Chronillogical

So you’ve noticed that the next comic has been slow to appear. Nobody panic! You may not see it, but if you listen closely, you can hear its steady approach from beyond the horizon—like a herd of buf­falo, or per­haps a hor­ri­fy­ing war machine.

This next comic has had a couple of false starts, and after a night that yielded zero usable mate­r­ial, I said to myself, “Screw it. Screw this noise. I am going to draw Lucca Ashtear.” And, lack­ing a gavel, I pounded my fist upon the desk. The heav­ens thun­dered in assent. It was rad.

I will admit that I have played some Chrono Trig­ger these past few weeks on the DS—hence the pic­ture. It shouldn’t sur­prise anyone that Chrono Trig­ger is a game that both Greg and I have played¹ and enjoyed and remem­ber fondly. It’s easily one of the best RPGs I’ve met, which is a mean­ing­less state­ment con­sid­er­ing 1) how many other people say that and 2) how few RPGs I have in fact played. That doesn’t dimin­ish its influ­ence on our work, though.

In fact, when Greg and I find our­selves in a tough spot (with regards to story or char­ac­ters or per­haps both at the same time), invari­ably we will ask our­selves “Why doesn’t this feel more like Chrono Trig­ger?”² And for good reason! It’s a fun story with fun dia­logue and fun char­ac­ters³—do you sense the subtle pat­tern here?!

Fun­ness is, after all, the essen­tial ele­ment that we strive for. Some­times we suc­ceed more than other times, and I know that, for the long-​term, we are headed in the right direc­tion. All I have to do now is finish the next dang strip so that I can prove it to you.

tl;dr ct 4 lyfe

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¹ Per­haps not so long ago as you’d expect—I didn’t touch it until my fresh­man year of col­lege (!) and I don’t think Greg com­pleted a full playthrough until he was well into high school.

³ Lucca strikes me as one of the story’s less engag­ing char­ac­ters, actu­ally, but she has a fun look. (Fun!!) You know who has a flip­pin’ weird look? The pro­tag­o­nist. What is up with that hair, some­body please tell me what is up with it. (Aaand here I am, bewil­dered at the hair­styles in a JRPG. I am 65.)