My friends always want to watch dumb movies.  “Let’s watch Bridesmaids again!”  I mean COME ON.  Sometimes I wish everyone could just shut up about what they like and be more concerned with what I like.  I’m not saying my opinion is superior to everyone else’s.  My opinion is far superior to everyone else’s.

As an exercise in problem solving, I have come up with a list of alternatives to movies that my friends want to watch.

Star Wars à Apocalypse Now

The Hangover à Apocalypse Now

Half Baked à Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now à _________

Do you see what I’m getting at?  If you have time to sit and watch a movie with me, why not cut the bullshit and watch Apocalypse Now?  It’s three hours long, but that’s nothing compared to the eternity I feel while watching any other movie.  Furthermore, if any of my friends plan on watching Apocalypse Now, I will instinctively suggest a different movie because I didn’t think of it first.

You may be asking, “What is so great about Apocalypse Now? Why are you so persistent in watching it?”

The simple answer is that you shouldn’t worry about that, just fucking trust me.

With a more philosophical focus, we are able to truly understand my infatuation.  Vietnam.  Sheen, Brando.  Guns, girls, boats, napalm in the morning.  Nietzsche once asked, “Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”  He’s right considering how entertaining Apocalypse Now is.  By some simple calculation, I determined that a seventy year-old person could potentially watch the movie over two-hundred thousand times in their life.  Talk about not being bored!

The next time someone wants to watch Dodge Ball or The Notebook, just remember my simple three-step plan:

A-ssess the situation.

S-uggest Apocalypse Now.

S-ee the difference.

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I’m having some technical troubles with the site. New comic will be up later on Friday, and I’ll also try to put up some bonus content to make up the messed up deadlines. Stay tuned!

That pocket-monster ain’t right.

WOW! Today’s comic is also available in “GRITTY VISION” in keeping with Nolan’s vision of Batman!

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How about that ending? Yeah, they wussed out about killing him, just like they wussed out about killing John Connor is TERMINATOR SALVATION. I’m thinking there’s some kind of conspiracy about not killing Christian Bale. WHATEVER.

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I like The Dark Knight as much (well, probably a whole lot more) than the next guy, but I’m getting tired of Batman being all realistic and shit. Now that this whole TRILOGY is over with, can we please bring in some of my favorite BATMAN villains?

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Killer Croc

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Man-Bat

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Clay Face

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I get that people associate with Batman a little bit more than other super-types because he has no powers and is boring, but super-hero movies are more fun when the obstacle the hero must overcome is at least SOMEWHAT fantastical, no? Its just kind of depressing. I have homeless people to make me depressed. I think I’m ready for the next BAT-FILM to take more THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD approach.

Of course, that will never HAPPEN, but I’m ready for it. Sadly, it’s quite the opposite. Thanks to the BATMAN franchise, we have grittyness spreading like wildfire. It already fucked up Spider-Man, and now it’s seeping into STAR TREK.

“INTO DARKNESS”? What the hell kind of subtitle is that for a Trek movie? It sounds “dark.”

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ANY WHO… I’ll be honest, I don’t really give THAT MUCH of a shit about the movie. I have comics to go read now.

So when I finished up today’s comic, I got to thinking about how great it is that condoms prevent unwanted children. Before condoms, the only way to reliably avoid having children was to join the clergy!

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Fortunately, in our modern world, we have lots of ways to avoid babies; the best of which is the condom. I got to thinking about how SPECIFICALLY avoiding babies is a selling point that condom companies don’t really use to push their products… Why? Because the of the pro-baby agenda, and all of their seedy connections, I’d warrant; not to mention the BABY ILLUMINATI. You can’t just attack babies straight-up – it’s suicide!

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So then, I had to come at this flowering idea at another angle if I wanted to proceed. I figured that since you can’t flat-out talk shit on babies (publicly), who CAN you talk shit on? I found three people who history general considers to be evil, and then I found pictures of their parents. The new campaign focus would be “wouldn’t it be great if these dudes hadn’t been born?” I threw together a few mock-ups, and pitched the ad campaign to TROJAN.

