Sorry, no big laughs this week. Or something. Speaking of big laughs, a close ally of mine–my Information Minister, he knows who he is–reminded me of the TV show “The Critic” the other day. After looking around on YouTube, I encountered this brief clip, which is honestly the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life (probably). I swear to god I was laughing so hard at that thing last night… I don’t even know why. I must have looked like an idiot. Maybe that’s some kind of keen glimpse into my psyche. Or maybe I’m just demented. Anyway, I declare it to be my Favorite Thing Ever. For this week, anyway. Oh, Orson Welles…
Stay beautiful,
W. Rowntree
September 29, 2008 at 1:33 am
Hey!
Don’t normally comment, but I love your comic. Just wanted to say, there’s a girl I’ve been friends with for a year now that I’ve been having exactly these thoughts with for a good month or two. I’m going to ask her to come get a coffee with me the first time I see her tomorrow. Here’s hoping
Thanks Winston
Tom
September 29, 2008 at 1:42 am
Good luck, Tom!
Subnormality–changing lives (with too many words) since 2007.
September 29, 2008 at 2:07 am
One of those things I don’t want for my life. Thank you for drawing this comic.
September 29, 2008 at 2:56 am
Hehe, I’ve lived through this story too well. I ended up telling her in the end very recently.
It didn’t work out, but unlike how I imagined, it didn’t destroy our friendship. She was pretty cool about it, and she still talks to me. So I reckon you should go for it, if you’re still undecided.
September 29, 2008 at 5:09 am
God damn it, now I feel like a fool for not acting. Way to ruin my self-deluding apathy
September 29, 2008 at 6:38 am
Fuck it now I AM depressed.
yay for ripping off my life in comic-book form.
*prepares grave*
*sneezes*
yeah, I also have a cold.
you jerk.
no but seriously, great great stuff.
September 29, 2008 at 7:53 am
fuck janice, love is for the living.
September 29, 2008 at 10:37 am
ahhhhhhh…. thats me. A loser.. A coward
*sobs*
September 29, 2008 at 10:43 am
It would be so ironic if she turned out to be a lesbian.
September 29, 2008 at 11:47 am
Wow.
September 29, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Fantastic.
If my wife hadn’t been the one to hit on me…
September 29, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Holy crap that hits close to home.
September 29, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Fun fact: Orson Welles did the voice of Unicron in the Transformers movie. When asked about the role his reply was “It’s about a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys.”
September 29, 2008 at 5:01 pm
@Kurt: that just made my day. Thanks man
September 29, 2008 at 7:28 pm
tl;dr
September 29, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Yep….very close to home indeed. Same train of thought, “if she would be interested, she’da said something”.
Once I’d moved to the US, and about 2 years after that very same bout of feelings, I ended up telling her over IM.
She was very engaging and interested in my thoughts. She said that she would never be able to admit that to someone she had a crush on.
As you may be able to tell, she did not have the same feelings (she politely sidestepped them without ever having to spell out her romantic disinterest).
At the time we both had SO’s, and when I told her, I had another girlfriend so neither of us was ever single at the same time. I was able to tell her because it didnt really matter any more and would’ve only complicated things if it had been otherwise.
To this day we’re still good friends (as good a friend as you can be at 4000 miles distance).
Women are used to having guys disclose interest to them.
As long as youre not a douche they’d be happy to gently let you down if theyre not mean. Heh.
September 29, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Great work Winston!!
September 29, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Very depressing my man but it speaks loads of truth. Life is about doing it. Good work.
September 29, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I was in the same situation just like every other guy on the planet. After a couple of weeks I asked her out and it didn’t work out – but after that we became even better friends. So please, guys, grow some balls. You won’t regret it.
September 29, 2008 at 8:20 pm
imo all friendships are worth risking for the opportunity to become more than friends…
September 29, 2008 at 8:42 pm
maybe it’s good, but it has too long dialogs to be a comic
September 29, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Awesome.
September 29, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Fucking mental. Classic stuff. Loved every bit of it.
September 29, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Yeah that’s me. heh.
September 29, 2008 at 9:55 pm
well done
September 29, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Fucking brilliant.
September 29, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I liked the comic, but I think that a lot of people are scared away by the great blocks of text. In this case that’s particularly unfortunate because it’s not necessary to read all the text to understand the comic. I would recommend that you do something to indicate that it’s not necessary to read all of the text. For example, you could put the Coward in front of the block of text (obscuring some of the words) so that it’s obviously in the background. Or you could have the text fade to grey, or degenerate into chicken-scratch, or get smaller and smaller. Any of those would indicate to the reader that the actual content of the text was not important.
September 29, 2008 at 11:50 pm
@Tim
Disagree, comic is fine as is
September 30, 2008 at 12:03 am
Scarper: Hey, good luck!
Kurt: Totally a fun fact… I think I did know that actually, but it’s definitely a big piece of the Welles Legacy of Crazy.
Will: Well said.
mo0n_sniper: Sorry, that ship has sailed…
Tim Maxwell: You’re right, a lot of people are in fact scared away by the text. That doesn’t mean a lot of text is no good though; it means that a lot of people have certain expectations about comic strips in general, and a lot of text is contrary to those expectations and thus turns them off. My desire is to see those expectations change, however it may happen.
September 30, 2008 at 12:12 am
oh that’s great, love it!
September 30, 2008 at 12:16 am
Awesome comic. I think you may have just inspired me. Thank you
September 30, 2008 at 1:55 am
I totally took this advice to heart and asked a girl out… she said yes.
