In October of 1977, the Sex Pistols released their one and only album aptly titled “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” and punk rock started it’s climb from clubs to mainstream radio and record sales. Today’s comic title is very apt if you check out the lyrics… “Problem, the problem is you…” And working for the TV Studio is THE problem. Now to see how Bud and the gang handle this problem!
I will have FOUR updates this week, Monday through Thursday. This starts a multi-part mini-arc that is going to wrap up the Road Trip. Also, when the comic posts on Thursday, that will be number 300. Now 300 seems to be a mile marker of sorts for webcomics, so hopefully it’ll be something special. I didn’t realize we were coming up on the 300th comic until in an interview I was a part of lately someone mentioned their comic was pushing 300 entries, and 1977 is about as old as that comic and what do you know, we’re hitting 300 this week. Let’s see how the next 300 go!
It also depends if this week goes better than last. Briefly, last Sunday, my oldest son’s 12 year old car broke a ball joint, smashing the axle, front brakes and front wheel at the same time. Lovely sound. The expense of fixing it was WAY more than the car was worth, so it was recycled. THEN, Tuesday my second son spun out in snow storm and bent the crap out of his front left wheel and tie rods. There went his Christmas money and then some. THEN driving my van home from his job, AGAIN my second son has a flat tire on my van and smoked it real good as traffic on the tollway on Christmas Eve refused to let him over to the shoulder. I came and got him then I waited for the tow truck. $350 later, the van is fixed just as the tire place closed Christmas Eve. THEN I get home only to find that our Wii has decided to crash as well. The sucky part is my second son had purchased Wii Fit for the family to use! LOL! We had also bought my oldest son a Garmon GPS for his car… yeah, the one in the junk yard. But, despite all that Christmas went well for me and I think this all funny (well, now, I was not a happy camper Xmas eve…).
My sons make me happy even though they’re at that age where they’d just assume kill each other. Boys… 🙂
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Discussion (25) ¬
Oh, the irony… 🙂
Yes, for me personally AND for the ladies of 1977!
🙂
Somehow I caught your strip before the blog part posted? Wow, that sucks about all the car problems that you’ve been having! AND the Wii!!! Yikes. Well, I’m glad you’re Christmas Eve went well. Wow, 300! That’s pretty sweet. I’m closing in on 250. Where does the time go? lol.
Hmmm… I’m fairly sure it was all up at one time. I did add a lot more text, but that was in the “pre-post” stage. Interesting….
I don’t know where the times goes… last time I looked it was, well, 1977…
🙂
Yeah, they’re gonna make it! 😀 This is some great comedy, Byron. I’m lovin’ the Cali trip.
Sorry to hear you had such a rough Christmas Eve, man. Here’s hoping the New Year shines brighter for you and yours.
Thanks, but the problems are in the past and it’s best they be laughed at. I’m sure Bud is going to have some “car issues” in upcoming comic strips based on what happened over Christmas. I least I get comic material out of it!
Now, we just have to see HOW the ladies make it… that’s the interesting part!
🙂
OOooooooOoooOOOOOooooo. Nice motion effect in the last panel!
Drawing cars is not easy… I spent a lot time trying to get the outline of the Gremlin correct only to realize I’m going to blur it out. DOH! I even angled the car forward like it’s moving really fast… just like in cartoons! Yay! All those years of watching Looney Tunes is paying off finally!
🙂
The Gremlin’s great. Somehow you’ve captured not just the looks but the attitude of the car. It was a brilliant choice too, and I’ve loved every appearance.
I can sympathize with second son. Back in 1982 when the first real snowfall hit Ithaca, NY, I took our ’69 Falcon to a large empty parking lot to get used to it for the winter. Heck, it was standard practice. Not standard practice was smashing the left front wheel (why is it always the left front?) on a kerb trying to get through the exit to the road.
Curbs have a magnetic force within them to draw in cars… it’s a Government plot…
😉
Great strip today. The group is definitely gonna leave their mark on California, that’s for sure. Unfortunately that mark may be the shape of a Gremlin. 🙂 Sorry you had such a rough week last week, seems that when it rains it pours sometimes. At least everyone was safe, and had no injuries with their accidents, etc. Hope your New Year goes great and you have a wonderful week this week with a nice clean slate.
