He’d do it too. In videogame land, you can kill anyone who shatters your dreams. It’s legal there.

Throwing food…

I’ve throw a lot of food out and off of various places, but I don’t think I’ve ever throw a turkey off of a roof. Jars of things, eggs… and eggs. Well I guess I haven’t throw that much food after all. I like food too much to do that to it. Plus I enjoy cooking, so unless it’s gone bad there is a good chance I will turn it into something edible.

Sorry for you midnighters, but I had a late night, so the blog was late and short. I will do my best to get a good one up tomorrow before I travel to Florida. In fact I am positive I will get a good one for tomorrow.

-Phil

Not positive

Okay, so maybe videogames can’t teach you everything you need to know… or maybe… they did!!!! EH!?

Comments…

Thanks for all of the awesome comments by the way. If you don’t see yours right away it’s because I have to approve the first one and then if you use the same email you can post without approval. We get a lot of spam, especially from Russia, trying to get us to click on links so we can buy Viagra. We don’t need Viagra, so we don’t need those links. If you need Viagra, I can copy and paste the links into an email for you. What I need is an IPhone or some other phone with a good internet browser so that I can check the site throughout the day in order to approve comments, but for now you are just going to have to be patient.

Looks like we got color strips all week. Well by all week I mean thru Thursday, but this weekend you can expect the return of “Girlls and Sports and Phil”, which I know will make some of you very happy.

Enjoy.

-Phi

“…Accusations don’t know how to take them. Inspiration’s getting hard to fake it. Concentration never hard to break it. Situation never what you want it to be.”

This blog (and its title) has been brought to you by Sum41. This late comic is brought to you by people not showing up to let me off work on time and then me being all pissed off and deciding to eat way too much and pass out on my bed while watching SouthPark episodes I’ve seen a jillion times. Good times. Goooood tiiiimmes.

OMFG… it Twilight n’ shit…

I work part time at the mall (at Juicy Couture… shut up) and tonight when I was on my break, I walked past the movie theater and witnessed all of the pale, mostly overweight Twilight fans sitting in line to watch the movie at midnight. I did that at 9:00pm. 3 hours before the start of the movie. The only time I show up 3 hours early to something is a sporting event, so I can tailgate. I there was no tailgating going on. No grills, no drinking… just a bunch of dorks sitting in a line, with their “hot topic” bags, getting ready to watch a stupid movie.

When I asked what the appeal of the movie was, one girl I worked with said, “I just want a guy that can run really fast and kill a bobcat”… maybe she said Mountain Lion, either way, I immediately laughed. I’ve never seen Twilight, so I have no idea what she was referring to, but I’m sure it has something to do with a scene in the movie or the book. All I know is that when I got home, I ordered a new pair of running shoes, and next week I’m going on a safari. One day, I’ll be that fast running cat killer… one day.

Be sure to swing by this weekend, as we might have something going on. I don’t want to promise anything though.

-Phil

Its my car. I’ll do what I want!

Tony the Tiger

Arguably, there are hundreds of food mascots I could have used in this strip. Jim could have just as easily said “toucan” in reference to Froot Loops, or “Frog” in reference to SMACKS, or even old black men in reference to Uncle Ben’s Rice. But there is one mascot that I always think of, and that is Tony the Tiger. I can’t quite explain the phenomena, but as a child growing up, when I was asked my name I would immediately respond “Tony Kohl”. This phase of my life lasted just about two years, and about a season earlier than Who’s the Boss? reached the airwaves. My mother still muses about the origins of my personal re-naming, and to her best guess (factoring out Tony Danza’s yet to exist reference in my fragile psyche) it was my love of Tony the Tiger. So, with that as my only proof of the occurrence, and explanation of the occurrence, I have to thereby assume that I loved Tony the Tiger so much as a child that I would falsify my identity with his own… with of course keeping my own last name as to keep a shred of individuality.

So there you have it Regulars, a little trip inside the childhood of Jim… did you ever have a fake identity as a kid? Funniest Child identity gets some stickers.

