Comix return! I’ll be back…
-Wr
Virus Comix News
Subnormality and some other stuff too.
-
RSS Feed
Subnormality and some other stuff too.
Tough to kill since 2004
Comix return! I’ll be back…
-Wr
This entry was posted on January 28, 2013 at 3:54 am and is filed under Subnormality.
Virus Comix News
January 28, 2013 at 6:23 am
I can honestly say that I would have no philosophical objections to not sleeping ever. The rising and setting of the sun, mealtimes, the TV schedule – we’d still find ways to divide up time. We could use futons, hammocks and the like if we ever needed a lie-down, and as for sex… there would be room for swings and all sorts of things, all of which could be folded or hoisted away when not in use. The only problem would be getting rid of the also-non-sleeping kids.
I did like the Abbey Road take-off. Even if Paul *had* been meant to represent the deceased in a funeral procession, the “priest”, “undertaker” and “gravedigger” would all be equally doomed in the long term…
January 28, 2013 at 6:30 am
Another beautiful comic, although I’ve never felt so much that I was missing hidden jokes in the artwork. What was the deal with all the Beatles references?
January 28, 2013 at 7:11 am
Oh. My. Heck. It was “Mean Mr. Mustard” that made the penny drop for me, but I know I’m missing a whole slug of references, despite being a child of the 50’s and 60’s and like the Beatles are still my favorite group of all time and yes when CD’s turn into those little quarter-sized things I *will* buy the white album again just like Agent K and this is what happens to my mind when I lose some of my precious sleep getting up at 3AM to teach Engrish to people in Japan who have no idea what time it is here and thanks for keeping me entertained in the dead spots…
January 28, 2013 at 8:36 am
I like this. At first, I was confused with the “Hallway People”, I thought they were in the street next to a building or something.
Those price tags in minutes and seconds (is it “M” with a dollar slash?) remind me of “In Time”, a movie I also loved.
I would never, ever give up sleep. There’s nothing philosophical about it.
January 28, 2013 at 8:53 am
So I got “Sun King”, “Mean Mr. Mustard”, “Polythene Pam”, “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window” and “The End”. But I keep feeling that I’m not smart enough to get the references to “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight”, which must be hidden in there somewhere, right? RIGHT?
Outstanding work, as always.
January 28, 2013 at 9:57 am
Great. Now I want some poutine, and I’m thousands of miles from Canada, and you just *can’t* get the cheese here….
January 28, 2013 at 11:04 am
Oh I love Subnormality.
January 28, 2013 at 11:33 am
Great stuff, as usual. Also, 100% envious of these ladies’ relationship…sigh. Also also, diggin’ the Sunny Day painting.
January 28, 2013 at 1:22 pm
I was distracted by trying to figure out which room is Valentine’s Day, whether to go across then down, or down then across.
January 28, 2013 at 1:23 pm
I’m with Greenwood Goat here; it’s a bit of a leap of logic to go from ‘no sleep’ to ‘no marking of days’ (all sorts of stuff changes diurnally), and an even greater one to leap from ‘no days’ to ‘no quantification of time’.
January 28, 2013 at 1:36 pm
Oh the irony – Time by Pink Floyd was playing as I read this.
And a Peepshow booth? Really?
…
…
Eh. Makes sense to me. (or is it a song reference I missed – I’m half asleep as I type this)
I’m going to go listen to Shine on you Crazy Diamond on the couch and enjoy the fuzzy half asleep feeling. Suck it hallway people!
January 29, 2013 at 12:37 am
Shine on! And for the record, the booth in question was in fact a callback to another recent comic: http://www.viruscomix.com/page570.html
January 28, 2013 at 2:53 pm
The ensuite-rumpus room argument is terrific. As per usual, taking one small step to the side, everything you take for granted is revealed to be absurd…
January 28, 2013 at 3:39 pm
Wow, you’ve got quite a great musical taste, kid. Seriously, plenty of great bands and Mike Oldfields referenced there.
January 28, 2013 at 4:59 pm
As sadly un-academically proven as it is, ISTJ here. Someone should do a psych study relating “too many words” with X. Or maybe its just ADD.
Another great one!
February 3, 2013 at 2:00 pm
INFP here, and I too loved this comic and was really surprised to see an MBTI reference! It made me bizarrely happy to see that in there.
January 28, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Awesome as always. So many references, most of which I sadly do not get.
Hehe, Vladimir Poutine 😀
January 29, 2013 at 11:30 am
BTW, “Vladimir Poutine” is actually the way you’re supposed to say his name in French: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Poutine
I think the reason they spell it differently is that the name “Putin” pronounced in French would be a homophone of “putain”, a nasty swear word.
January 28, 2013 at 9:04 pm
I really liked this comic.
The idea of loosely connecting a comic with an album is a way cool idea.
And the character’s conversation on mortality and time was eye-opening – as is usual in this comic
Is there a zoom-n version somewhere? I couldn’t find it,
Anyways, wonderful work!
January 28, 2013 at 10:24 pm
Just curious, are the two women the same women as in #152?
January 29, 2013 at 12:38 am
Indeed!
