War of Fog

It might just be me, but it seems like we've had an unusual amount of fog around my house this month.  Thankfully it hasn't yet reached Stage 3, or I'd have a lot more to worry about than just getting to work on time. 

Capricorn Christmas

The cats who climb the Christmas tree have been officially one-upped.  Who needs tinsel and candy canes when there's an entire tree to nibble on?

As an interesting coincidence, it really is the time when the Sun is traditionally in the constellation of Capricorn.  Or at least according to the tropical zodiac timeline.  By the sidereal zodiac timeline, it won't be in Capricorn until January.  And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's okay.  I had to look it up too.  But either way, it doesn't matter.  Goats can and will happily cause havoc at any time of the year.  Bonus points if they can be adorable at the same time. 

Vows of Folly

In the name of goodwill and merriment, we smite thee!!!

A depressing song, an obnoxiously depressing song, and a depressingly obnoxious song.  The first is pretty easy to tune out, and can be snuck into a playlist without attracting attention.  The other two are an entirely different matter.  They're probably not the worst Christmas songs in existence, but you'd still be severely pressing your luck should you choose to play them when those listening are able to find your current location so that they may apply either a 2x4 or a fruitcake to your skull. 

Wrap Battle

 

The elves tend to be under a lot more pressure to stay on the "nice" list than regular folks.  So the fact that Santa hasn't bothered to put an end to this yet means they're probably still safe.  And possibly possess super clean-up magic so this sort of thing isn't as big of a deal as it looks, in which case I'm very jealous. 

End of User

Ah, the end-user license agreement. That gargantuan, hodge-podged legal document of dubious legality we are supposed to wade through and agree to before using a program, but rarely do in practice. I actually do at least skim through EULAs, mostly because one time I read through one on impulse and discovered a chunk of information that was immediately useful. It's probably a good policy given that if rumors are true, there's at least one company who claimed the user's soul as part of the agreement (as a joke), and another who claimed the right to hack into the webcams of users with bootleg copies of their program (not as a joke). 

Imagine That

Reason why normal people and I don't understand each other #516. 

In other news, besides the word balloons and a few minor edits, this was entirely done in watercolor.  Because why not?  Pros: looks cool if done right.  Cons: erasing is nigh-impossible, which allows "what on earth was I thinking?" moments to crop up a bit more often.  Ah, well.  Live and learn.

Pearfectly

 

They need the sleep.  I need the sleep.  We all need the sleep.  We shall conquer the sleep.  We shall devour the sleep.  We shall drink of its tears.  We shall not sleep until we have sleep.  The sleep shall sleep with one eye open, knowing that we are coming for it.  The sleep shall be ours, or the sleep shall suffer the consequences! 
SLEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!

---

Hi.  How are you?

The Science of Fiction

Back in 9th grade, I once had the audacity to ask my Geometry teacher when I'd ever use the material covered in his class, seeing as I was planning to go into the arts. Ten years later, I'm not only using geometry in my artwork, but have found myself researching (or at least getting a cursory knowledge of) an absurd amount of topics so I can have enough realism when I write fiction. To illustrate, here's a list of all the stuff (so far) I've had to study in writing one story in particular:

• various mythologies
• noosphere
• Spanish vocabulary
• Japanese vocabulary
• Shakespeare
• iguanas
• posttraumatic stress disorder
• false memory
• hyperopia
• toothpaste
• foreign traffic signs
• artichokes
• Hangul
• ley lines
• blood
• dryads
• longitude

And let the wild mass guessing on what the heck I'm writing begin... now!

"A" for Effort

 

Sleep, good grades, and plotting against your roommates.  Pick two. 

Rather than trying to kill your roommates, you might try messing with them instead.  It's better at relieving stress (yours, anyway), and doesn't come out of your deposit (probably)!

