After fifteen years, one week, and one day, the Daily Grind Comics Challenge is now officially over, and Andrew Rothery is the winner. Go read his comic: it's one of the few I've followed since the contest began, and I'll be eager to see where he takes his characters now.
As for my characters here, they'll be back, and there are plenty of adventures to sample via the Table of Contents. But Book XX, Raising the Curtain, and its first chapter, "Clean Up," will not be making an appearence here until what scientists refer to as The Future.
Oh, and if you'd like some "exit music" for the comic, let me point you toward "Stolen Moments" by Oliver Nelson and his Orchestra. During the first presentation of the melody, imagine Howlett dancing in a slinky, snakey fashion about a darkened space. The lights come partially up as the melody repeats, and the other four of our characters slide in to join him. During the trumpet solo, Mrs. Teasdale takes the spotlight, then Jolene during the flute solo. The saxophone solo is Tharka's, and Doc takes center stage when the piano does. All five come together again for the third iteration of the melody, and for the fourth, the walls open, and they dance off into the silhouetted city.
Terebinth will of course continue every Monday. I'm convinced that it's become a part of my autonomous nervous system by now. Heck, I may even get back to producing pages there more then once a week now. One never knows, do one?
Still, might as well go out with a sonnet, eh?
My Creative Process
Become a window mindfully deployed,
With fingers scrawling pencil over page,
Combine the words and pictures, spread the ink,
Enough remains perhaps to still suggest
Not Exactly a Conclusion
And let the other cosmos trickle through.
Absorb it. Soak until my brain's destroyed
The pictures, made them something I can spew.
I cobble scenes and spackle dialogue,
Imagine words and hope they might engage
Or maybe flow instead of cause a clog.
Reduce the vision, squeeze it into shapes:
Ungainly, turgid, stultifying stink
As most of what I thought I'd seen escapes.
The wonders left undrawn and unexpressed.