This has been a tough week of work. I had to do a lot of all nighters and at my age, it takes a toll. I turn 46 next week… after 30 the birthdays just whizz by and I wouldn’t notice them unless the Beloved Mrs. TenNapel didn’t shower me with balloons and presents.
So we’re trying to get some Nnewts shirts and posters done for next week’s San Diego Comicon! If you have friends going, send them to booth 1601 to buy everything in sight. I’ll try to bring some Nnewts pages for display, and I’ll be selling hard bound copies of my new graphic novel CARDBOARD!
I gotta cut this post off as I need to get back to work. Thanks for reading, and remember that each of you are my marketing department!
This is a great pic of a baby newt I’ve raised from an egg. He’s almost an inch long, and you can see that he’s transparent. Look at those guts! He’s full of white worms I grow in a separate container. Photo by Brian Battles.
I love the eyeball action – the colors and shape, and how they appear to actually be looking at something.
And how Odetto’s eyeball takes flight in panel 2.
What a coincidence, (or miracle)!
Guess what issue has been bothering me recently?
Is it is always a sin to tell a “lie” and what is a lie?
I love this page!
This is great, I especially love the expressions in panels four and seven.
But even little legs can create big journeys
I love this art too
@Doug – thanks for the great comic!
@Benjamin – If you’re concerned about lying being _sin_ then it’s probably best to start off thinking about love. The paramount sin in the Judeo-Christian tradition is failure to _love_, first God and then neighbor. (Other religious traditions want to chip in here?)
Ought expressions of love be limited to the realm of truth? The simplest possible answer is that God detests lying and so it is always sin. (Again, bearing in mind that if failure to adequately love is sin we are pretty much sinning non-stop, all the time… and the question becomes which sin is the more severe.)
I believe there’s good practical evidence that saying “I need to lie for the purpose of good” is an unloving path that precludes more loving (but more difficult and demanding) responses.
We’ll see how Doug spins this story. Will Herk overhear hunting chat and learn that Odetto was actually the strongest of young newts? Will he be devastated that he was lied to and give up all hope? Maybe the lie will go uncovered… but Herk will remain crippled all his life, asking “Why me?”. Will he become bitter because Odetto recovered but he never did? There are all sorts of ways that even the best intentioned falsehood can harm, once it is found to be false…
It’s funny you should bring up lying because I do deal with some of that in this story, but not here.
The ethics of this page might go something like, “Is hope rooted in false information still hope?”
As a parent we’ll often take a false quality in a kid instead of a true one. Look how in America a parent would be less troubled if they found out their kids cheated on college entrance exams than finding out that they smoked. Though our kids are illiterate, we just want to get them the piece of paper so they can hang it on the wall, appear to be smart and get a job.
With my own kids, I make them apologize to each other for wrong things they do no matter if they feel like it or not.
In some ways, I think Herk’s mother has hope, and might have the belief that not all is lost which she can’t properly convey to her son. So when a hunter gets him to have hope for false reasons, the mother doesn’t care so much because there may be other reasons to have hope… so he gets the right answer for the wrong reason.
I’m just guessing here.
I like how his eye kinda pops out in panel 2.
I’m somewhere between laughing and touched.
I think the birthdays start whizzing by much sooner than 30. I turn 30 next year, I don’t know where my 20s went its crazy.. Happy Birthday!
I’m Really enjoying your work by the way. People on the outside have no idea what kind of effort it takes to produce comics. All nighters are brutal at any age I think.
I think you have to play it by ear.. too many kids nowadays are raised being ASSURED that everything will be perfect in their lives, and they have nothing to worry about or try to improve about themselves.. but a frustrated little newt like this absolutely needs some hope.
Yes, I too am a big fan of the eye-ball pull away on panel 2.
With regard to making your kids apologize, there is something to be said for doing what you’re supposed to do because you’re supposed to do it, and learning to want to do it later. Also, there is something to be said for learning how to function in a civil society.
I don’t know the rules of this world, like how long it take a new tadpole to walk. I would think that failure on the first try is normal. I didn’t think the kid was crippled or anything, I just thought he failed at his first time walking. I thought the mom tearing up was more at how touching this moment was. kind of like teaching a little kid how to throw a ball, their arms are too week and uncoordinated. As the kid pushes forward they’ll grow into it more. I may be way off I just thought he was too young, not that he was handicapped in some way.
I love Mama’s face! this is a very sweet comic, even if there’s some fact-stretching going on (not truth so much as fact, if you get the difference). I also appreciate the new “bonus materials” you’ve added