=D
September 30, 2008 at 8:59 am
this is a comic about me! i am the dead guy in that grave right there!
September 30, 2008 at 9:22 am
Thank you for you brilliant comic about procrastination
September 30, 2008 at 11:08 am
Faint heart never won fair lady.but then I prefer brunettes
September 30, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I can so relate to that at the moment.. Well done bro!
September 30, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I love the huge text walls usually, but I feel in this one the information content was a bit low. Still good comic though.
September 30, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Ah… this one is fantastic.
And FWIW, I found it quite easy to read.
September 30, 2008 at 10:26 pm
It speaks to me.
October 1, 2008 at 2:16 am
A very touching tale to me.
October 1, 2008 at 3:17 am
Poor Orson Welles. How do you go from having your first movie hailed as one of the best ever made, to doing cheap wine commercials?
But anyways, hooray for huge blocks of text! You should make a comic that is just text from top to bottom with little tiny figures in the corners. Well, maybe not that extreme, but some of us actually do like to read!
October 1, 2008 at 3:55 am
Um, feeling a bit angsty these days, Winston?
October 1, 2008 at 5:17 am
Wow, you nailed it.
In the immortal words of The Reverend Mother Gaius Mohaim,
*GET OUT OF MY MIND!*
October 1, 2008 at 7:57 am
…… i just go with the club to the head routine, then drag her by her hair to my cave… its worked 9… no 10 times so far.
October 1, 2008 at 9:16 am
@5entient
hahaha, i just laughed out loud because i think rape is really funny! you can never go wrong with a rape joke! seriously!!
…fuck you.
@comic:
i’m another one who sees herself in this one.
although this isn’t my favorite strip of yours since i feel that it lacks the novelty (in idea) others have, i think it’s pretty nice. somehow i especially like that the guy’s gravestone isn’t the only one with regrets written on it.
October 1, 2008 at 9:20 am
(and by the way, i mean “novelty” as in “state or quality of being novel, new, or unique”, not “an article of trade whose value is chiefly decorative, comic, or the like and whose appeal is often transitory” [definitions from dictionary.com]
can i play that “english isn’t my first language”-card now, please.)
October 1, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I know some people are saying that the huge walls of text are scaring people but the thing I found scary (I just discovered Subnormality) was that this comic didn’t fit on my 24″ monitor 2364 seems a bit to wide, but I’m glad I didn’t let that stop me from reading the archives, I’m hooked.
October 2, 2008 at 2:31 am
im livin this situation right now! LOL
October 2, 2008 at 6:48 am
Having been in this position myself, it’s not really all that bad. Eventually you forget about her and you have to struggle to bring her face to the surface, even if it faded away a long time ago. Usually, it is never a big deal and another person walks by and you forget all about her.
October 2, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Sad and funny in the perfect ratio. Great stuff.
October 4, 2008 at 6:58 am
Epic.
Hehe. Been in this position but now i’m with her! O yeah.
Great comic.
October 5, 2008 at 3:03 am
This one did hit fairly close to home, but now I’m pretty practised at making convo with any random chick. I actaully started smoking again so I would have an excuse to be around the outside communal areas at my campus without having to make up shit. Couldn’t stand to stay inside and idle away time when I could be outside making conversation with whoever else is there.
October 6, 2008 at 12:31 am
Funny and depressing at the same time. I like it though
October 8, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I have been in this position,than I was with her and now she leaves me and I don´t know what to do..What is better that I was with her 2 years or when I never met her?
October 12, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Somehow I love that Cap’n Crunch looks so deranged in your comic.
November 13, 2008 at 1:34 am
Now I’m depressed. I think I just read a comic strip that recounted the events of my entire life.
At least I can take solace in the fact that the guy who did ask the girl out and ended up living a full and satisfying life will end up equally as dead as me, in the end.
November 29, 2008 at 11:57 pm
I also feel quite depressed now. I was waiting for some solution at the end of the comic, but it just ended in an anti-climax. I hope that was the reaction you were looking for. The rest of your stuff is very funny though, nice work.
January 6, 2009 at 11:36 am
This comic is just like “Hey men (and perhaps some women): here’s a mirror!” and we’re all like “damn that is totally me, how sad and socially retarded of me, I should be more outgoing!” but then we never really are, and then it’s a few months later and we forgot the comic entirely. Good angle.
January 10, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Ohhhh man… who hasn’t been in this position before?
January 17, 2009 at 5:04 am
Yeah, I’m in it right now.
February 4, 2009 at 11:28 pm
this was great!i mean a lot of people,inluding me, always ask themselves ifthey should make their move…and end up loosing everything.
excellent
February 19, 2009 at 5:42 am
I…. I think i gotta go do something now… sadly… i can relate…. so i guess i’ll say it tommorow if i have the chance… i might even comeback and tell the result… thanks
April 7, 2009 at 10:16 am
Wow… Totally describes me. But I’m not gonna ask. Still too much of a coward. Oh well…
May 16, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hmm… I have done this, to someone who was previously one of my best friends. I was thinking like the guy in the cartoon at first, but eventually made that leap into the unknown… what I would say is unfortunately its not as clear cut as the cartoon makes out- you MAY regret making the decision to say something. For me it turned what was a good friendship into an uncomfortable situation and 5 years later we still aren’t talking much. In hindsight, I think I would have been less confused had she actually been interested in me.
June 24, 2009 at 4:25 pm
To Dzonoteri:
Grow up, man, that´s what life is about!
You 1- act, 2- enjoy the empowerment, 3-get hurt, 4-take it, 5-move on.