Past Stories

Manga Studio 5

Say You Love Me

(If you missed Thursday’s comic, use the Previous Arrow above to check it out first)

Don’t you hate it when someone one-ups you in the storytelling department? Not what you expected? Maybe, maybe not. But I know there are a lot of Robyn fans having to go fan themselves off about now. I’m going to leave the rest to your imaginations… better that way.

Oh, yes, that is the same crook that held up Bud at Jenkins Record store two years ago. Small towns only have so many thieves, so he’s out on bail and gets clobbered… apparently for good this time. Note the flowers on his chest. A nice cartoon gimmick if there ever was one!

A little Fleetwood Mac for your Monday. From the first album with Buckingham/Nicks on board and the best line-up for sure they’ve ever had. This album is actually better than “Rumours” but not as popular. It ends with “I’m So Afraid” which has a haunting guitar solo at the end by Buckingham, a very under rated guitarist who could make a lot of noise as the only guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, especially live. So, a little “Say You Love Me” to get your week started. It will help Robyn, it seems…

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Discussion (34) ¬

That first panel is frakking EPIC. Seriously. And how much do I love Robyn’s realistically spiky-ish hair? Very, very 1970s.

This is neither a criticism nor a nitpick, but given that we’ve seen Bud and Lorraine in the sack, it’d be great fun if we could get equal time for Robyn and her cop likewise. Or does Bud’s infamous wild night as Budette count for that? Heh.

Well, my problem is I have to work the scene into the storyline somehow, but maybe as an encore I can get to a little “police action” for Robyn.
🙂

I love the first frame too, really came together for me. Three layers. Robyn/flower pot in the foreground, the “glow” effect below that, then the background plate. Being sneaky, I was able to draw only half of the background as the plant & glow cover most of it up. Helped a great deal!

I’m a crafty old fart and rarely go the way you *think* I’m going. Robyn is the only one without a steady sidekick this whole time if you go back through the archives. She did have a date with Chet that didn’t go so well, and this may explain a few things.
🙂

I was sure Robyn was going to cut loose on somebody else, but I didn’t know who or why. Good thing she’s got Officer Janice there to clean up and deal with the paperwork. I hope this doesn’t delay their getting back to their personal lives too long.

I got a couple of events I didn’t comment some time back so, I’ll just put them here.

First of all, I’m sorry to hear your wife’s health problems keep coming back. I hope she get’s better soon.
Second, I hope you feel better for the moment. If you have to be strong to help your wife through these dark days it can be pretty difficult not to crack under the pressure of everything coming together at the same (wrong) time.
Third: This one’s really good! I think nobody saw that coming.
Last, Finally a band I’ve heard of, yay ^^

Sorry to hear about the ongoing probs at home, send your wife my best, and as someone who has had an awful lot of pain over the years, she has my deepest sympathy and my hopes that anything that can reduce the pain doe so, and is good!

Well, there WILL be a Members only drawing coming up. I’m getting back up to speed now that Cindy can get around on her own. I have a TON of ideas for desktops I haven’t had time to do, but will get to them before the year is out.

Glad to hear you’re both doing better Byron!
Altho we’re usually on the same page musically, I do have to differ on the Fleetwwod Mac. I agree about Lindsay Buckingham: great, underated guitar player & his solo on “I’m So Afraid” (ESPECIALLY off of ’80’s “Live”) is killer, but as far as I’m concerned, anything with Stevie Nicks was an abhoration… I can’t stand her croaking. Give me the original line-up with Peter Green’s great guitar work, or even the “mid period” – ’70 to ’75 stuff with Danny Kirwan & Bob Welch, ANYTIME. You do redeem yourself with the holdup guy’s line tho. Now I’m gonna have to pull out my BTO “Best Of” CD & crank up “Gimme Your Money Please” when I get home!

Agreed on Stevie Nicks, can’t stand her. But Buckingham and Christine McVie more then make up for her crap. I just skip her tracks. It is such a habit, I don’t even consider her part of the band.

The Bob Welch era was okay with me. His solo album was very good, but I never got into their earlier stuff. Maybe I need to go give it a go again, as the old ears have mellowed with age and I may like it now.

I drop BTO all the time, love them! Their first album and Not Fragile are worth the money, though most of the “Best of” CDs have tunes mostly from those albums anyway, so it’s probably all the same.

I love to crank “Don’t Get Yourself In Trouble”… pounding riff and searing solos… don’t get any better than that.

Robyn’s had that cap for 35 years ??! Dang. Knows how to take care of things.

Would have expected a bit of blood and maybe a few flying teeth to go with that hit, though. Girl can pitch a flower pot near-perfectly horizontal … bet that guy still has a mark & ringing in his ear.

And, yeah, cheers on the flower pot slapstick in panels 4&5. Immediately thought of a Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner gag as I was reading. Panel 6: “Nice moves, Robyn.” I can hear that line in a deadpan Adam West delivery. 😀

On Fleetwood Mac: I was an avid collector of pre-Stevie Nicks material. Had half a dozen bootleg vinyls, a score of cassette boots, a couple dozen CDs and a few digital rips of bootlegs. Kiln House, Bare Trees, Mystery To Me, Then Play On… some great Peter Green era live stuff from some Boston clubs, etc. etc. Musician friend has ’em all in Latvia now. Hurts like hell, but they’re in good, appreciative hands.

But, I don’t really harbor any ill-feelings toward the later efforts with Stevie Nicks. That’s a band where, one way or another, I pretty much enjoyed everything up through Tusk. Just at different times and for different reasons. An unnatural amount of musical genius concentrated into just about all their work.

Nicks’ music is extremely popular with a lot of folks. Her songs were chart makers, but I just can’t stand her voice. Drives me nuts. Good music, bad delivery… for me.

Ah, Latvia, been a long time since the crew went for their visit there. I should do some flashbacks to that time now that I can draw things a lot better. I had some ideas I couldn’t draw back then. I may pull out those old scripts and see what I may be able to use.

Some cross-pollination between 1977 and 2011 (or 2012) could come into play here. A performance such as they gave in the Soviet Block would have been under heavy surveillance. All sorts of photo’s, audio recordings, video footage would likely have been taken. A lot of that would have (and has) ended up in private hands both before & after the collapse of the Soviet State.

I can attest that Rīga was an elite enclave of the time and region, a real playground for connected Party favorites. All sorts of high-quality media would likely have been collected for American performers and could turn up … either to merely document Plan 9 &/or embarrass them. On stage and off. Something like their performance of Back in the USSR would have been incredibly popular amongst Russians and widely distributed via underground & the bootleg scene.

In the rest of the world, their trip to Latvia would be a pebble in an avalanche, but in that region at that time, it would have been a small avalanche and very well-remembered by folks who were fortunate enough to witness it. Their behavior, musical style, fashion, etc. would all have potential to have inspired trends, artists and general ‘hipster’ malcontents.

Ah, but then it would have been “too” real and the cartoon comic effect would not have been as strong. The most that happens to the Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons is he’s either singed or flattened. He’s rarely shown any other way. I treat 1977 as a cartoon first, then as a semi-autobiographical look of the times.

Sometimes adding in those details, like the broken flower pot in panel 5 distract from what’s really important… Robyn taking the hat and the flowers on the chest. I sketched the scene with broken pieces and it seemed too much and cluttered the scene. Also, I’m a lazy asshat, that doesn’t help.
😛