before a teacher and says, "I don't know what to do with myself." The teacher raises a didactic finger and serenely says, "First you must learn to be with yourself." The seeker says, "Oh. That's way worse."

 

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2023-09-28

I spy

Two stick figures walk on a trail through a forest. The first looks around and says, "I spy with my little eye..." The second, who has one large eye and one tiny eye, frowns and crosses arms crossly, saying, "You know I hate this game." In the background, two pointy-eared creatures peek around plants and watch the two. Also, a bat hangs from one of the trees. Hell yeah! It's bat time!

 

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2023-09-27

Sartorial vastness

An advertisement says, "Come on down to Shen's Shirt Barn, home of the Shirt That's Just Way Too Big!" and has a picture of a barn and a person in a cowboy hat and a nondescript T-shirt. Below the advertisement, a person is wearing a shirt so big that it trails behind them on the floor even as they are standing up. The person says, "It'll probably shrink in the wash."

 "What have I done?" I asked myself, and then I looked at the screen and it was this. This is what I had done, and it was too late to make a different thing.

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2023-09-26

Bird self

A crow painted in digital watercolor, with (attempted) iridescent purples and blues and greens steps kind of awkwardly with one foot. Top caption: I don't understand myself. Bottom caption: I just experience myself.

 

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2023-09-25

Banana nomenclature

 

Pictured: an angry banana with a face (the face shows the anger, but the whole banana is angry). Q: What do you call a talking banana? A: Anything you want. Just because it can talk doesn't mean it can move. The banana says, "I am filled with impotent rage."

For Remake Monday, I've improved the wording and redone the coloring but left the 2017 version's Crustacean Sans, which was my second attempt at a handlettering typeface. It turned out better than it had any right to, even though I made it so light that I only ever used it in word processor-simulated bold. (Come to think of it, I could fix that now, although I think ultimately it's too clean compared to QuickClaw, the one I use almost all the time now.)

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2023-09-24

Just screaming

 

Panel 1 of 4: a blobby creature in a desolate landscape screams. A stick figure approaches. Panel 2 of 4: The blob and the stick figure both scream, facing each other. Panel 3 of 4: The stick figure explains, "To be clear, I was screaming with you, not at you." Panel 4 of 4: The blob smiles while emitting the same scream as before. But now happy? THE END

Four panels? On my CrustaceanSingles? It may be more likely than you think! (I don't know how likely you think it is.)

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2023-09-23

OK

A figure resembling a half-abstractified version of Clippy, the failed Microsoft entity, announces that "Trouble is on its way". A hypercube appears below its speech bubble containing the response "OK." and a mouse cursor approaches the hypercube. Weird, huh?

I've come to the conclusion that if I'm to continue CrustaceanSingles at all, I have to give myself room to make weird nonsense like this. Thank you for understanding.

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2023-09-22

Betrayal

 

One person stands at the edge of a cliff, arms raised in anger, while another escapes in a hot air balloon of which the ballast bags are labeled with dollar signs. The one on the cliff says, "I can't believe you'd betray me like this!" The one in the balloon says, "I know, right? I always expected the circumstances of my betrayal would be way different."
Don't laugh, but I always imagined there'd be music playing.

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2023-09-21

OK so what if

 

A person has a thought bubble that descends into total illegibility after starting with "OK so what if there's this person at a bus stop". The thought bubble is rapidly floating away and the person is reaching futilely after it, calling, "No, come back! I'm not done with you!"


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2023-09-20

Outside again

 

The eerie long-limbed stick figure from yesterday's comic is now walking away from the building and towards the reader. The night is still dark blue and full of fluffy white clouds, with a crescent moon above the building. The building is shown to be a section of undestroyed structure floating in the air above the rubble and wreckage of the rest of it; in the top right window, a daylit blue sky with its own white clouds can still be seen. After visiting that window yesterday, the walking figure's body, head, and eyes are now also filled with the light blue daylit sky and whatever clouds are behind the figure.

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2023-09-19

That thing again

An exterior wall of an apartment building or hotel, with a grid of four windows within the frame and a narrow patch of sky visible over the flat roof. The sky is dark and full of fluffy backlit clouds. A crescent moon is almost centered above the grid of windows. The upper right window's curtains are the only ones pulled open; a stick figure with extremely long legs and arms stands to the lower right and looks in. Inside this window is a bright blue daylit sky with fluffy white clouds.

 

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2023-09-18

This feels like my fault somehow

A person pulls aside a curtain and looks out the window, where the sky is a mottled grey and populated with black-outlined, textureless cloud shapes suspended from barbed hooks attached to thin black lines extending up and out of the frame. The person says, "The sky is doing that thing again."

 

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2023-09-17

Awfully reflective out there

 

A person pulls aside a curtain and looks out the window, where the sky has been replaced with a reflection of the same person pulling aside the same curtain, and out that window the sky has also been replaced with a reflection of the same person pulling aside the same curtain, and on and on until the pixels get too tiny to make out. The person says, "The sky is doing that thing again."

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2023-09-16

Consider this an invitation

 

A person pulls aside a curtain and looks out the window, where the sky has been replaced with the alpha channel familiar to those who spend too much time editing images using layers. It's a white-on-grey checker pattern that shows wherever pixels aren't and under pixels that are at less than 100% opacity. The person says, "The sky is doing that thing again."