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I explained that the art was obviously not finalized, and that I was just pitching ideas. I thought the results were pretty effective at making people want to use birth control, but TROJAN didn’t agree. After a short back-and-forth, we couldn’t seem to come to an understanding, and so,sadly, no advertising deal was struck.

They asked me to stop e-mailing them.

Funding contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief effort by ARGUMENTCOMICS.COM: $1.

Funding contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief effort by Ore Ida parent company H.J. Heinz Company: probably $0.

In these times of natural disaster, how can a conglomerate like Heinz continue to sell BAGEL BITES with a clean conscience? Every day, dozens of New Jersey resident go without pizza bagels. They have no Cheese & Pepperoni, no Sausage & Pepperoni, and no Three-Cheese blends. While those suffering the most starve for mini-pizzas, the bagel barons sit in their luxurious board rooms cracking wise about when and how often pizza on a bagel is available to them.

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Sure, Heinz donates hundreds of thousands of pounds of products to FEEDING AMERICA, a charitable organization that backs hunger-relief efforts in not only the U.S., but all over the world, via food banks; but how much EXTRA has the major corporation donated SPECIFICALLY to the victims of Hurricane Sandy? A cursory Google search indicated the following findings: SQUAT.

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Heinz points out that it also donated a purported $100,000 to SHARE OUR STRENGTH, a national non-profit dedicated to preventing child starvation. While this “charitable” donation does indeed go towards a noble cause, it’s obvious that the company is really investing this money in its own image.

Sure, a pizza bagel company that fights starvation wherever it might rear its head sounds excellent on paper, but how is it in practice? How many families do you think actually HAVE a huge stockpile of BAGEL BITES, like the one in today’s comic had? NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. Shame on Ore Ida for not taking it upon themselves to make SURE people had access to pizza on a bagel in the face of tragedy.

Thank goodness for the grassroots movement that is stepping up to fill the void; and for the strength of character and perseverance of the brave citizens of the beach. While the corporate FAT CATS stuff themselves on all the pizza bagels they can eat, it is the duty of every American… nay, every HUMAN… to make sure that those in need can have pizza. Anytime.

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HAPPY SHANKSGIVING TO ALL!

STEP 1: DOODLE

The first step is drawing something is deciding what you want to draw! I feel like drawing Squid-Man, and maybe have him spitting some game for the ladies. I draw a quick doodle to get my idea down before I forget, or start coming up with ways to “improve” it.

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Step 2: Choose a composition.

Next, you’ll want to figure out your composition. This means determining where things will generally go on the page, even if you don’t know WHAT those things will be. Thinking about your composition can help you increase the viewers interest in your drawing. If the composition is doing its job well, the viewer’s eye will want to look all around, but still find it’s way back to your main content. In this example, Squid-Man is right in the middle of the page (it’s a fucking portrait), so all I really need to do is throw some bullshit in on the sides at angles to make people look around. If this was something a bit more ambitious, I could use a tight composition to control the pacing, direction, perception of speed, so on and so on. Composition is like the stupidest thing ever that actually matters.

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Step 3: Finding shapes!

It’s time to get back to our Squid-person. After you have a doodle, you can starting finding the geometric shapes of the figure or object you’re drawing. Squid-Man basically consists of a sphere and four cylinders. You will want to draw the shapes all the way through, even if they intersect each other. I didn’t do this in the example because I am drawing a stupid squid, and nothing really intersect. I guess I could have had the tentacles going all over the place, but that would have pretty much been making it complicated for the sake of making it complicated, and that’s lame.

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Step 4: Sketch it out, yo!

