More Rejected Narbonic Plots
Commentary: On
August 22, 2010 ~ 7 Comments
Oh, man… the storyline about Artie’s online friends was another one that I made up early on, wrote a ton of thumbnails for, and totally scrapped. In one version of the plot, Artie and Dave’s ex-girlfriend had an online romance going.
I’m still kind of sorry I never had Dave date the nameless woman from the bus station lost-and-found, but SPOILERS his romance with Lovelace in the upcoming storyline “Professor Madblood and the Lovelace Affair” ended up being more important than I’d planned, so I decided to develop that instead. I only had room in Narbonic for so many girlfriends for Dave. I’m sorry, Dave.
“And a woman” is a surprisingly good punch-line – probably because of how out-of-character it is.
The “net.” prefix has not aged well. No one is nostalgic for it. (Though, this assertion may be biased by the fact that it’s impossible to Google for.)
These days, the only people who even remember “net.stuff” are the ones who were actually on USENET before the Great Renaming. “stuff.com” has totally co-opted its mindshare.
I like the line, “Out of all the talking body parts we got at the bus station, you were the most memorable.” Whether she’s being sarcastic or not, it’s still funny. And what if she’s not being sarcastic? I can see a little Se?or Wences hand with a face drawn on it, “I no want to go in de box” …
For that matter, the Lost & Found of the bus station could be the center of its own webcomic. We need more comics about the service industries related to the mad-scientific and superheroic communities! (“Atomic Laundromat” is one example.)
As ever, I like how Helen is the embodiment of Even Evil Has Standards. She may want to crush the world beneath her boots, but she’s got no truck with dishonesty.
I love these deleted scenes. That party would have been pretty fun to read about, I think, with the genetically modified gerbil discussing how wrong it is to make genetically modified creatures….
Also, I like the old floaty eyebrow style in page two of that script. Helen appears to be so surprised that after the second panel, her eyebrows have left the vicinity of her head completely and are apparently orbiting elsewhere.
I like that Artie’s already crushing on guys. It would have been a good lead-in for later revelations about his preferences.
Oh, man, I totally forgot that to mention Chris the hamster was named after Chris Gleason, the real-life person who was the inspiration for Sammy the Hammy, the giant talking hamster in Melonpool.