Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Third Edition
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"How do you pronounce Devahi's name? Dee-vah-i?" -Andrew

Close! It's Deh-vah-hi. So when people are call her "Dev" for short, it's dev like "developer", not dev like "Devo".

"How long beforehand did you plan out that huge, 2.5-year story arc?" -Tobias

Entirely beforehand! There are a lot of cartoonists out there who manage to achieve great things by just making the story up as they go along... but I am not one of them. I need to know exactly where I'm going at all times or I can't function properly... both in life and in art!

Now, I don't want to give anyone the impression that I somehow scripted out the entire thing in advance -- that would be anal retentive to an insane degree, even for me. I just create an outline -- a rough framework of all the important events, twists and character arcs -- that I follow and occasionally embellish on as I go along. The result is a story that (hopefully) all hangs together and makes some modicum of sense.

"Did you plan on the Noosehead story arc to be two years long? And will the current story arc be as long as the Noosehead arc?" -Brain

When you're working from an outline, it's not always easy to estimate just how many comics it will take to work through all the plot points you've mapped out. I thought it would take two years to get through the Noosehead arc. It actually wound up taking three!

I probably shouldn't even guess how long the current volume will be. It may well wind up as long or even longer than "Noosehead". But this time, the individual stories that make up the big "arc" are going to be a bit more stand-alone than they were in the last volume. Because of that, I might spread the arc out over multiple volumes instead of confining it to just one, ala volumes 2 and 3. We'll see what winds up making the most sense!

-Sam Logan

I've found a new way

The new Franz Ferdinand record contains a lot of fun surprises. It is loaded with any number of things I would never have expected to hear on one of their albums... from crunching synthesizer riffs to bizarre, looping acid-jazz grooves. And of course, there's also Ulysses... the song that sounds like the lead singer has forgotten the words to his own chorus. "Nah... uh... nah nah nah... something... Ulysses!" Easiest sing-along ever!

The next installment of "Help Wanted" arrives on Friday, as does our next Q and A feature. See you then!

-Sam Logan

Broaching brooches

As a Canadian, I'm generally pretty enthusiastic about fabulously counter-intuitive spelling. Heck, sometimes I even throw a second extra "u" in colouur just for good measure! But something really bothers me about "brooch". I know it's pronounced "broach"... but man, I just can't type the word "brooch" and not hear something that rhymes with pooch. Brooch sounds like it should be, I don't know... the term for a litter of baby ferrets.

-Sam Logan