By way of apology for the long wait, here is a two-page epic!
Action! Adventure! Mysterious voyeuristic women in luxury cars! We’ve got it all!
…Admit it. You all just come round for the boobies.
This is what happens when a Science Villain makes a miscalculation.
I looked up a real Tesla gun to try to find more sciencey words to use, and found out the real words aren’t much different. but the are pretty cool!
And we’re back! Betcha thought that, what with all the stuff that went on, we weren’t gonna be prepared for January! Hell, it’s not every December that your artist loses part of her vision. (At least I sure hope it isn’t!) Our regularly scheduled updates will now resume. I’m sorry we didn’t have time to do any of the bonus materials we promised, although I did start a blog. It’s very pretty. I’m sorry, but you need a capital “J” in the URL because I created it stupidly and cannot fix it now.
Anyone who read Narbonic will be familiar with the concepts I’m introducing here. Narbonic is my all-time favorite Mad Science comic, one which I am trying hard to lovingly tribute to and not directly steal from, but Science Fiction is such a collective-consciousness field ever since Asimov introduced the Three Laws of Robotics and recognized that other artists would of necessity have to include them in their works. His rule was that you could freely use the concept but you had to paraphrase the wording. I feel that “Mad Science in the Real World” settings suffer the same necessity – if the “common” people lack a Perception Filter, the world swiftly becomes something dissimilar to our own.
Shaenon, if you’re reading this, please feel flattered and not angry!
Mila has a secret: She’s not very relaxed.
This ends chapter one. CttC returns 1 January 2010.
In case you haven’t noticed, Diedre is sort of a spiritual person. The enlightened mundane scientific community does not ascribe to her theory.
The enlightened mundane scientific community also frowns upon any experiment involving scattering herbs from a cauldron.
Diedre has powers.
Taylor was unavailable to film this week, so we replaced him with a life-like dummy crafted entirely of cheese. His voice-over was done by Richard Gere. Bet you didn’t know the difference!
Alright you two, break it up.
Why do I punish myself by cramming in so many words, causing myself to have to painstakingly trim and re-arrange to lead the reader’s eye across the page? Because if I didn’t, this exposition would take FOREVER. I do it for YOU.
For the record, yes the author was diagnosed with TS as a child, and no he does not randomly swear like in those “funny” movies, and neither will Jim. Both Jim and the author swear in meticulous, pointed, f#&%ing hilarious ways.
My mother has been asking me when she would show up just about since the comic first began. All things in time. I think it was worth the wait. Mila seems to agree.
An ASAP Sunday post for our loyal fans. Deepest apologies; we had to take a week off. For those of you who do not follow Holly’s blog, there was a death in her family after a long illness. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.
Yeah, incomplete maybe, but I doubt we’ll hear complaints. The best thing about writing a comic with beautiful women in it is being able to dictate when their clothing comes off.
Waaiiiiit… don’t cats hate showers? EVIL CLONE!
This is one of those conversations that leaves you wondering if you’re very lucky or very doomed.
Mila has a lot to learn about the Sciences. Particularly those which are Mad.
Color version to come.
A special feature! Print this page so your kids can color it!
…or maybe we just got busy. If anyone wants a City of Heroes referral code, talk to us!
Colors will be up later today.
Special 2-page feature this week. Pagers sure do beep at inconvenient moments.
War is hell. More so when the enemies have shared a bathroom with you.
Someone had to point this out eventually.
[Due to catastrophic software failure, the page you are seeing is incomplete. Check back later on to see shadows and highlights.]
UPDATE: The full version is now available. Enjoy!
Mila is having a crappy vacation.
Mila is less thrilled than most people would be to find out their father had a secret biotech lab.
Mila! Your angsty childhood is not solely a product of your father’s terrible mental disorder!
Three dudes, a thousand pounds of speeding steel and some upbeat foreign anime soundtracks. Ah, memories.
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Ack! I misspelled “Iambic.” I’ll fix it soon. Promise.
Mila, perhaps your mom has some ‘splainin’ to do.
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Taylor! This is an inappropriate thing to do! Be careful, or else hilarity will ensue!
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Mila’s sister is probably a stressful person to be around.
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Mila is sad because nobody else is sane.
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She’s lying, Mila. In a pinch, you can manage it in five.
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Jim! Why did you bring your lucky screwdriver to a non-hardware-based interview?
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Jim, iPod is clearly more of a sidekick. Really now.
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Seriously, Taylor. Â Seriously.
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EDIT: Sorry about the locked forum thread, it’s fixed now!
As soon as Science thinks of this too, I’ll be hailed as a visionary.
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~Edit~
It would appear that James forgot to disable comments, so I went ahead and moved them over to the correct forum post, and disabled comments. >.<
~Edit 2~
The Bots are named (from large to small)
Lennon, Frankfurt, Eddie, and Tiny Tim (the little bastard stealing parts from Eddie, after Frankfurt installs them)
I just love the Shed. It’s been so long since I decided it exists. The apparatus hanging up in the third panel might look familiar to anyone who’s seen The Prestige…
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She’s not excessively violent, Jill. She’s appropriately violent.
