Yet another guest strip from MacHall.
Matt Boyd speaks:
It may not be obvious, but Seraphim is saying "Mmf!" because she has been bound and gagged, presumably by Asmodeus. This is also why Piro thinks it 's a reasonable idea to go after Yuki in the last panel: his good concience has been incapacitated.
Of course, Fred would never allow any of his female characters to be tied up and gagged. Which is why this storyline was rejected.
Ian McConville speaks:
First off, I really not sure why Piro is apollogising to me. I'm the art monkey. Not the script monkey.
Matt sent me a script and I drew it.
I also must say right here and now that the third part of the comic with Erike and company just plain bit. I was up late and they were the last three panels I needed to draw and so I rushed. The result: three really crappy panels. I spent most of my day at work studying piro's most recent strips to figure out how they were drawn. Personally, I think how Ed came out was the best.
Piro speaks:
Ok, here's what happened with the Mac Hall guest strip - raw, unedited, and straight from the horses mouth (me).
Ian had been workin on a guest strip for MT for some time - back once when i knew i was gonna miss a day. Now, as far as i am concerned, when someone does a strip for me, i do NOT push them - if there are things like classes, work, new girlfriend, whatever - that comes first. Ian was in the middle of finals, no problem.
Week before last i poked Matt and Ian about having something to go up for Friday. Matt talked to ian and they were like 'sure, no problem'
I started to get into one of my frenzied, overworked, overstressed, mygodimnotgonnabeready modes for this trip to Akon over the weekend. Durring this week i never did have too much of a chance to touch base with Matt or Ian. Also, i missed wednesday's comic, so i revised my plan - which moved the Mac Hall comic to Monday, not Friday. For some reason, i don't think i communicated this to Ian (and yes, i believe it's my fault). Fast forward to Thursday night.
I do a very quick goofy comic with Seraphim and some recycled art which gave us the friday night comic. As a bit of a joke i wrote what i wrote in the status bar to give Ian some "MT Fanmail Nudging" ^^;;; - and then i basically left for A-Kon.
Now, this is where i was not in reasonable connection to the net and things started to get goofy. I had my laptop with me, but thats pretty useless without plugging in. If anyone was at akon, you will know that i pretty much worked non-stop the whole con (it was a good con, i'll talk about that later) - and as a result, i never did get online to check mail or anything till sunday night - sunday night around 2am, to be exact.
Imagine myself, ukyo and a few friends sitting on the floor of an empty hotel convention area using the phone line that we paid for (aniverse did, that is) that i never had a chance to use because i was too busy drawing - and i saw that Ian was irritated because he busted his ass to finish a comic for friday, only to see the one i put up sitting there. oops. Sorry ian, i really am about that.
Then i saw the comic itself. As always, damn funny machall stuff - but there was one problem. The original joke was largo reading a line from "Jesus Christ Superstar" where he is reading off a line (and i forget the exact line, i'll edit it in later) which basically made a rather humorous l33tspeak play on 'king of the jews' - where 'jews' became 'jooz'.
Ok, honestly, if it wasn't for a particular set of circumstances, i would never have changed it. I dont like changing other people's work. But i felt that i had to. You see, Rodney and Ruby were getting married monday, and... Ruby is jewish, ok? ^^;;; I didn't think the timing of THIS particular joke was REALLY such a hot idea. Sure, maybe it wouldnt have been a big deal, but then again, it was my judgement call, and i was VERY tired.
I tried to get a hold of matt or ian, but they werent around (and i dont hvae their cell numbers). Dom was not near a computer with Photoshop, so i had to make a decision - not post anything, or change it.
I changed it because i felt that it would NOT be fair to Matt and Ian if there wasnt the MacHall guest strip, that they would yet again have to deal with a massive volume of irate MT fans on his case - they dont deserve that, so i did the best i could (i'm sorry if its not as amusing as the original, but it IS a machall joke :P)
The worst thing about this is that i had to change it WITHOUT talking to matt or ian. I actually feel very bad about this. But i did the best i could with the situation as it stands. So, if i caused a problem for anyone, gomen - it was my call, and i was very tired. Not the first major screw up i made in the past few days. (sigh)
And that's what happened.
Largo's original line was "What s4y u, King of the J00s?"
MacHall's strip 120 is sort of an accompanying piece to this.