So the interwebs are abuzz with talk that Kevin Smith was ejected from a Southwest Air flight the other night because he’s too fat.

I think I’ve flown with them once or twice, I can’t recall, and I don’t really know what to think about the whole deal. I mean, there’s no doubt that the seats on these little flights are way too small even for regular sized people because God forbid anyone be able to get some elbow room to read a book, much less work on a laptop. That’s pretty much the main reason I hate those flights because I can’t get anything done while suspended in mid air for those long hours.

You know what gets me though? It’s the way they handled removing him from the flight. Instead of going straight up at the check in booth “No, damn it, you’re too damn big to get on this ride” they waited until he was sitting in his seat and everyone was ready to go before pulling him back out.

That scares the crap out of me.

Not because I’m a fatty (though good Lord knows I am) but because I have this horrible fear that I’ll be taken away by the flight authorities for…something. Anything. They finally figure out that I never turn off my mobile phone while on the flight. They notice that I’m not really paying attention while they’re doing the safety demonstration. They get suspicious about how many weird electronics I have in my bag. They saw I stole the headphones out of business class last time.

It’s pretty scary to think they can remove you at any time, for no real reason. And frankly it’s a really low thing to do to drag someone out in front of everyone. Christ, I hope that never happens to me.

On a side note I’ve been reading forum posts about the whole incident and people are making fun of the shorts he always wears. They’re kind of jean short things. Jorts. Sheans?

ANYWAY I WEAR THOSE SHORTS EVERY DAY.

I’ve finally gotten off my giant bean bag (well actually it’s a giant sack of potatoes but who’s counting) and set up a Facebook fan page for our lovable plant-based heroes! Hoorah! It’s what all the cool kids are doing these days apparently, and I’m ever so eager to be thought of as cool.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Plant-Man-Flowerin/284726619457 is the link you need to activate in your Web Terminal Device. I don’t know how that works ask a grown up to help.

I’ll be adding all sorts of little goodies to the page – next week I’m adding character grids which is a cool little technique I’m using to learn more about the characters that fill my head all day long. Plus I’ll put up sketches and other bits and pieces. Come on by and say hi!

“FIVE DOLLARS FOR A HOT CHOCOLATE FROM THE STARBUCKS ACROSS THE ROAD?! AGH”

Man I sure hope the poll results don’t change before Monday, because I’m gonna be royally stuffed.

In other news, the locals are duly impressed with my over the top “Alf from Home and Away” Australia accent. I expressed wonderment with their “dollar bills” and told everyone how good a documentary Crocodile Dundee was.

Happy 24 Hour Comics day, everyone!

Hi! I’ve decided on what the name of the Plant-Man book will be: Small But Perfectly Formed.

It’ll be a manga-sized book with over a hundred pages of wacky tomfoolery, hence the name. It’ll collect many of Plant-Man and Flowerin’s first adventures with a handful of new comics, never-before seen pieces of art and a surprise or two. With a bit of luck we’ll have it on sale here before Christmas!

I don’t have any details on the price yet but stay tuned. I’m really excited about having a piece of Plant-Man in my hands.

Work on the cover has begun. I started with a couple of quick sketches, trying to make an image that works with the title and somehow sums up the feel of the comic:

Trampoline, eating cake and…being shrunk? OK, I guess. Let’s keep going…

I like the one where they’re looking at the bonsai tree. It’s about plants!

Then I was tinkering with a more arty one, with close ups of the character’s eyes and some character poses next to them:

I like it but it’s not really evoking the feel of the comic. I showed the sketches to the wife, each image on a seperate layer and then she grabbed Photoshop and made this:

Hee, she’s funny. BUT! It kick started an idea…how about a cover drawn in crayon, like it was drawn by Flowerin’?

I like this one. I like this one a lot. It might read a bit too kiddie given some of the humor inside…

So…what do YOU think? Maybe none of these ideas will end up as the final cover – all I know is that I want it to be vibrant, colorful and evoking the carefree attitude of the comic. Please let me know what you think!

So you might be wondering just what is so special about the new story, Choose Your Own Plant-Man. You might also be wondering about what that smell is, but that’s not important right now.

Choose Your Own Plant-Man is an interactive story! That’s right, YOU decide what happens next! Simply vote for what you want to see happen in the poll on the right. The winning poll decides how the story goes! Wow the future really is here alright.