Seriously Nuts

 

Thank you for tuning in to this regularly scheduled crazy.  Donations (and donut-tions) will be accepted, and proceeds will go to the Thanatos Sanity Recovery fund, the Sedna Trauma Recovery fund, and the La Calavera Catrina and Hades Safety Bunker fund.

Plouton Playlist

The Helm of Darkness is renowned for its powers of invisibility, and is great for hiding lots of things: gods trying to defeat their forerunners, heroes trying to slay monsters, and headphones trying to play the songs that you don't want to admit to liking. 
Though that last one doesn't always work out, as Hades and Persephone can attest to. 

Lucky Day

Friday the 13th comes and goes, but we will always have people who take superstitions way too far.  Don't be one of them.  The Grim Reaper already has enough to do. 

Dogs of Hel

They're back!  Once again, October and the annual Deity of Death-fest is upon us.  Today we are visited by Thanatos and Hel, along with Hel's brother Fenrir and her dog Garmr.  Hel has... an interesting family.  Besides being half-skeleton herself, she has a wolf and a giant snake for brothers, and the most irritating being in Norse mythology for a father.  She also has a half-brother who's an eight-legged horse, but they don't like to talk about that. 

All Bite Long

And the moral of the story is: do a thorough background check before hiring new zookeepers, and double-check their medical histories.  It will save you a lot of headache/dealing with authorities/long-winded explanations to hospital personnel. 

Or at least make sure your only sane employee doesn't leave town.  That would help too.

High School Lesson #5515

There are different varieties of science teacher crazy.  There's "Ms. Frizzle" crazy, there's "spends the entire year researching the properties of exactly one kind of rock" crazy, and then there's this. 

At least it's (probably) a good kind of crazy. 

Muffin Mania

Breakfast:  Blueberry muffins.
Second Breakfast:  Cinnamon muffins.
Elevenses:  Oatmeal muffins.
Brunch:  Jam muffins.
Lunch:  Rhubarb muffins.
Afternoon Snack:  Banana nut muffins.
Tea:  Cream cheese muffins.
Dinner:  Ham and cheese muffins.
Supper:  Corn muffins.
Dessert:  Chocolate muffins.
Midnight Snack:  Poppy seed muffins.

English muffins will not be permitted.

There's a Cult at the Bottom of the Stairs

 

So there's a group of deranged people locked in the basement, trying to bring about the end of the world as we know it via long-forbidden magic ceremonies.  Meh.  It still only contributes a small percentage to the total amount of stressors faced at college.  Now the waiting line for the Testing Center.  That's a problem. 

Note:  Due to a (mostly) unrelated set of stressors, I fell irreparably behind on this week's comic, and finally decided that getting sleep was more important than doing the coloring.  I'll do it eventually, once I wake up sometime tomorrow.  Or next year.  In the meantime, I decided to try doing a basic grayscale so viewers wouldn't have to sort through the lineart. 

EDIT:  Color content is now at 100% capacity.  Ish. 

High School Lesson #7525

 

"Cool it, kid.  Just stash some smoke bombs and a few arcane spells in your backpack for next time.  No big deal."

Premature Night, Premature Party

 

Brought to you by a vampire's critical research failure, and by my determination to not let the eclipse mania end just yet. 

So my house happened to be right in the path of totality for this week's solar eclipse, and that was pretty awesome.  As in, soul-moving, life-altering-epiphany awesome.  Less awesome were the few thousand visitors who missed a reality check and all decided to try to leave town at the same time afterward, which inevitably gummed up every street in the city and brought the interstate to a standstill for the next ten hours.  This probably led to another, though considerably less welcome, epiphany for those involved.

But that's (probably) over by now, so everyone can go back to cooing over eclipse photos.  Ahhh....

Last Stop on the Milky Way

The astronauts were sick of freeze-dried ice cream, and that moon cheese had to come from somewhere, so...

