The comic formerly on this website has appeared, in bowdlerised form and under another title, in the magazine. I daresay the original version will appear in my postmortem collected works, a slim volume but one offering great delight.
I was rather on edge about this comic. I objected to having to tone it down, as I liked the ideas explored in the original. I was annoyed that it was appearing during a week when a group is setting Pakistan on fire, destroying hospitals and beating policemen to death, and one of the sympathetically portrayed characters is not a million miles from its members. And finally, I don’t like feeling exposed.
Well, I received a couple of kind messages about it, which was nice, it’s best not to bare one’s throat to the mob, and charitable to present red-eyed loons as quite nice if you get to know them.
It has also inspired to mull another comic. We are planning to go away (just to an Istanbul suburb, as lockdown is back) and if I don’t have too much work over the weekend I’ll try outlining it. I suppose that is a benefit of publishing, the impetus it gives to try again.
This afternoon the magazine also had its first ever podcast recording session, which was, well, hard to say as I went off the video and stayed on mute throughout and also took off my headphones as I really needed to work. It has been a week of late nights; I have not once gone to bed before the sehri drums, and they are coming later every night as the drummer finetunes (I assume) his routine.
I was slightly late to the podcast as we had requested a flooring shop to send over a sample of wooden flooring, and the man turned up not with the small pieces we expected, but three quite long planks. So we had to carry them over to the flat to decide which we would go with. We shortlisted two: one lighter one with a strong grain and weird crosshatching, the other a deep smooth brown with darker grain. Both have problems: I am worried that the first is too fake industrial and the second is too plasticky, but we don’t have a lot of choice, unfortunately, as you can’t install non-engineered wood over underfloor heating.