Okay there is a drawback to this awesome interactivity…while this story is going, Plant-Man is going to be a weekly comic. The trick is of course that I’ve written the story ahead of time, and YOUR decisions will determine if we get to the good ending or one of those horrible endings that you pretend didn’t happen!

Let’s see how this goes and how quickly I can build up a buffer again. Thanks for your support!

I’m in the middle of doing a long form story on Plant-Man at the moment. Well, that’s nothing new, because Plant-Man has always been long form. The funny thing is that I never thought it was.

As you might know I started doing Plant-Man + Flowerin’ as a mini comic, and they usually ran to about 12 to 15 pages of story. Compared to a regular Marvel or DC book which had 22 pages of content each issue or a graphic novel that ran anywhere from 48 to 72 pages, I always felt that Plant-Man was pretty small.

On the web however even a 12 page story is treated as an epic. Weird, huh? I think a lot of its comes from the way most webcomics are done as a traditional 3 or 4 panel strip format. They’re easy to digest, you don’t have to scroll, and you’re pretty much guaranteed a joke at the end.

A 6-or-so panel page in a multi page story on the other hand doesn’t have those conventions and so people tend to stay away from them. It makes drawing in and keeping an audience a hell of a lot harder than something like, say, Funny Webcomic, which you can drop in and out of with no prior knowledge needed. A strip comic is also a lot quicker to get through, too, which can be seen as a plus.

On the negative side though strips (typically) don’t have as much depth or length to the story-lines. I know I put a lot of jokes in Plant-Man (well, in theory) but I don’t feel like I have to do a joke every four panels or whatever.

I like the form of the full page, it’s something I’m comfortable with and I’d hate to have to drop it completely in order to keep doing comics online.

I think a week or so of ’strip’ type Plant-Mans would be good…what do you think?

I don’t talk about video games on here much because I deal with that enough in my day job. As some of you know I work in the games business and a game I was distantly involved with is due to the hit the shelves soon. I approached the local EB Games to see if it was in stock:

I think there’s a store in there!

The store is just wall to wall used games. Used games on all the walls. Used games behind the counter. Used games in giant piles in the middle of the store six foot high. I kind of just stood there, stunned at the sight of it all. The guy behind the counter asked me if I needed some help. I asked him if they sell any new games. He told me that used games offer me better value for money.

Funnily enough the guy didn’t have an answer for my next question about how, exactly, selling used games offers the people who actually make and publish these things a good deal.

*sigh*

The wife pointed out afterwards that it’s a bit hypocritical of me to complain about this when I’m such a used books junkie. Damn it!

Went grocery shopping today. Went to the cat food aisle because I have cats. Started poking around the pet toy area, and saw this:

Wow, toys endorsed by Better Homes & Garden’s lovable pet guru, Doctor Harry! I wonder what innovative ‘feline follies’ this Doctor has come up with? Surely something really cool and worth the $4…

It is, literally and without joking, a small blue tuft of fur. That’s it. I could have pulled this out of my belly button.

The tag reads “Quality Guaranteed”!

I’m looking to buy a new car in a few weeks. It’s what grown-ups do, so I’m told. I don’t really know anything about cars so the extent of my research into the subject amounts to:

1) Can the CD player work with MP3s?

2) Does the car come in yellow?

That’s pretty much it. Apparently there’s an engine inside these things? I have no idea.

However I have used this opportunity to think about what kind of personlised licence plate I want to have on it. OK I’m not that likely to have one since they cost a fortune and don’t do anything useful like a GPS (great things, those. I hate having to think and drive at the same time, we men really don’t multifunction that well).

The standard ones let me have three letters and two numbers. The mega-expensive ones let me have six characters, which is just as useless since Cameron and Gazunta and Plant-Man and Flowerin’ exceed that. So…let’s look at some of the suggestions:

This would be cool but people might think I was into weed or something. Or a relative of Robert Plant.

I hate the fact that it’s a misspelling of the greatest video game magazine ever made, but it’s still cool, and it represents the starting point of my day job career.  On a related note CBM64 was unavailable.

It’s supposed to spell “Pinata”. I really enjoyed making that game.

See…it’s “Zunta”…and I’m born in ‘74 so that kind of fits…

Anyway…head on over to the Personalised Plates site and see if you can come up with a good one!