-Tony-

Color

The strip will be in color all week. I know this, because this week has already been handed in and given an “A”. We don’t have “A+” where I come from. We have “A,B+,B,C+,C, D, and F”. No “D+” either. That’s a bullshit grade. Yeah, so that’s why it got an “A”, because “A+” doesn’t exist in my world.

I think this strip started off the idea of a bar giving away a frozen turkey as a Thanksgiving Day promotion. Honestly if my local bar or liquor store (in Jersey our food stores don’t sell beer… otherwise I would have easily achieved a frozen turkey well before any deadline) started such a promotion, I would have spent my hundreds of dollars already and have my turkey ready to go for next week. Maybe someone will read this and the idea will catch on. If you bar begins offering frozen poultry as a giveaway for drinking there, please let us know… our lawyers are standing by.

-Phil

Maybe one day I will be a standing by lawyer

Not to diss on community colleges (after all, my mom teaches at one), but you gotta admit two things: one, that title sounds awesome, and two, an AA degree doesn’t make you an expert of anything. Then again neither does a BA or a BS… but at least it costs way more money and wastes another couple years of your life.

Wait, what was this comic about?

Sorry this is a day late but it took way longer to get this done than I originally gave myself time for. Maybe its just me, but anyone else find it funny that I started the xmas storyline late last January and finished it in early November? No?!

Whatever… you’re obviously just not as funny as me then. Yeah. That’s it.

Thankful…

Do your friends and family do this? Go around the table and say what they were or are Thankful for over the past year. Mine doesn’t and I can’t say that it ever has. They would probably just all say, “Having the family together for the holidays.” Which is all well and good, but when they got to me and I would say, “Marty Brodeur” and be serious about it, there’d be a good chance that I would be eating alone in the backyard with the dog. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind eating in the backyard with the dog… my parents live in Florida.

By the way, this strip originally read “boobs” in place of “beer”. I asked Jim to switch it, not because I am not appreciative of boobs, lord knows I am, but because I felt beer just felt better in the strip. It’s Happy Hour after all and a majority of our ideas and stories come while we are sitting in the bar, drinking a couple of beers. Also, if they were about to enter a Gentleman’s Club and not Trippers, than boobs would have been the more appropriate word.

What will Jim do with his turkey? Maybe he’ll cook it, maybe he’ll throw it out a window, or maybe he’ll donate it to charity. Be sure to come back and find out!

-Phil

Is also Thankful for ad clicks

-Anoroc

I’ve basically jammed out a new working schedule that will give me a bit more freetime to play videogames, sleep, and maybe socialize a bit, and I think all of those things will be good for not just myself, but for the comics as well. The new schedule will basically take what I’ve been frantically doing in two or three days, and spreading it out over 5 or 6. This way I can write and sketch the next comic Tuesday. Resketch elements and start inking Wednesday. Spend my sweet time getting the linework the way I want it… and then color, shade, and drop in the text and bubbles late in the week, or even over the weekend.

This should mean a few really awesome things for you: first, that Gleeful Nihilism is up earlier in the morning. Second, that B4B will actually update on time. Third, that I’ll have some time to work on some secret projects I’ve been writing for a while now. And fourth, maybe I’ll finally have time to work on some decent merch and stuff to sell at conventions I have my eye on for 2010.

Thought I’d give you the heads up on all this while it was fresh in my brains, and I’ll add it to the header later this week. Thanks for reading, and hopefully I’ll have the comic up tonight or early tomorrow.

I recommend checking for mortal wounds before flipping out and screaming at unresponsive friends and family… but that’s just me.

Wishful thinking…

I keep thinking today(sunday) is Saturday. I got no idea why. Lately all I’ve wanted is more sleep. When I can, I try to sleep as much as possible. More to come later, as I am going to employ this sleep ideal and try to get some right now.

-Phil

sleepy

Morning

Yes Chris, full color on a Monday! We are trying this new thing were we have more color strips. They take a bit longer, so we will see how the timing works as far as getting everything we need to accomplish done. I think we will be alright and you all will have beautiful color, everyday.

