Ruxpin
BACKLINKS OF RELEVANCE: You can see Fuzzy storming into the Newport police office to ask about Hazel earlier in this volume. And you can see a flashback of Fuzzy and Hazel's final use of the teddy-bear scam (AKA the "Ruxpin Maneuver") in the final chapter of Sam and Fuzzy Fix Your Problem. (It's actually an interesting scene to re-read in retrospect, since at the time, Fuzzy had no idea just how many times they'd pulled that scam, while Hazel knew all too well.)
In other news... it's only a couple of weeks 'til Emerald City Comicon in Seattle! Like last year, Topatoco is bringing so many different artists, they can't all be contained in booth #202... so Jeph, Jhonen and I will be hanging out across the aisle in booth #203 (affectionately known as the "Topatoco Annex"), most likely hurling things at the other booth. Here's the floorplan of our future battleground, and here's a list of all the other guests who will be at the show!
-Sam Logan
Boom
In today's strip: Dev's occassionally-seen friends Alice and Star, along with partially rehabilitated vampire Edwin. (You can find all their past appearances using our character search.) Also in today's comic: Dev herself, who is clearly still a little worried about the opinion bomb that she stressed over so much in our previous chapter.
In other news, Topatoco is looking to clear out the leftovers of some of their discontinued t-shirt designs! Two older Sam and Fuzzy shirts -- Cataloupe and 8-bit Olympics -- are now available there for the low, low prices of $10 and $15, respectively. You can find them in the Sam and Fuzzy section, along with all our other (regular-priced but still awesome) stuff. Woo!
-Sam Logan
Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Aaron Edition
Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!
"Does Aaron like the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution or does he burst into flame with rabid jealous rage?" -Tom
I'm not sure Aaron ever made it to Deus Ex! After all, his available video gaming hours are pretty firmly committed to Ages of Swordworld.
I think he might also find the stealth mechanics a bit confusing. There's always a learning curve with stealth games -- you have to "learn" what kind of suspicious activity the game's AI is and isn't programmed to recognize. Deus Ex is certainly no exception. Consider how a typical Deus Ex goon reacts to the following situations:
Creak of door opening twenty feet behind him - INSTANTLY ALERT
Sight of a wide-open door that was firmly closed when he passed by the previous time, 10 seconds earlier - NO BIGGIE
Sound of very quiet footsteps 20 feet away - FREAK RIGHT OUT
Sound of another goon being violently slammed into the desk directly behind him - NO IDEA IT HAPPENED
Sight of a quick, tiny blur of movement in the far off shadows, while they were clearly busy looking at a computer screen - HYPER AWARE
Inexplicable systematic disappearance of every other member of the massive, chatty team of goons who were searching the room with him, silencing all their conversation and leaving him totally alone - THEY PROBABLY JUST WENT TO THE BATHROOM
It's fine, and super fun, once you learn the rules. The rules are just kind of goofy!
"When Aaron was first introduced as Jackson he was a [sot of] awesome ninja who kicked butt and took names under after Fuzzy had taken over. But now he seems pretty much useless. Why did he change so much over the course of the comic?" -John
Aaron can kick butt when he wants to, but his truly defining traits are probably his generally indifferent laziness and dislike of responsibility. That said, there is a bit more to it than that. You'll get to learn a bit more about life from Aaron's perspecive in our next chapter, actually.
"Do you think, after having made a grandiose story-arc like Noosehead, you'll be able to follow that up again? Please let me elaborate. In Noosehead, there was a definitive beginning, middle, and an end. During the current volume, it feels like there's a very slow mounting of tension that may be leading up to something huge, but the story is far more complicated than before. It feels more like a continuing crime-drama than an epic. Please don't feel that I'm trying to insult your work, as I mentioned before, I love it, but why the stylistic change from the Noosehead volume to the current volumes. Was it a conscious decision? " -Vincent
No offense taken, Vincent, I understand what you mean! As you said, the stories are structured very differently. Noosehead was really one big tale of a long, fairly singular journey. Fix Your Problem and beyond were conceived as more episodic series of interconnected but relatively self-contained separate books. The comparrison to a continuing crime-drama is probably an apt one!
The change was done partly out of a desire to do something different, just like Noosehead was very different from the story that came before. It was also partly out of necessity... Noosehead could hit the ground running because so much of it's plot was set up in the previous story, whereas Fix Your Problem was really starting from scratch.
But despite the differences, there's still a singular, major arc that's been building since Fix Your Problem -- as I'm sure many of you have noticed -- and there are some pretty major turning points coming up. I like to think that it's all building towards a climax that will be every bit as epic and satisfying as the end of Noosehead, but... well, it's you guys who will be the ultimate judge!
That's a wrap for this week! See you on Monday, team.
-Sam
