The Saga Continues...

Fall is here, but it's still summer in Three Craters Lake, and The Inquiring Minds Big Summer Adventure is in full swing with big changes and big events happening right now!

After all these years, will Iris finally become a full fledged member of The Inquiring Minds, changing the balance of power forever? Will Bobby and Albert ever get this theme park finished and running, especially now that a looming deadline has been imposed?

Don't know what I'm talking about? Read the strips below, and some of your questions will be answered. :0) And if you have no clue whatsoever, then please visit the official home page for The Inquiring Minds Big Summer Adventure for the whole story. :0)

Cheers, JOHN :0)

100 Comic Strips

Today I am proud to announce my 100th comic strip of The Inquiring Minds! This is a big deal to me.

Okay, so some of you are saying, "but doesn't Take Me Away From All This!! have 226 Knight and Day comic strips?" Well, yes, but almost all of those are black and white dailies. "How about 3 Knights in India then?", the most observant of you ask. "Weren't there 101 comic strips there?"

The answer is yes, so this is the third time a comic strip of mine has reached such a milestone. The Inquiring Minds have been around a long time now, so it's actually hard to believe that there are ONLY 100 comic strips so far. However, right now they are all in color, and over a third of them are full sized color Sunday strips. Also, this 100 strips does not count illustrations, or strips drawn by Brian Hughes, or the dozens of strips drawn of the original Inquiring Minds.

I'm also doubly pleased that this 100th strip falls smack dab in the middle of the 2008 Big Summer Adventure currently going on. I honestly believe that when this is over, the Big Summer event will be my best work to date. I'm very pleased with the art and the writing both, and for me, this is something that's been a long time coming.

The original Inquiring Minds were the first to catch the interest of a Syndicate. If I had been more prepared for that then than I was, maybe the strip could have been syndicated! What it came down too, though, was that the Syndicate did not want a strip that told stories... they wanted gag a day humour. For me, The Inquiring Minds were made for stories, and now, finally, The Inquiring Minds as they are today are getting their chance to tell one heck of a story.

It's fun, and getting funner, and big things are yet to come!

If you aren't up to date with the story, please read through it before reading the new 100th strip below, as it is a culmination of what's been going on so far this summer. But this is by no means the end! Plot twists are a coming! :0)

See the whole story at www.HappyGlyphs.com/summer.html

Cheers, JOHN :0)

Forgive the delay...

The Inquiring Minds' Summer Adventure continues... although at a slightly slower pace than originally schedules. Have no fear, and a lot of patience, please, as I move into one of my busiest months. However, the recent delay had nothing to do with time, believe it or not.


The latest cartoon in The Inquiring Minds' Big Summer Adventure

When I first thought of this Big Summer Adventure, it was going to be a large Sunday cartoon. Only when I started thinking about Imagineering, and the Disney theme parks, did it occur to me to make this a long adventure. Once the idea struck, though, it poured forth like water from a spigot, and I wrote out about 20 comic strips, to tell the rough story. I say rough because part of the fun of Cartooning, and especially story telling, is letting your characters chip in, and take the story where THEY want it to!

One advantage to storytelling in a comic strip is you may find time to make changes, corrections, or additions as the story goes on. If you've been following along with The Inquiring Minds, you've already met the gang. Iris was supposed to come in later, but I later decided that I wanted to introduce her earlier in the story. That change suddenly upset some of the dynamics of the storyline as written, and suddenly some of the strips appeared weaker. What to do?

I could have drawn the 3 strips and posted them as is, keeping up with my self imposed deadlines, but I didn't think that would be right. I risk losing you, the audience, by not posting frequently, but at the same time, are you going to stick around if the strips are just 'okay'? I don't think so.

So it took me two days to rearrange strips, and rewrite strips, and I'm still not back on track yet! Yes, Cartooning is harder than it looks, folks, and believe it or not, but the writing is just as much work as the art. That's why Artist/Writer partners usually get a 50/50 cut of comic strip profits, unless one is lucky enough to be 'hot' at the moment.

So when you toon in for our latest toon, and it ain't there, please don't fret... just come back again later, or the next day. I promise that even though my schedule is getting heavy, I have a commitment to finishing up The Inquiring Minds' Big Summer Adventure THIS summer. :0)

And it's gonna be good!

Cheers, JOHN :0)

New Toon

I've been so busy lately, that I haven't had the time to draw any cartoons, which is pretty sad considering that I'm a Cartoonist. My Freelance career has taken me towards finer illustration, and my basic tooning skills have been getting rusty, so... I pushed all else aside and drew up the following. It's important to keep all of your skills sharp and up to date, and that's the excuse I'm sticking with.

Of course, I jumped back into things with a full page Sunday toon, instead of a nice little daily, but that's the way it goes. :0) I drew this at an unusually larger size for me, since the new book I am working on gives me the extra room to play. Sometimes choosing the size of a toon can be the hardest decision when you're a web cartoonist. When you're in the newspapers, you go with the size they give you, but on the web you have freedom to roam. I love books, though, so I always plan everything for print and web.

The inspiration for this came from my Travel Blog. I spoke of a day at the beach, and found myself looking for a cartoon about fishing. Couldn't find one, so I sent the Inquiring Minds down to the lake, and of course, they couldn't just go fishing. No... they had to make a big deal of things, as usual. :0)





Hope you like it! Cheers, JOHN :0)