January 28, 2013 at 10:53 pm
A refreshing take on things. We get so preoccupied with time flying by, it’s good to remember that things are cyclical and that there are other opportunities and chances for us.
January 29, 2013 at 6:52 pm
Nice to see the Sphynx make it onto the cover of Time Magazine…!
January 29, 2013 at 7:31 pm
Hit the Super Convenient Non Religious Confessional on Saturday! 🙂
January 29, 2013 at 8:39 pm
Winston your visual metaphors are lie crack for my mind.
January 29, 2013 at 9:08 pm
Wonderful artwork as always, and so many references, but i must be missing so many more. (Is the 28th “Here Comes the Sun”?)
You have ASDA (formerly Associated Dairies) stores in Canada?
But like Greenwood Goat, I don’t see the connection between sleep and dividing time into days, weeks, months, years. I last went to sleep on Monday, woke Tuesday afternoon, and it’s now two in the morning Wednesday – not regular perods at all, unlike the light/dark divisions of days.and night.
January 30, 2013 at 2:49 am
Awesome! So many references. Is that Arthur the Avocado Plant from MAD by the ‘Yesterday’ door?
January 30, 2013 at 5:52 am
Smashing Comic! I wish I could put a new one in everyone of my day boxes, but the wait is worth it. Guess I just need to make my boxes bigger. ❤
January 30, 2013 at 6:07 am
I will now go and listen to all the albums I could find referenced in this strip. It might make me forget the horror of the time you made me listen to Silver Side Up, but I doubt it.
January 30, 2013 at 6:11 pm
Wow, I should always be reading these comments! So much stuff I missed.
Is this the first time we’ve seen that these two are in a relationship, or was that already shown and it’s just something else I missed?
February 2, 2013 at 5:43 pm
Heavily implied…especially in one comic set in the future.
February 6, 2013 at 7:38 pm
After extensive research, I believe you’re referring to #152.
January 31, 2013 at 4:26 pm
I see sleep as the opposite. Instead of a break shielding you from perceiving the inevitable oblivion; I see it as a sneak preview. This wonderful, restful nothingness you get every night; well when you’re done life you get the same thing except forever. It’s comforting, the same effect but for different reasons; I’d fear mortality more if I had never experienced unconsciousness to compare it to death.
I might see sleep differently if I ever remembered my dreams.
I might not see death as less comforting if I didn’t suffer from crippling depression.
On a related note there is a drug in the works that is supposed to replace sleep. Not a stimulant that keeps you up but one that actually makes you feel like your had a restful full night of sleep. I think the American Military is involved with it’s development. I’d definitely take that drug if offered, but I’d go off it once and a while for a “sleep vacation”. Maybe 24 hours solid sleep once a week.
February 2, 2013 at 6:13 pm
I love the artwork and the food for thought conversation. I’d buy a print but im broke as a joke.
February 3, 2013 at 3:02 am
This is my kind of calendar.
Just one thing: I can only afford a small screen netbook right now(which is fine), but man it’s seriously incredibly hard to read your comics and appreciate the artwork on a small screen.
February 4, 2013 at 1:06 am
If you hold ctrl and scroll with your mouse wheel (or the touchpad, if you don’t have a mouse), you can zoom in and out of the screen.
February 3, 2013 at 7:42 pm
It’s always a delight to see your comics, Winston, my friend. =D
This one was really entertaining after having a bit of a bothersome week. I specially like how it reminded me of Jean Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, in how not being able to sleep was part of a hellish nightmare. Though it also made me think, what if people didn’t need to sleep but could if they wanted to, kinda like Alphonse in the Fullmetal Alchemist anime and manga, or having it as an alternative way of recovering your energy, kinda like in videogames and especially RPGs, where there’s also potions and what not to achieve the same thing. I love the way your comics always make me think a lot, but in a very much heartwarming and cheerful way on probable serious issues unlike many other media that just critizises things.
But anyway, thanks for the comic I’m eternally greatful for such great displays of artful thinking. *nods*
February 4, 2013 at 12:23 am
Too many words. Give me fanservice.
February 5, 2013 at 3:51 am
Another great comic. Thanks!
February 7, 2013 at 10:36 pm
I don’t normally do the whole tumblr post thing
but i found this and it’s pretty relevant, eh?
http://sideli.tumblr.com/post/18793673854/only-yesterday-1991
February 8, 2013 at 9:26 pm
Oh my god, how I love this. And I usually don’t write comments like these, but I’ve been wanting to give some candid praise to your work for quite a while now.
Winston Rowntree, not only are you obviously trying to push the envelope and challenge yourself every time both graphically and lyrically, but you manage to equally challenge your audience as well. And you pull it off. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. Each and every one of your comics is always both humorous, inspiring, relevant and thought-provoking, and, not least of all, original to the point of uniqueness. You, good sir, are a goddamn artist. Please keep up the good work. Your work is nothing short of magnificent.
February 16, 2013 at 11:53 am
Paul Mccartney had a dream where he heard the song yesterday. He then woke up and wrote it up.