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2023-09-15

A matter of taste

A person with a human head and a cephalopod's eight-limbed body gesticulates in frustration against a dark background, perhaps of flowing ink, and says, "Yes, my limbs taste anything they touch / No, I do not like the taste of most things".

 

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2023-09-14

In the frame

 

In the foreground, seen from the back, a stick figure holds up a wide frame in front of two other standing stick figures. One of these two holds up exasperated hands and says, "Come on, man. Put that down." The other, arms folded, adds, "We already said we don't want to be in your comic."

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2023-09-13

Better

A child looks at an adult's head, replacing the hat they are wearing with a thought bubble containing a sort of tophat with branching arms and flat tops, like a candelabra cactus if it were a tophat. Also, a bright orange feather in the hatband. The child says, "I am imagining you with a better hat." The adult smiles and replies, "That's very kind of you."

 Please imagine me with a better comic.

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2023-09-12

And now we wait

Parent, peeking around the wall in the background: Whatcha doin', kiddo? Child, having set up a cardboard box manual fall trap leaning on a forked stick with a string and holding the other end of the string, which cardboard box is clumsily labeled "angel food" with an arrow pointing down: If I catch an angel, I get to make a wish when I let it go. Parent: I don't think— Angel, small and made of interlocking wheels with seven eyes and six wings: No, it's true. But that's a big 'if'.

 

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2023-09-11

Sanctions

Two parents stand facing a child. One parents wears glasses and has a supportive arm over the other's shoulder; the other has a high ponytail and folded arms. On the floor in front of the child is a hammer and several nails, most of which are haphazardly driven into the floor. The ponytail parent says, "The Parental League hereby informs you that sanctions on your behavior will begin with a TV embargo and may escalate to suspension of financial aid." The child, frustrated, says, "This paternalistic attitude is... oh, right."
 

(This is more of a re-run than a remake (though I added a little detail and cleaned up a couple errant lines from the original), but listen. I had to keep Glasses Dad as-is. I can't explain it but maybe you will understand.)

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2023-09-10

Just right

A three-toed sloth lounges on a log in a jungle, smiling. Between its outstretched arms, three grumpy toads sit on the log. You may suspect where I am going with this. Caption: Two was too few and four would be too many. I love being a three-toad sloth.

 

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2023-09-09

Look over there!

Pictured: a squid whose upper body is in the shape of a giant hand, which is pointing behind it with its index finger. Two fish and a shark look at the finger or in the direction it is pointing. Caption: The handsquid uses distraction.

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2023-09-08

Used to be

 

Three birds sit on bare branches, another on a bush, and a fifth on the ground. The first says, "You know, I used to be an accounts executive." The second replies, "I used to be a systems analyst." The third looks a little annoyed and says, "Am I the only one around here that didn't used to be a human?" The fourth tilts its head and says, "Who said anything about being human?" The fifth adds, "I used to be an HR director."

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2023-09-07

New song

 

The single panel is divided into two subpanels occupying continguous space but suggesting a brief passage of time. In the first subpanel, a person is playing a guitar by licking the strings. The guitar is also missing some strings. In the second subpanel, the same person has stopped playing and now asks a second person, "So that's my new song...how do you like it?" The second person says, "My opinion is irrelevant. You are already too powerful to be stopped."

I used to write songs all the time & have been dusting some of them off lately & have begun to contemplate inflicting them on you, the innocent readers of my comics

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2023-09-06

Free thinker

 

A person smilingly says "I'm a free thinker, you know? I only think thoughts that aren't already taken." Thought bubbles from the same person: "hotdog hazmat suit", "bacterial apotheosis", "mumbly boots" (this last one written as one word).

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2023-09-05

It started as a self-portrait

 

One stick figure presents a sculpture to another, saying, "So this is what I've been working on lately". The sculpture is a misshapen blob creature with sparse tufts of hair and a mouth frowning full of teeth placed higher on its face than its two drooping eyes. In one approximate limb, it holds a bird with long, awkward arms that has its toothy beak open as though in song. In front of the blob creature, there's a neglected, wormlike thing that frowns. The other stick figure shriks back in a rictus of astonished distaste. The artist adds, "Maybe I shouldn't work on things".

Head over to my Ko-Fi to see some sketches I made while I was figuring out the "what I've been working on" part. No paywall (but you are allowed to give me money if you want)

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2023-09-04

JPEG crystals

 

At a business meeting with a table of stick figures in neckties, a person in a dress introduces the room to Lobsterman, an anthropomorphic crustacean horror with a grinning maw and gigantic lobster claws: "Team, meet our consultant, Lobsterman, who's here to explain the upcoming campaign." Lobsterman says, "I think "threatvertizing" is pretty self-explanatory..."

It's Remake Monday, and I did improve the words, but the terrible 2011 drawing is just going to have to stay. I did SVGify the original tiny cluster of JPEG crystals, so that's...something, I guess.

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2023-09-03

Maximum accomplishment

 

A stick figure sits on a football/soccer ball and has a thought bubble: "This is it. I am at the top of my game."

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2023-09-02

Become liberated

 

One human figure sits on a dirt floor across from another person whose human torso continues into a more snakelike tail instead of legs. The first asks, "Teacher, how can I achieve liberation?" The second replies, "First, you must care the exact right amount about what you think I think of you."

And that's the easy part.

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2023-09-01

I will

 

Person 1, head hung low: "I woke up sad this morning." Person 2, resolutely and with a clenched fist: "I am not sure how, but I swear I will avenge you."

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