Oh, things are going better already. I’m ready for 2010 (the year we make contact!).
And yes, the 1977 gang is leaving their mark on California for sure… 🙂
Cars ARE hard to draw… I usually cheap out and just put in a puff of smoke, nice job with the drawing.
Hopefully your family’s car troubles are over for awhile… (they should be, these things always happen in threes).
Thanks, Sandy! Yeah, I do my best not to put cars in the comic, but they were such a HUGE part of our lives back then… with no computers, internet, 500 channels on satellite, our cars were our major entertainment resource. It got you to bars, and had great sound systems in them (spent more on a car stereo then on the car once). So, I’m gonna have to get use to drawing cars!
Holy crap! I’m sorry about the horrible week y’all had. Thankfully, no one got hurt! Cars and money are replaceable. People, not so much.
Thanks for adding the Sex Pistols to your title legacy! As a longtime Punk fan (introduced via The Plasmatics on Tom Snyder in 1979 or ’80), I appreciate your recognition of the movement and its slow but implacable effect on popular culture. To really see what an atomic bomb Punk lobbed into the “room” of the late 1970s, check out the Tom Snyder Tomorrow Show Punk Rock collection on DVD. In it, vintage interviews and performances with The Ramones, Johnny Rotten, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett and – yes- The Plasmatics nestle side-by-side with vintage interviews and commercial break footage from the rest of that era’s pop culture. It’s like watching… er, a Gremlin smash through a guard station barrier. 🙂
GREAT story! I’m enjoying it thoroughly! Thanks.
Tom “Mr. Huge Head” Snyder… man, that brings back memories. We in the TV industry teased Tom’s how for having such tight close ups on his face. He had to be bigger than his guests, so they always zoomed in tighter on him. It was a policy on his show. Look at any of them and you’ll see what I mean. “Big head, big head, big head…”
Hey, Punk is pretty damn good! I was never into the punk bar scene, but I enjoy the music a great deal. Hey, it is rock after all!
Glad you’re liking the story. I have a TON of back logged comics; ideas not dealing with the Road Trip (been a long time since I did one…) so I know 1977 has at least another year or so in it before I get bored or start repeating myself…
🙂
I’ve had a similar past few days. The technology is trying to revolt or something. Right after Christmas day the hard drive EVERYTHING was on went out… and the automatic backups I thought I was making somehow stopped working about 11 months ago…
I think I’ve got it fixed now, and I’ll be rejiggering things so that the backups function again, but this hasn’t been happy. I’m just hoping it’s really fixed!
In any case, BIG GRATZ for the upcoming #300! That’s a wonderful marker. I hope you’re proud!
Aw, man, nothing ruins a day/week/month then a hard drive failure. I had a back up drive start to fail last year, so I moved everything off to a SECOND back up drive, then that one failed just as I formatted the first one. ARGH!! So I feel your pain, man.
You gotta be at, what, 1000 comics? You have a ton of stuff in your archive. Do you keep count? As I didn’t someone mentioned it. Just curious…
🙂
ha, seeing that last panel made me think of your son’s car catastrophe, too…
Yeah, very ironic that I’m drawing Lorraine’s car out of control while my son’s cars are bouncing around in the snow. Life imitates fiction sometimes!
🙂
As long as your Wii isn’t over a year, Nintendo will take it back and fix it. They did mine when I had it 11 months. They fixed it and tacked on another year to my warranty.
The Wii is 3 years old. It is the disk drive that’s failed and for $75 (plus shipping) Nintendo says they’ll fix it. More than likely they’ll just ship back a refurbished unit, but they do give a one year warranty, so that’s what we’re doing. But the timing sucked…
🙂
“coming up on the 300th comic”– 300? This is MADNESS!
~sits back and waits for the punch line~
Glad to hear you survived the holidays, for some value of ‘survived’ 😀
Also, you take the prize for funniest eggcorn of the year – ‘just assume kill each other’ – ROFLMTAACO!