There was one year where I achieved the $300 dollars in order to get the free turkey. Since I went to my parents for Thanksgiving I left it in the back of freezer for a long time. One day I eventually realized that it was still back there, so instead of putting it in a bag I just tossed it the garbage can outside. When I woke up the next day and went out to my car I found the garbage on its side and my frozen turkey ravaged on the ground. I was actually delighted by this sight as it would have just been wasted if it made it to the dump, at least this way a family of raccoons or wild dogs had something to eat.

Find out what Jim does with his turkey as I am sure he simply will not let it sit in a freezer for several months before tossing it.

-Phil

Will actually cook a turkey this year

I recorded a live sport… (Happy Hour blog — Afternoon Edition)

Tonight I had to work, so I recorded the Devils game and asked my friends and family to kindly not tell me the result. Luckily I have nice friends and family, so no one one told me the outcome. It’s new to me and I love it. Though it was very difficult not to check ESPN on my phone in order to get the score. Even my mom texted me, “watching the Devils game”. This text I did not expect and immediatey texted back “not home, taping it. Do not text results”. I said “taping” because I did not know if she would understand me if I said “DVR’n it”

This is your second Friday strip, so if you missed the morning strip just click previous and you can read it. Here Myles let’s his friends know that he was dreaming about them and Jim is a little creeped out. I don’t mind it when my lady friends dream about me, but when the first thing in the morning that Jim says to me is, “Dude, totally dreamed about you last night”, I’m not happy.

Hey, have a nice weekend.

-Phil

sleepy

It’s not that I’m a pessimist, I just want all of the in-your-face-optimists to burn in hell for all eternity. That’s all.

“shit-like” would have been wrong, however. It just sounds stupid… you stupid, stupid, loserface.

My Call to Duty…

Is Call Of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 nothing more than government propaganda to get our youth to join the military? Perhaps. I know the army has these recruitment centers where you can play life size simulators that give you “a combat experience”. MW 2 would be a great way to get you started. I would say that it’s gotten me started, but I’ve been playin “Borderlands” lately and the only thing that has done to me is crave some sort of “Mad Max” scenario.

It’s Friday so this is the strip were Myles wakes up and realizes that his college dreams were all delusions of grandeur or as Robert Rodriguez would put it “a dream sequence”. Yeah that’s right we just pulled off the world’s first comic dream sequence. Jealous? I knew you would be.

You may also have noticed that we didn’t have a new strip on Thursday… well here it is. Read it now because at noon it is going to switch over to Friday’s strip, assuming I programmed it right.

-Phil

I got green smoke.

BTW, Pete won the guessing the New Brunswick locale contest from Wednesday’s strip. He was dead on. I don’t know if that is a testiment to Pete’s attention to landscape design or Jim’s ability to draw. Pete, I will be emailing you because you won a prize. Way to go!

Quick, everyone worship the made-up gods my crazy brother made up. Maybe they’ll end this goddamn heat. Sure, I was fine with it being nice all the way through October, but when it’s in the mid 60s during November, I start looking to do whatever I can to please the snow gods.

Don’t make me turn to human sacrifices.

The Concerning
Hey Regulars, it’s everyone’s favorite comic artist Jim here! I have for some time now frequently found myself faced with a concern over the backgrounds of Happy Hour. This strip is a good example of times where I get caught up in the moment, and just keep making the background more and more detailed. Now, I will be the first to admit that the backgrounds are rarely integral to the joke of the strip. However, we here at Happy Hour take pride in the strip, and like to make them amercing.

So, anytime you see one of these backgrounds that seem overly complicated, take pride in knowing that someone over here at Happy Hour wanted to massage your eyeballs with a little world unto you and the characters portrayed in them.

This particular background was my representation of a certain little spot on Rutgers. 5 points to anyone who can tell me which one.

Happy guessing!

-Jim-

…that every sack lunch will have awesome sandwiches with tasty bread that hasn’t sucked up all your condiments and meat juices. That your lettuce will stay crisp and not get all gross and slimy. That someone will make this for me so I can not only have awesome bread, but so that I can reap all the financial benefits by suing their asses for stealing my idea.

