Crooked Halo 2: This Time, It's Personal

So, long time no see. I've been what you might term "busy." Really I haven't been doing anything more than I usually do, but it's felt like a lot more. And I've been too damn lazy to update anything here, though I tend to update the ol' blog at least daily, sometimes more. Dunno why.

Anyway, wanted to say a few things about the current Crooked Halo storyline. First, I think it's fairly obvious that I despise boy bands with a burning passion (on a related note, an athlete the other day referred to the Beatles as "a boy band." The authorities will never find the body). Anyway, the whole storyline was concocted because I wanted two things: to express my distaste for boy bands, and to change Earl the Archangel's hairstyle. Only a few things have remained constant throughout all the iterations of my comic. One is clothing--Simon has always worn the shirt with the exclamation mark, Earl has always had the shirt with the wide rings around the neck, arms, and waist, and Jerome has always had the shirt with the diagonal stripes. Earl and Jerome's names have also stayed the same throughout (Simon is the third name for that character). For a while, Earl and Simon's haircuts were also always the same. Then I decided to make Simon's hair look like real hair. Or closer, anyway. Anyway, folks still complained that Earl's hair didn't look like hair.

Then Adam started drawing Troubled Times, and took a radically different approach to the character. I liked his take on a character I'd been drawing since high school, and wanted to adapt part of it to my own interpretation. So I decided to change it up. But how to actually explain the new hairstlye? The thing about the new hairstyle is that it makes Earl look like a pretty boy. I find this fact amusing. I find making fun of boy bands amusing. Thus, a concept is born: give Earl a new haircut, put him in a boy band. Hilarity ensues.

To make things even more fun, there are a couple of cameos in the strip, too, though nothing on par with the number Adam's been throwing in Vapor Lock lately. C.T.--a.k.a. Clyde--is also a member of the boy band Earl joins. Clif, upon whom Clyde is indelibly modeled, actually went by C.T. for a while when he was younger. And did you ever notice that most boy bands have a guy whose name is just initials? Well, it amused me to make my brother (the one other person who possibly hates boy bands as much as I do) a member of the band as well. I also hope it pisses him off.

The other cameo is one only a few people will catch, but which amuses me in ways I cannot even begin to describe. What's the name of the "bad boy" character in the band? That's right, Brent. Guess who he's modeled after, Ozarks folks.

Yeti

Supposedly, mp3.com, the site that hosts a few Cross-Eyed Yeti tunes, is closing down because it was bought out by some other company. The site was supposed to close its doors last Friday, but as of the last time I checked (late Thursday afternoon), the site was still up. So, um, download 'em while you can. There's a link to them up above.

On a related note, I've been thinking about selling copies of the debut Yeti album, Delusions of Grandeur, here at Dim Bulb. The cost would be about $5-7, I'm not sure exactly yet because it depends on the price of supplies. The CDs themselves would just be regular CDRs, but I'd make up a label for them, put them in a jewel case, and include a jewel case insert with some spiffy artwork by the Noise Monkey. Those who are interested should drop me a line.

"Merchandising, Merchandising, Merchandising!"

On yet another semi-related front, I'm trying to come up with some other Dim Bulb merchandise. I got an idea from the forum and from the amazing artist over at College Roomies From Hell: why not put together a CD of old Dim Bulb comics? I was thinking all the pre-Keenspace stuff, which consists of at least a good hundred or so Crooked Halo strips and who knows how much Mac 410 (Vapor Lock). The cost would be cheap, of course, because i can't imagine folks would want to pay a large sum of money for these things. They'd include the old comics, organized by storylines or whatever, some commentary, and maybe some extras of some sort. If anyone's interested, let us know. We're also still looking for t-shirt ideas, so if you have any, drop us a line in the forum.