February 16, 2013 at 10:11 pm
I wanna talk a bit about the layout of your comics, ’cause i feel like there’s room for improvement. I often wonder if you think about where one’s eye is drawn to when making your comics, because it doesn’t feel like you do when I read it. For example, the speech bubbles; due to the length and the placement of the speech bubbles i find that my eye is drawn away from all the artwork in the comic and towards the dialogue, and that I have to go out of my way to look at it all after i have finished reading it.
I wish you would layout your comics in a way that one can get the full benefit of the writing and visuals in a more natural way, if that makes any kind of sense.
Another thing as well, I feel like there is too much dialogue across too few panels in this, and a number of other Subnormalitys (for example,the otherwise excellent “Hallway” comic). What I mean is, the reader should see more body language over larger amounts of dialogue. In other words the larger the amount of text, the more panels there should be, giving the reader more visuals to look at (I find it quite visually boring to be reading too much text in a comic at one time.)
I hope all/any of that made some kind of sense.
Also, just wanna finish this rant of with a compliment so it doesn’t seem too negative; I love to see you continuing to experiment with the layout in your comics, it’s one of the things that I think makes Subnormality truly great, it’s always so refreshing to see you changing it up every so often. I guess you could say it’s a visual feast.
Anyway, as always I am infinitely grateful to you for creating what is, without hyperbole, the greatest thing on the internet (though I guess there’s always room for improvement :P)
February 17, 2013 at 1:31 am
I understand what you’re saying, to some extent, but I actually find a lot of charm in the dialog being separated from the visuals. I LIKE going back after I’ve read it and spending time looking at everything, and reanalyzing it, and seeing things I missed the first time. If it felt like it flowed naturally, I wouldn’t be quite as motivated to go back and look at things.
I read maybe 40 webcomics on a weekly basis, and most of them just go way too fast, you know? You get your gag at the end, and because everything flows naturally into the next panel, you read past it all and then find yourself wishing it lasted a little longer.
I might be annoyed at it if this comic updated daily, but on a weekly or bimonthly schedule, I feel like I’m getting the perfect amount of comic for my time.
I like this style because it forces me to reevaluate what I’ve read, and then go back and reread and look at the tiny details and get more out of it later. These kinds of comics force you to schedule 15-30 minutes to read each one, which I like. It makes it last longer in my mind as well.
February 17, 2013 at 12:35 pm
“the reader should see more body language over larger amounts of dialogue. In other words the larger the amount of text, the more panels there should be”
Oh, i agree 100%, believe me! You’re absolutely right, i mean there’s no question. The thing is, it seems there’s always a measure of compromise in producing anything artistic. You inevitbaly find yourself having to strike a balance between the script and the budget (the “budget” in my case being time as opposed to money), and that’s always gonna result in things being not-quite-as-good-as-they-could-be (i’m sure we all have favorite episodes of TV shows that aggravatingly feel like they should have been fleshed out into movies or otherwise held lost potential, i mean i can think of a bunch, but it’s just a reality of producing anything– particularly anything episodic). It just comes down to a choice between never telling a particular story because you don’t have the budget, or telling it as best you can with your resources, and most people are always gonna choose the latter.
Putting perhaps way too much text with not enough drawings is pretty much the main compromise i chose to make to ensure i could get out the stories i wanted to tell– as exemplified by the “Christmas Eve in the Future” comic from a few years back. It was literally a graphic novel idea i had, but i have no time to make a graphic novel so i finagled it into a short-story. Would it have worked better as a graphic novel? Quite possibly. But the point is moot because if i saved it for that it would likely have never been used. And frankly i’m happy with how it turned out, despite the compromise (i like the framing story, it would never have been in the graphic novel).
So yeah, i definitely agree, but it’s often just a function of compromise. I honestly would love to flesh out dialogue scenes with more panels, facial expressions and hand gestures etc., that’s really something that’s missing, but it would mean the comix take wayyy to long to draw, and i’d rather publish something imperfect than nothing. It is the way of things, in a world of paltry 24-hour days and other such slim budgets. What’s most important to me is to get a particular story or set of ideas out of my head and into the world, so that’s always gonna dominate the resources i have. I can’t compromise on the ideas or the dialogue, so the art has to take a step back where necessary (this is not to overstate things, i mean i think i still get in a pretty good amount of visuals).
PS: Oh, and thanks for the kind words and the equally kind critique– it means a lot that you like the comix, and like them enough to want them to be at their best.
February 20, 2013 at 6:05 am
This should have been in that Silverlight zoomable format. So, moral of the story, “live your life one day at a time”?
February 21, 2013 at 7:53 pm
Your work is wonderful.
February 22, 2013 at 4:34 am
I MISSED THIS FOR A MONTH!?! I step outside for a breather, and got kinda sidetracked along the way. Once I wanted to come back I actualy felt embarassed for having been gone for a month or so, and put it off more. 3 A.M. being one of the best times to check out your artwork because the house is quiet I grit my teeth and “come in from the cold.”, as it were…. So glad I did.
March 22, 2013 at 1:00 am
It’s like picking apart magnolia.
February 4, 2014 at 10:04 pm
Just spotted the cock sauce, I keep re-reading these and there’s ALWAYS something else.