Mystical Creatures

Years ago, my family owned a goat with an extremely questionable level of intellect.  Her name was Sekhmet, but we forever remember her as Braindead, the goat who would keep getting her head stuck in the fence where there was absolutely no grass to eat on the other side.  Do I have proof of this?  Yes.

Needless to say, we made sure she didn't reproduce. 
Thankfully, most of our other goats at the time were considerably smarter, which include (as pictured) Tiy (the cream, horned one), Hatshepsut (the small brown-and-white one), and my favorite, Selket (the black one).  And yes, we gave them all ancient Egyptian names.  Because it was cool and we could.

Vacation Time

Some people just don't know how to relax. 

Oh, and I should probably reiterate this before someone else brings it up:  vampires being literally allergic to sunlight was not part of the original stories.  They just don't usually like it very much. 

Purgatory Creek

 

The Western U.S.A. is loaded to the brim with ghost stories of every kind.  Given that it's also home to many prominent fossil sites, including several at the famed Hell Creek Formation, I'm kind of surprised that I've not yet heard any stories concerning the wandering spirits of the less-recently-deceased.  Just imagine how much mileage you could get out of cowboys running into dinosaur ghosts. 

Grandma Cat

At one point in the long history of the feral cats that have lived on my family's property, there was one cat (nicknamed "the crotchety old grandma") who did exactly this.  The victim kitten in question protested very loudly. 

The Snafu Merit Badge

At least they managed to keep their life jackets on. 


Snafu merit badge - noun:  The Boy Scout equivalent of the Darwin Award.  Given to individuals who, against the odds, manage to survive hilariously abysmal situations spawned of their own stupidity.  They're probably not going to earn anything else, so we might as well give them this. 

Origin:  July 2017; from the brain of a weirdo female cartoonist who otherwise has virtually nothing to do with any kind of Scouting program.  But it's funny, so let's see if it catches on.

Fellow Blood-Drinkers

Just some vampires having an identity crisis.  Nothing to see here. 


I suppose it could be worse, though.  In some cultures, vampires turn into insects...

Declaration of Awesomness

Otherwise known as, "John Hancock Figured That If He Was Going To Be Remembered Only For His Signature, He Should Go All Out." 

Funnily enough, the formal signing of the Declaration of Independence that he participated in occurred not on July 4th, but a month later.  It's also debated over if Hancock actually commented on the size of his name at the time.  But the idea of him thumbing his nose at King George the day the United States was born (also not technically on the 4th, because history is fun and messy like that) got stuck in legend, so that's what he's known for.  Sure, he served as a governor of Massachusetts and did a few other things, but the only people likely to know that are serious American historians, and maybe artists who did a Wikipedia binge prior to drawing a Friday-night cartoon. 

On the plus side, he did get a destroyer ship named after him, which is probably the next best (feasible) thing to excessive pyrotechnics.  It will probably surprise no one that his name was written on the stern in a very specific way. 

Death Petal

 

A beautiful summer afternoon.  The bird are singing, the hamburger patties are grilling, and the carnivorous plants with their adorable canine hosts are roaming. 

Yeah, time to run. 

Convenient Powers Man

Convenience is a power unto itself. 

The name "Captain Convenience" was briefly considered, but it was decided that it sounded too much like an advertisement for a convenience store.  And that would be inconvenient. 

Organization Level C6H12O2

 

The new secretary's hobby is sugar.  That is all you need to know. 

It'll Buffy Out

You can thank my family for this one.  I'm not the only one around here who makes bad puns. 

Now, you might be wondering if park rangers actually have access to a coyote pit.  The truth is, I don't really know, but have been assuming so unless informed otherwise.  So any rangers out there, speak now or forever hold your peace. 

...

Huh.  I guess they really do have coyote pits.  Good to know.  Moving on!

Coming After Me

Things change, but not all things.  Happy Memorial Day.


If you'd like to know more about Anni and her story, visit her new About Page.  Don't worry.  There's no singing flowers there. 

