My apologies in advance to everyone of Eastern extraction… This week’s strip achieves 2 firsts: a Main Female character (at last), and the introduction of fart-humour!

This strip was – and maybe still is – a mess. It’s the first of the lot that I’m not happy with. If I ever get up to around 3 strips ahead, it’ll give me a chance to tighten up the writing and the artwork before my Friday Deadlines.

But, I worked on it until 12:30 last night and from early this morning, in an attempt to salvage something: missing my Friday deadline! I do think it’s much better now in terms of writing, but I’ll try to fix it up a bit more – visually – as it’s still pretty rough. « Compare it with last week’s one? I think the line-work is too thick, amongst other things. (Seriously contemplating inking on the computer instead of paper, to sharpen things up)

What actually helped this morning as I wrote the script on this again – was when I went full-juvenile with the humour. “Pongy-pants!”

 

PC?

The other thing about this strip that had me in crisis last night, was the content/ideas – aside from the attempts at humour. There were things in it – before the version you see now – which really worried me, and made me fearful of publishing. I think it’s OK to point out people’s ignorance about race etc., or the societal problems associated with a particular era, but I don’t want to start giving the impression that the Seventies setting, and the immature characters give me a free pass to be offensive. Taking swipes at Nazis (with Germanic stereotypes, influenced by 1970s boys’ comics is one thing) but I felt I was getting close to stepping over a personal line. Yes, I do have one!

Do any of you recall that in the 1970s and 1980s, there seemed to be a regular group of actors who the US TV series producers would call on to play ‘Eastern-looking’ characters? Even as a child I was very aware of it. For example, the same actor might play a vengeance-crazed Vietcong Veteran, in Magnum P.I., or a terrified Chinese Railway worker in some wild-west TV show, or the reliable old script device of the old Japanese pilot marooned on a Pacific Island, who doesn’t realise that WW2 is over. The latter was in Six Million Dollar Man and Salvage, if I’m not mistaken. At least they didn’t get a Chinese actor to play an Indian.

My friend Darren Slade, who I bugged about my problems with the script, very late last night, reminded me of the fact that Bruce Lee was turned down for the main role in Kung Fu because he was deemed “to Chinese looking.” Yes, it’s true

I actually considered having Jenny remark to Jack that “He isn’t very Japanese looking, is he?” – but after a bit of panic, and reconsideration, I dropped it.

 

Acknowledgments!

Thanks to Darren Slade of the wonderful Episode Nothing for giving me some pointers very early this morning on how to try to salvage this thing! It was actually helpful even to put the problems into words and hit the ‘send’ button.

If you enjoy today’s strip and article, please leave a comment so that I know? And please ‘Share’ it – in whichever way you prefer. Every bit helps, to get my comic ‘out there’ – and – encourages me to stick at it.

Thanks!

** Stay Groovy, all you 1970s kids! **

– John White