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Yeah, Mila, stop being such a pretentious ho-bag.
Mila, this is just too much information.
*site update: check out the nifty share/save button below!
It is against common sense for a scientist to be mad and for a girl to like iPod.
The real Isis was only slightly more terrifying than this.
iPod, your reaction to Jim’s flippant disregard for ethics in application design is deemed humorous.
Jim, perhaps Neil Patrick Harris is not the best possible role model for you…
Mila likes girls. This is relevant to the interests of Taylor and iPod.
Jim believes in flushing people through pressurized tubes to send them away.
Not shown: special “bull” roomba with combat attachments, programmed to respond to anti-theft alerts on other cleaning robots.
iPod enjoys digital images of Krystal from Starfox Adventures. He has no explanation for the \Falco\ folder.
Jim, perhaps you should start listening to your crazy sister. She seems to be on to something.
The nurse said she was “lucid.” She didn’t say anything about “patronizing.”
The first cave woman draped kelp over her legs to convince the first cave man to gather firewood. It had a different result.
Jim, you should really listen to your girlfriend when she is speaking. Particularly when she is speaking about sending you to an asylum.
Holly: It should also be noted, that this is exactly how I got James to agree to actually going and visiting his sister in Edmonton recently… Important lesson here ladies… wait til the husband is distracted, then tell him what to do… works most of the time… helps if you have a sammich or pudding to wave at him while you talk…
EDIT: Jim’s stylish desktop can be found here. Thanks for being awesome, wonderflonium.com!
iPod, you have a very special way of tracking amortization.
…that might be nice. I’m not a manic depressive, paranoid, schizophrenic, so I don’t need your advice.
I’d apologize to my real sister for this, but why break my trend of offending everyone and everything?
I’m really pleased with how this one turned out. I managed to pare down my pages of dialogue to what you see here, and the artwork is still beautiful.
Pod is lucky Mila isn’t a violent person…
Feline fact of the week: The elasticity of the feline lens capsule is only 5 percent of the one in humans. Rapid change in refractive power of the eye in cats occurs not by changing lens curvature like in primates but by front-to-back movement of the entire lens. This works on the same principle as adjusting an optical zoom on a camera. The lens can move forward by up to 0.6 mm. A cat’s eye still can’t focus as well as a human’s, though.
So I guess there was a little disappointment last week because we tricked people into reading shoujo (You know who you are). This restoration of balance to the Force was not planned, but it stands regardless.
Holly: I actually had this nifty plan for donations… Which is giving away free limited edition autographed prints of the 3rd panel… Which wont be found anywhere else online… If anyone wants to toss us a dollar or two in donations. I will gladly mail you a print of that lovely image, or another of your choosing from my portfolio… First 20 18 people get this! ^-^
Sheesh, all this drama, you’d think I’d forgotten how to write comedy in favor of fanservice and wish fulfillment.
Just kidding, of course. My wishes are already fulfilled. And boobies are hilarious.
Also of note, in case you’re wondering about the conversation you missed, here’s something from http://www.kittyshow.com/ :
Emrys: Time for my two cents… I have actually been waiting for this moment for MONTHS people… MONTHS I tell you *flail* And I kinda surprized myself with this one… record time and it looks beautiful… Yay me!
You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but…
Revelation!
After that, [things] got sour…
Oh, Cecilia!
Better late than never, this week’s page is go. Worth the wait? Well, studies indicate that a weekly dose of CttC will help you live longer!
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m stalling with this comic. It’s all about pacing and anticipation. What is Emo’s plan? What is Jim doing on the couch there? Who is Jill, really, and will she try to kill anyone?
Believe me, it’s worse for me, knowing the answers and wanting to see ‘em and having to wait….
ha-HA!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_fever
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yellow+fever
It’s funny, see?
I need to do more visual gags… this took, like, 2 minutes to do the lettering on.
Emrys: This strip makes me happy… and wee for playing with camera angles… seriously guys… I improve every week. 
I enjoy this page. Next week: new plot arc.
See the newsposts.
CSIS: Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the service responsible for the intelligence operations of Canada
Ah, The Shed. Everyone asks about The Shed. NO INFO FOR YOU!
…seriously though, I’ll be showing you the inside of it soon enough.
I accidentally titled two strips “First Impressions.” This one was retitled.
Another reborn comic! The original art was terrible. I just… I can’t apologize enough for how bad it was.
Dialogue is unchanged, because I made zero mistakes.
Jim, look out. Anyone who smiles that big is not to be trusted.
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UPDATE: as of the 15th of January, 2009, the first page of Close to the Chest has been remade. This will be an ongoing project with the aims of improving the quality on our early works and eliminating the presence of work not created by the current creative team. No, I’m not going to repost the first 4 pages. They sucked out loud. Enjoy!
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