D, D’: May 1-6, 2006
October 6, 2012 ~ 14 Comments
Can I just say that a tiny Habitrail-based apartment complex furnished with even tinier lamps and divans is friggin’ hard to draw? Nowadays Jeff makes me draw way more convoluted stuff for Skin Horse, but at the time this was a pretty big challenge for me. I hope you enjoy it.
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This strip is adorable and awesome. Check out the little dome house! I totally didn’t design it that way because it’s easier to draw than a regular house. Nope.
The “morphic control” stuff is so totally from Terry Pratchett.
I do not blame Artie for his freaked-out expression in the last panel. As far as I’m concerned, waking up to someone staring at you is just about the scariest thing that can happen. Even if it were someone I wanted to see, it would make me scream myself hoarse. And if it was Bob from Twin Peaks, I would die of fright right there. Zeta kind of falls midway on the spectrum.
Plus, he’s probably embarrassed about being naked and stuff, although frankly that generally doesn’t seem to bother him all that much.
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For shame, Zeta! He’s your…some kind of oblique lab-experiment-based relationship. It’s weird, anyway.
Zeta is awfully cute in the second panel, which is not a thing she does, typically. It’s not often you get to see her eyes.
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I like the idea that Zeta and Foot have been hanging out together all this time. This is my second favorite Narbonic sitcom idea, after, “Seth and Caliban share an apartment.”
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Yeah, Zeta, why are you racist against genetically-engineered beast-people? It’s not cool just because you’re one of them.
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Hamsters: trying to adjust the divan
Helen: trying to adjust the Davenport
Monday:
For something so extreme, the size difference between Artie’s two forms isn’t put to practical use all that often.
That’s one thing that has been bothering me for a while… Does Artie, somehow, manage to learn sleep morphic control? Because if not, a few years in the future, many men will wake up to discover there’s a sleeping gerbil on the pillow next to them.
And, while the ones who already know Artie’s origins might not care, for those who don’t it could be an unsettling experience, to say the least.
It’s the tiny pillow on top of the human-size pillow that hits me in the cute attack zone.
@Kether; This might indeed be unsettling for some of Artie’s partners. On the other hand, if they rolled over in their sleep, it might be downright crushing to Artie!
Wednesday:
Zeta’s reconciliation with her rodentine roots is manifesting in even quirkier behaviours than what she had as a gonzo journalist. How ironic, that the real quirkiness was inside her all along.
Clearly a case of skin selection.Er, kin selection.
Thursday:
It didn’t really occur to me until now that Zeta may be literally masking her scent, not just metaphorically. This mutant rodent enclave espionage drama is becoming very serious indeed.
In her defense, she doesn’t know that yet.
@Leon: I, on the other hand, never considered the posibility that it could be a metaphor until now.
In her defense, they’re not precisely siblings. They’re more closely related than, say, the Brady boys and girls, but further than even half-siblings.
Friday:
I like the idea that Zeta has lost the ability to correctly compare Foot’s size with anything else.
I wonder… could it be that Foot’s scale suits her inner gerbil identity, her sublimated urge to be gerbil-sized in a world of towering humans? If only Madblood had finished that robot.
I think it is Zeta being used to Foot’s inner feeling of being tiny – just a Foot.
Hipster speciesism isn’t any improvement on hipster racism.
tune: “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” Blue ?yster Cult
Hamsters Dana gengineered
Are devoutly to be feared
Gerbils must fear the hamsters
Because they’re dangerously insane
(Must fear the hamsters)
Watch out, Artie
(Must fear the hamsters)
I’m disguising my scent
(Must fear the hamsters)
Lost ANTONIO and Foot
(Must fear the hamsters)
Evil we must prevent!