Sorry for missing a week, but my parents visited the weekend of Halloween which threw off Monday’s update. And then my brother attempted suicide again Wednesday around 1am and so my Wed/Thurs/Fri was consumed by that. Then the Anime NebrasKon was this past weekend and I hit that with a few friends. So I’ve been busy.

I’ll blog about this later today prolly, but I’m gonna go back to once a week updates I think. I’ll explain more there. To put it quickly: it’ll give me more time to focus on the story and art, will mean I shouldn’t miss or be late for deadlines, and can hopefully push out this other comic I’m writing sometime in early 2010. More in the blog… once I write it…

(It didn’t help that my one-off comic idea for Monday’s Gleeful Nihilism snowballed into a weeklong story arc either… when the inspiration bug bites, you just go with it. So most of my Sunday was spent writing and sketching a weeks worth of comics for that.)

So, I’ve decided to skip the Monday, November 2nd update for the sake of my sanity. I’ll have it posted on Thursday instead, which works better actually, because it will give me time to start on next week’s comics before the Anime Nebraskon this Fri/Sat/Sun in Omaha. I’m not gonna have a table at it (because I have nothing to sell anyway), but I will be there and will have some business cards for the comics. It’s more of a meet and greet sorta thing for me… and no, I’m not gonna be targeting the main group of attendees, cause if I wanted to do that, I shoulda got merch ready and gotten a table. Instead, my focus will be on meeting and hopefully networking with the other artist/webcomic types in attendance.

I apologize for the skipped update, I’ve been trying to be timely and not skip stuff for whatever reason, but hopefully you understand and don’t hate me. I’ll see ya Thursday. And I’ll bring a comic with me. Promise.

UPDATE (11/5/09): my little brother is in the hospital again. He started to make cyanide in the apartment on the 4th, around 1am while I was at work, stopped and checked into the local mental ward place. He’s doing alright but the parents came back up that night, I was back and forth between the hospital all Wednesday, and didn’t get any real good sleep until Thursday afternoon. So, Thursdays comic was delayed too. Both should be up next week, since I’m already shading the one that shoulda been up Thursday. Hopefully in my downtime at the con this weekend I can sketch/ink next Thursdays and stay on track. Anyway, sorry but once again, its all sorta out of my control.

Slowly, but surely, you will figure out what that apartment looks like. And after that has happened, I’ll finish the schematic and post it. I’m not just gonna hand out everything… that’d make you look stupid. And I know you aren’t that… are you?

…what? Don’t act like you wouldn’t. You know it sounds delicious!

Sorry this is a day late, but the original posters and shading job I’d done didn’t pass my QA inspection (ie: i hated it). So I redid those and ended up spicing up the dialogue a bit. Then I hated the font so I’m trying a different font. Depending on when you’re reading it, it could have changed a few times as I test a few I like on different sized screens and resolutions.

Anyway, I’m off to do whatever now. See ya, monday.

If you really want to read everything that’s in the 3rd panel, you should read the X-mas Storyline from the start. But, honestly, starting from the Thanksgiving storyline would probably make the most sense…

Either way, it’ll make a lot more sense than me trying to sum it up here or in a single comic. And it will be a lot more interesting and time consuming for you, too! I suggest reading it at work/class instead of whatever you’re supposed to do! Just don’t laugh at inappropriate times. You might get busted …or look insane.

I’ve never been cold in my life. It’s true. Know why!? Cause I’m a MAN!!!

…in the summer, it’s a PARTAY!!!!

I redid a bunch of the website stuff this weekend… moved handmade widgets into plugins. Made a background and tweaked the ComicPress code a bit. Got the next comic inked. Napped 2 or 3 times every day. All in all, a pretty successful weekend.

Many comics have off days, weeks, or months where the authors/artists are just too busy, sick, or distracted to get up their own content. But, thanks to wonderful friends and connections like this group, we are able to fill in the gap with some amazing guest strips!

As those of you who read our strips regularly already know, Ego & the Squid is currently having a guest week, because Chris has been under the weather and overworked as of late. The guys over at Happy Hour have already had one strip posted, Mark (from B4B and GN) has one coming later this week, Chris’ friends will probably have several strips posted to look forward to, and I’ve heard rumors that a few others in the group have been working on some stuff as well. It’ll be a good chance to see a few of our talented artists/writers tackle someone elses comic universe. You can catch the start of the week right here, and just click forward to browse through it.