High School Lesson #6145

Out of curiosity, I checked one of my old yearbooks.  No eldritch abominations, but there were pictures of students with sledgehammers, licking giant M&M replicas, and applying makeup.  Not at the same time. 

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Pigs?

 

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Or in other words, a few extra minutes of instruction for the babysitter is worth a few years of paying for therapy. 

A Casual, Everyday Battleground

 

At one point I had a pair of roommates who started engaging in nerf gun warfare, using the kitchen as their domain.  The rest of us usually took cover until the scourge had passed.  Eventually the darkness would lift from our apartment, and once again we would be permitted to use the microwave without fear of darts entering our ear canals.

Pets vs Boyfriend: My Human's Keeper

To win a girl, you have to go through her father.  If her father is not available, you have to go through her siblings.  If siblings are not available, you have to go through her roommates.  And in the absence of the above, her pets will take up the mantle. 
And pets don't follow the Geneva Convention.


Of course, then there's the possibility of having to face up against all four groups at the same time, in which case it's probably better for everyone involved if you just leave the state while you still have all your limbs. 

High School Lesson #5294

And you might even get extra credit in your computer class! 
Unless, of course, the situation involves your computer lab teacher in the first place, in which case trying to help might just seal your doom. 

In the Bag

Perks of being a cartoon character include being able to actually have the bottomless bag that everyone and their dog wants. 

One Fang, One Horn

All the mystique associated with narwhals doesn't change the fact that their name literally means "corpse whale." 
Also, because the horn is a tooth (specifically, the left tooth), it's always on the left side instead of being centered.  Though there are occasionally narwhals with two horns (or tusks), so they're more symmetrical. 

Question and An-Sir

 

By my count, this comic contains a total of twenty-five puns, not counting the title.  I regret nothing.  Probably because I'm sleep-deprived.  But my point still stands.  You can regret them as much as you like, but that's your problem. 

Goat Logic

 

Contrary to popular belief, goats will not eat everything.  Sample anything that fits in their mouths?  Sure. (They really like sampling my hair)  And yes, they'll eat the label off a tin can.  But actually eat the tin can itself?  Not unless the goat in question is spectacularly insane (which I admittedly wouldn't put past certain goats, but my point still stands). 
Now my late dog, on the other hand, had a list of things-she-tried-to-eat far more extensive than any goat I've ever met.  Wood.  Pine needles.  Wax.  Clay.  My little pony.  Garbanzo beans.  Chocolate candy, wrappers and all.  How she lived as long as she did may forever remain a mystery. 

Peace and Love, Rapunzel

Your fairy tales, now with more tie-dye.  Welcome to the Flower Tower.

Some of you may notice that I posted this on March 17, and are wondering what connection there is between Saint Patrick's Day and hippies.  And the answer is, absolutely nothing except that I felt like drawing it.  My first name does mean both "peace" and "Ireland," depending on who you ask, but that's probably stretching it.

Higher Authority

Mother - noun:  the bringer of life and death.  Several curious barn cats have narrowly escaped becoming an example of the latter bit. 

The Date Escape

If both humans and other vampires consider you obnoxious, it's probably time to re-evaluate your life. 

Raspberry Lemonade

I do know where Golden Raspberries come from, but that's something entirely different and hopefully will stay that way. 

Canary in the Coalmine

The music building at my school had a few live plants here and there, which functioned both as a morale booster and an early warning system. 

Or, at least I'm pretty sure they were real plants...

Dinosaur Scales

And now you will hear "fossil" every time someone sings "Fa-Sol." 
Also, I should point out that the dinosaurs are not to scale.  I'm pointing it out because it gives me an excuse to use one more pun.  You're so lucky. 

High School Lesson #2533

He may be a little irritated afterward, but really, what are they going to do to him?  Drink his oil?  Suck his circuits?

Eight-Legged Fido

 

Er, any arachnophobes reading?  Please don't set fire to your computer.  It won't kill the spiders.