The plot thickens

Today's comic finally answers a burning question many of you have been wondering about for years. Yes... Mr. Sin can read. Now you know!

At last! Thanks to the hard work of my webcomicing pals Kate Beaton, Meredith Gran, and Carly Morando, you can finally read comics about Strong Female Characters. I see now I've been going about it entirely the wrong way. I mean, look... you can see their breasts AND their butts at the same time! I'm going to have to beef up on my figure drawing before I can compete with this kind of work.

(OK, OK... I actually have LOTS of practice drawing the "spine-breaker." One of my fondest convention memories is of a bunch of us huddled around a table at the Seattle GameWorks, taking turns demonstrating our mastery of all the terrible art trends 90s superhero comics had to offer. Aaron Diaz is probably the best at it. There were Liefeld belts, bomber jackets, giant guns and wasp waists everywhere, man.)

-Sam Logan

Hedgehogged

Exciting times in the Sam and Fuzzy-verse! For starters... Yuji Naka, co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, tweeted that my hedgehog t-shirt was cute! (Trust me, that's what he's saying. I swear!) He even used an emoticon and everything. D'aw! Thanks, random dude who wore that shirt to a Sonic convention and stood in front of Yuji Naka. You made my day!

Further excitement! I have assembled the final pack of epic free digital goodies for anyone and everyone who picked up a copy of our first book! This is the last pack I'll be sending out before our next book launches later in the summer. (But don't panic... we'll be doing a whole second year of bonus packs for that one, too!)

As promised, I let our club members suggest ideas for the next desktop image and then vote on their favourite. The winning result (by a large margin) was "Scott Pilgrim parody". After giving it my best effort, I can now present to you... "Fuzzy Pilgrim and the 7 Evil Ex-Employers!" (Although Gertrude is really an ex-coworker... I guess that was an experimental phase.) You can click for a slightly larger version:



Anyone and everyone who's bought a book will get the full-sized desktop image -- plus another desktop and an exclusive ancient Sam and Fuzzy comic -- on July 6th. (As will any latecomers who buy a copy of the book by that date!) You can click here for a full preview and more info. Bam!

-Sam Logan

Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Eric Edition
Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!

"When is the next Book Club pack coming out?" -Casey

Soon, I promise! I hope to finish up the new wallpaper this weekend. In accordance with the suggestions and votes of our Book Club members, it will be a Scott Pilgrim parody! I'm actually just trying to decide who to cast in each role. The way I see it, there's two ways I could approach it:

1. Sam is Scott, Nicole is Ramona. The Evil Exes are cast as whatever Sam and Fuzzy characters they most resemble, even if most or all of those characters never actually dated Nicole.

2. Hilarious gender swap take: Nicole is "Scott", Sam is "Ramona". Then the evil exes could include Sam's actual exes like Candice and Alexa. But then which ladies do I cast as the other exes? And who would be the one male ex? (And is it canon?)

I will think on it!

"Wait a minute! Sin DID know Fuzzy and he DID mention 'no honor among thieves' back in comic 997 (which shows how mind bogglingly awesome you are for planning that far ahead), but why did he called him Fuzzy?" -Jaber

My greatest shame! This isn't the first time I've fessed up to that one, but yes... that was a mistake. Sigh!

As you noted, back when I drew that comic, I'd almost got the plot for our current storyline figured out. Sin reminisces about working with Fuzzy and his two "thief friends" at Blamco toys. He realizes those friends must have turned on Fuzzy and wiped his memory. He even jokes about how Fuzzy ought to "recognize" him despite the fact that he's now using a different robot head. It's all there! I was so close!

Unfortunately, one plot detail I hadn't come up with yet was the idea that Fuzzy was not actually Fuzzy's original name. That only came to me a bit later, when I was really blocking out the story for Fix Your Problem and deciding exactly how I wanted Fuzzy to realize the truth about his past. And it would fit in perfectly, except... I completely forgot that Sin called Fuzzy "Fuzzy". Shows what I know!

I think it's a pretty easy error to fix. When Sin and Fuzzy finally meet again in comic 997, Sin is not surprised to see him. He's aware of Fuzzy's current life... he knows that he's one of the people running around with this Sam character that the ninjas are all obsessing over. He'd know Fuzzy was going by a new name. He just should have acknowledged that it's a new name in the dialogue. "It's Fuzzy now, isn't it? How long has it been?" Something along those lines.

But I won't correct it yet! Let's take this one last moment to really DWELL in my mistake, first. Augh!

"Hey, you're a Sonic fan, right? Did you try the Sonic Generations demo? Do you think it could redeem the franchise?" -Kyle

I'm actually in a kind of funny position coming into the Sonic Generations demo because... I actually really liked the last Sonic game! Sonic Colors was great... different as it was from the classics, it did it's own thing, and it did it really well. For the first time ever, I was actually left feeling pretty good about the idea of Sonic games that explored new and different types of gameplay and art design. So of course, it's only natural that they would follow it up with a game that does the exact opposite of that. Ha!

That said, I enjoyed the demo! Unlike Sonic 4 (which I really didn't care for at all), the game "feels" right... Sonic handles with the kind of weight and momentum that helped make the original games so much fun to play. (Although there is some physics weirdness going on with the rolling mechanics and some of the spring interaction.) It also looks great, although once Sonic picks up speed all those busy visuals actually make it kind of hard to tell what's going on.

The thing that really surprised me is the stage design. Like all the classic Sonic games, there are multiple paths through the stage. But unlike the classics, the higher path is actually quite tricky to get to, and even harder to stay on. It seems like the higher route is less an alternate place to explore than a sort of ultra tricky reflex-testing shortcut for people looking to master "perfect runs" through a lot of trial and error. (In that respect it actually reminded me a lot of going for S ranks in Sonic Adventure 2.)

Long story short... I am capable of writing way more about Sonic games than anyone would ever actually want to read. Let that be a lesson to you, question askers!

That's a wrap for this week. Come back on Monday for the next part of our story!

-Sam Logan