Kaiah is back, gang. We are going to be devoting the next couple weeks to our longest story to date, focusing exclusively on Kaiah at summer camp. The exposition begins today, and it only further enforces the idea that most children are nasty little trolls.

For over a year, we have tossed around the idea of expanding into some longer-form stories on the side, but have found it difficult enough to effectively conceive a regular four-panel comic over the phone twice a week, and are not about to enter in the raw hours of composing a story while speaking into a tinny microphone. Thus began the mystical notion of a “Writer’s Weekend,” where we would meet up and craft stories of extended length.

Friends, this weekend is upon us.

We currently have two stories of exceptional length brewing, but these are far too large to ever feature in this limited space. Consider “Summer Blockbuster” a warm-up for these stories, as we figure out how exactly to tell  a longer stor , before plunging into one of our “epics.”

This current arc is not slated to have any appearance from either Tim or Marlon; they will appear when the story has run its course. We don’t  have much character development (shocking) for Tim or Marlon, but I feel  they have grown considerably from their starting points. The Pillow is interesting, as always, but I have no idea what kind of character he is. I think that I am much more intrigued by Kaiah’s character simply because she is so drastically different from Tim and Marlon, in both age and gender. I still don’t understand her, so hopefully I can get a better grasp of what we have created by the time this summer camp escapade has run its course.

Enough about that character building nonsense, let us discuss events, and possibly happenings.

This is old news now, but Michael Jackson’s death was interesting. I never listened to his music, and my only real experience tied to him was feeling extremely disappointed when he was not found guilty of kiddy diddling. After his death though, I read about what a depressing life he was leading in his final days, how stressed he was about his upcoming tour, and how he couldn’t dance like he used to, and how he repeatedly said he wanted to die rather than perform.

I was strangely empathetic toward this description, and I am not sure why. It was the line, “he didn’t want to disappoint his fans” that really resonated with me. I felt really sorry for him, so naturally, I purchased his “Essential” album on iTunes. It made me think a lot about the book “Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story” by Chuck Klosterman, in which he builds the book around the foundation of whether musicians need to die in order to truly become notable . . . or something like that. I honestly don’t know because the whole book was actually about Klosterman crying over women that he used to date.

So I have not figured out if I like Jackson’s music. I especially have a problem with the sound of children singing, I think because the sound of recorded prepubescent voices brings back traumatizing memories of screeching voices of children on Day of Defeat. I prefer the later Jackson, even though I find it far different from anything I would ever listen to normally.

There was a stirring of controversy over last week’s comic because it included the  word “goddamn.”

I know  it was a stronger word that you are typically used to appearing in the comic, but I would like to explain that you reading our comic is like a relationship. We love having you here, and we are glad that you like our stuff enough to return twice a week to check it out. Our comic has been very honest, and by that I mean that we are doing the jokes that we find funny, and we write how we think it will be funny. While we are flexible, sometimes we just have to go with how it truly resonated with us. I personally felt like having Tim say “goddamn” showed that he was extremely, EXTREMELY passionate about his dryer lint, which is something both Noah and I found funny. I didn’t feel like it would be as strong if it was censored, or a lesser word was replaced so we kept it in the rawest form. Unfortunately, if you do not like the language to the point where it would turn you off of our comic, I apologize for that. If we compromised for a segment of readership (as valued as you are) then we would be doing a great disservice to the rest who want to receive our comic that we want to read.

So if you were offended, I am sorry that you feel that way. I hope you can look past it.

That is all, my friends. See you on Tuesday for Part 2.

-Nathan

Likkle bastuds!