Apartment 4H

That’s no moon! Posted Wed, 08/12/2009 by Dave in response to Moon Error

“Moon Error” is the first strip in what was intended as the introductory arc for the horsemen. I don’t mind saying I think of it as a failure–not the individual strips, but the arc as a whole. The problem with them is that the introduction arc was supposed to serve two roles–introduce the characters and offer some explanation as to why they’re moving in with Ted. The former it did, more or less. The latter it’s a failure at, and I chalk that up to a rookie writing mistake. Really, I should have been less concerned about people suspending their disbelief that the four horsemen would move in with a random dude and more concerned with making sure the cast and the premise were established concretely. As it is, this arc did us few favors with either.

You’ll notice as well that the artistic quality fluctuates wildly in the next couple of strips. That’s partly because of a time differential, and partly because we decided to scrap half of the introductory arc shortly before it ran. The strips with the rougher art and less defined character designs were part of the five strips in the first introductory arc, the ones submitted to the Cavalier Daily for initial review, before we were approved as a comic. The ones with newer art were written and illustrated shortly before the school year commenced and our strips started to run, so Joe had plenty of time to work on his artistic style and I’d had enough time to become dissatisfied with the way we were kicking off the comic.

Two years later I’m still not wholly satisfied but at least we upgraded a few punchlines. Maybe if we ever make a book we’ll revise the whole thing again! That will work, surely!