And speaking of guest strips, one of our other comics, Ravilob, had a guest week of his own towards the start of 2009, which was rocked by several of our very own talented members, as well. Andy, from Liquid Medication, kicked it off and Chris, from Ego & the Squid, provided a strip as well. You can catch the start of it by clicking here, and if you’re wondering why this is so late, you can blame Mark for being busy as hell during the first half of 2009 and never pushing “publish” on the article he started about it.

As usual, we thank you for your viewership and hope you enjoy our comics. Keep checking in for more news, new members, and other awesome updates from all of us at Off The Wall Comics.

As of July 27, John has decided it is time to take a break from Hooray For Pandas. There is a pretty good sized archive over at his site, though, and if you never checked it out while alive and kicking, you should most definitely drop in and cruise through the archive.

They were one of the early comics that joined the group and have made me laugh a lot over the past year. Thanks for the laughs, John, and I hope to see something else from you with time. It would be ashame for the internet not to have your strange humor on it in some new way.

We not only have a new comic in our midst, but they have been around long enough to have their own Wikipedia page! That’s right, Happy Hour has joined the Off The Wall Comics collective, and we’re proud as hell to have them here. If you haven’t stumbled across their comic before, you should definitely check it out.

It was created in 2004 by Jim Kohl and first appeared in the Rutgers University Newspaper “The Daily Targum” (November 30, 2004, Volume 136, No. 60) and in the 5 years since, Happy Hour has gone on to amass over 800 strips, along with several shoot offs involving the comics side characters. Happy Hour is unique because of it’s one panel format with a continuous storyline. But don’t let that fool you, because each strip can be read alone… its just that when read in conjunction with the strips prior or following, you will have a much greater appreciation of the humor and character interaction.

Currently the strip is drawn and written by Jim Kohl with the help of Phil Kriser, who colors strips and maintains the website. Right now, Happy Hour is mostly focused around two main characters, Jim and Phil, who are the catalysts for most of the strips, however there is a rich secondary cast that often appears alongside the main cast (and are the stars of The Brewery, Shiver Me Burgers, and The Barb Exam).

Definitely drop by to welcome them to the group, and make them feel welcome as the newest members of Off The Wall Comics.

The webcomic Ravilob, the little town that awesome built, turns 1 yr old today. In the past year,Ravilob.com, has grown from a four panel black and white humor comic to a full page, color comic. And these days, Ravilob isn’t just a humor comic, but works topics ranging from comedy and adventure, to sci-fi and fantasy.

Currently, Ravilob.com is looking back on the origins of it’s most popular character, Mort, the Alien Slacker. This prequel shows how Mort came to Ravilob and how he met his friends, Hugo and Whitney. You can also see fan art, guest strips, and pictures from conventions by navigating through the sites extra pages.

This was Casey William’s first attempt at drawing and writing an ongoing comic and he is not only looking forward to what advances and changes come during this second year, but would like to invite everybody to join him in the wonderful town of Ravilob.

We’ve been getting a steady stream of submissions over the past few months, and we definitely appreciate all the interest. But, for those of you looking at applying, reapplying, wondering about the first application’s progress, or for those of you who haven’t yet applied, I wanted to draw your attention to the new Joining page. We’ve put up some more specific requirements which we’re asking all of our members (current and new) to abide to for everyone’s sake.

We also moved the “on hiatus” comics to the new R.I.P. section of the site since none of them seemed to be making a comeback, and we’ve pulled their links from the dropdown so the mainpage and dropdown only have comics that are active and holding a regular schedule.

And finally, we’re asking the members for new ideas on the logo. The new header/logo is just something quick Mark whipped up in some spare time… so, be on the lookout for a change on that front in the future.

Thanks for sticking with us throughout the past year… this month does actually mark the 1 year anniversary of the groups creation. Hopefully we’ll be celebrating many, many more of these.