Once you have the elemental shapes, you can go over them and form your sketch! Use the shapes to determine things like light and shadow angles, and positioning of features. In Squid-Man’s case, his eyes are about a beak and half apart, and his beak is one beak long, and about 3/4 a beakslength below the eyeline. Squidman’s eyes are usually just circles, but in this instance I have drawn them as normal eyes to display the versatility of this technique.

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Step 5: Inking!

Now, you might be thinking “oh, my sketch is done, so my drawing is done.” One problem: your sketch looks like CRAP. Go over your shitty sketch with some ink, only make it good this time! Inking is the process that differentiates us from the animals. It’s the step where you say “hey, that other stuff was just practice, yo.” All that other crap you’ve already done is just to help you get the inking right. Once you’re done inking, you’ll have what some people refer to as “line art.” This is a stupid term, because lines are fucking everywhere all the time.

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Step 6: Color!

Time to block in some color! Color is kind of amazing, but I don’t like to use it for my comics very much because it’s often overwhelming for the reader and takes him or her out of the tempo of the comic. Of course, people who are really good with color can not have a problem, but I make no such claim; especially digital coloring.

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Step 7: Shadows and Highlights!

Once you have blocks of color, it’s time to think about shading. Refer back to your sketch or shapes to figure out where the shadows and highlights had ought to be. Squid-Man is being hit by light from the front-right. His left side is in the shadows, and his eyes have highlights indicating a reflection from a forward light source. This is also the step in which I throw some random bullshit in the background. I would put more thought into this if it was a scene in which location mattered, but it isn’t, is it? There are some fruity bubbles floating around ‘cuz I guess he’s in the water or something.

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Step 8: Finish that shit up!

Time to add whatever finishing touches you are going to be throwing in, and sign the damn thing! I usually do the text or words last, so I can see how they will look and what I need to do with them to make sure they are readable without covering too much my hard work! When you add your signature to the bottom, you’re gonna wanna keep it small and at the bottom; usually on the right hand side (I put mine on the left for this one because I wanna see dem bubbles). If you know the year, try and include that too, though I honestly forget why it matters…

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Anyway, there you go! A step-by-step breakdown of the drawing process I used to paint this fine Squid. I did it in Photoshop, with my little baby Wacom tablet.

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Have fun. Godspeed.

I’ve got a little extra free time, so I’m going to be taking requests for a while!

Here’s the deal:

I only take requests for comics. I don’t care about content or subject matter, as long as it’s a comic. It can be a single panel, strip, or full page (I won’t be taking requests for multi-page projects at this time).

I’ll let you know how I feel about your idea, and if it’s something I want to work on. Some projects get me more excited than others, so whether it’s in color or black and white, highly detailed or cartoony, or what medium I decide to use, is all entirely up to me.

If I take your request, and am particularly happy with the results, I MAY choose to post it as a bonus update on my website. If I do this, I will cite you are the person who came up with the original concept. I will use your posting name for the credit unless you specifically request otherwise.

I’ll also send you a message letting you know that it’s done!

How to submit a request:

1. You can post a comment on this web-zone!
2. Tweet it at me! @arugmentcomics.com!
3. Leave a comment on Facebook or Google+!
4. E-mail me at Steve@argumentcomics.com!

One more thing:

I may take your concept and make it exactly as you ask for, or I may change it dramatically. Either way, you are still the person credited with the initial idea or concept. There is a 75% chance I will take any comic idea and turn it into a fart joke.

THANKS!

-Steve

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Let’s take a look at some of the requests I’ve already gotten and completed. Turns out, most people have horrible comic ideas!  CAN YOU DO BETTER?

Someone from DA wanted me to draw her some anime lesbians. This could have gone so many places… yet I am so lazy. Also, I HATE drawing in anime style… so I didn’t.

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This guy wanted me to draw his some ONE-PIECE original character he made up who had the power of never bleeding. His name sounded too Japanese, so I just changed it to Chim-Chim.

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Ive got some other ones that are done, but I don’t feel like posting them all right now, so maybe later in the week.