I will be keeping Fox around as a character, but I think she’s very thankful that she won’t be answering questions anymore.
There’s a certain skill needed for answering these questions, and it’s a skill that only Captain Pete seems to have. It’s being an idiot savant, with a heavy focus on the idiot. So Fox’s main disqualification was that of a working brain.
Meanwhile, there’s one note I want to make sure is clear: We now have an official moratorium on answering questions involving rum’s goneness.
On a happier note, I want to say that I’m thankful for three things. I’m thankful for the internet. I’m thankful for the support of my wife. And I’m thankful for laughter.

dern
hotstoving

This image was in my head when I woke up today, and I had to make it into comic form. It’s the Weighted Companion Cube from the game Portal, after you broke it’s heart. You know what you did.

I was reading over Mark Evanier’s blog, and he noted that there are seven different food groups that people will fight over which are the best.

Hamburgers
Pizza
Chinese Food
Barbecue (ribs, especially)
Philly Steak Sandwiches
Hot Dogs
Clam Chowder

So I started thinking – where have I had the best of each?

Hamburgers – In ‘n’ Out is king for me. I understand that if I grew up in Maryland and moved to California instead, it would be Five Guys (which is definitely my No. 2).

Pizza – Woodstocks Pizza in Chico, Calif. It has some good college memories to it. Though I occasionally miss and crave Round Table’s Pizza, a chain on the west.

Chinese Food – I had a couple special places in California that I liked, but were more or less the same. Jesse Wong’s Hong Kong in Columbia, Md., is my current favorite.

Barbecue (ribs, especially) – Andy Nelson’s Barbecue, Hunt Valley, Md. Because hogs smell better barbecued.

Philly Steak Sandwiches – I started with Pat’s. But I’ve eaten far more from Royal Pizza (Columbia, Md.), Philly Cheesesteak Company (Frederick, Md.), and The Real Thing (Towson, Md.).

Hot Dogs – Candlestick Park, San Francisco. I’m not sure if the Giants still serve the taste-test winner at AT&T Park. It was one of my favorites. As a big-time hot dog connoisseur, I prefer the Costco dogs, too. At home, I cook the Hebrew National quarterpound frank on an “awesome roll.” Extra mustard.

Clam Chowder – I’m a white chowder guy, served from a sourdough bread bowl. The best at this is this place on Cannery Row in Monterey, Calif. There’s another good place right on the coast in San Francisco, just outside of Golden Gate Park. I can’t remember either name at the moment.

OK, where are your seven?

dern

first halftastic!

And so Cthulhu heads back to Hades and the land of the Caf-Fiends. I’m a little sad to see him go, for he’s really my first 4.0 model for Dear Pirate. However, he’s not a pirate, so it’s time to get back to the nautical and the advisory.
I do want to touch on one thing I just said – 4.0. It’s one of those things that kind of annoys me about the archives, in that I’ve changed the art styles and mediums a total of three times now.
First, it was a badly done sketch, which was initially on a piece of lined paper. I digitally removed the lines, but didn’t do a whole lot more of drawing.
Then I grew tired of cutting and pasting the same pirate over and over. So I practiced, improved my skills, and came out with the 2.0 launch (and ninja Hasselhoff). This was fun, but my desires to improve my line art came to a crashing halt when I was eating a Chipotle burrito one day. I realized that all that clay on sale could turn into something really, really awesome. And then, the 3.0 art was born.
That was June of 2007 (though a good chunk of the first clay Pete was in May of 2007). I didn’t really know what I was doing then. His body was solid Sculpey III, and his armature was from paper clips. I had no tools other than a pair of pliers, my fingers and some push pins. And somehow, it worked really, really well.
But the mistakes made on that first build grew to haunt me. The paper clips were too stiff to easily move around, so photo shoots were a pain. Heck, photo shooting in general was a pain, as my “studio” was the coffee table in the dining room, where I taped some paper to a lamp, then hung a flashlight from a string on the ceiling. There was not a lot of control, and my ancient digital camera was on its last legs.
Things finally took a turn for the ugly when the clay doll fell while packing my house up for a move. Pete shattered. There was just no coming back for that body.
This past month, I’ve been building a new Pete. There are touches of him that I kept the same, like his multi-colored brain of Sculpey III, his double hook hands, and his peg legs. But now, there’s 24-guage wire for the armature, with plenty of built-in aluminum to strengthen his torso and butt. He’s even got a shiny new swashbuckle, and some other surprises to come.
Next week, Pete’s back, and you better hold onto your hat.
Dern
A young Cy Young

Cthulhu will be leaving us soon to head back to the Caf-fiends.
It’s odd how easy it is to make something that should be the greatest nightmare for everyone everywhere into the cutest wittle adorable thing in the cutest whole wide world.
Funny times.

Dern
bye

The cross-over with the Caf-Fiends continues.
We’ll have a couple more questions for Cthulhu before we have to give him back. So if you hurry, you can still send one in just for the big guy.
Meanwhile, my Halloween was spent playing rounds of Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour. That being said, there’s been more than a few calls for me to compare and contrast the two. I’ll do this, but not right now.
In the meantime, I’d like to focus on one feature of GHWT: unlocking rock stars to play against you. Stars like Billy Corgan, Sting and Ozzy Osbourne. And then you can also unlock Ted Nugent.
Far be it for me to mock Ted Nugent. He is both the Nuge and the Motor City Madmen. I’ve watched many an episode of Ted Nugent’s Spirit of the Wild, where the Nuge demonstrates his lack of sanity and breadth of arsenal as he hunts random animals. I imagine that if the show were still shooting today, there’d be a shark week, along with a month-long crusade against squirrels using a crossbow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNynwt4I_k0
Yes, I do love the Nuge.
But in reading over a forum post about his battle, one poster wondered who he was, and why was his guitar battle so awesome. Someone clarified that he was a character in Guitar Hero, then wondered if he also played guitar in the real world. A third person then noted that he probably doesn’t, because he looks like a cowboy.
Ladies, Gentlemen, Scallywags. Damn Yankees is the band you’re looking for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl2WuR38l8U
Thank you, that is all.

Dern
Dropped what?

I give you Cthulhu, a Halloween treat!
On loan from his home in Hades, which is a lovely little slice of the world of the Caf-Fiends, Cthulhu will be answering questions for the next few days. If you have a particular question that is suited for one of the Great Old Ones, then please send it in immediately (the big green guy is only here until Halloween).
As for Cap’n Pirate Pete? Well, catch his return to 2D at the Caf-Fiends. As of right now, Blondie has actually managed to draw Pete from more angles than I ever have.
While I’m on the topic of link-fu, let me direct your attention to the following charity band, Band From TV. The main reason that I’m bringing this to your attention is that Matt Parkman, er, Greg Grunberg, and Dr. House, er, Hugh Laurie, are rocking out.
And finally, this one is not for the kids, but it is for those that are fans of more twisted humor. Bryan Prindiville, who in fact is a legend that walks among us (and helps people move into houses), is relishing into his darker humor with Broken Muzzle. Note that this may be the last kind words I have for him until Christmas, when I intend on serving him his shame from getting beat by me at Super Art Fight II (Dec. 20, the Ottobar, Baltimore, Md.).

dern
I like Mike. No, really.

Pete just needs some time away. Perhaps he’ll get a good cup of coffee from the Caf-Fiends?

In the meantime, The Fox will be here to answer some questions.

dern

blow out the candles, mom

This comic is brought to you by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Please consider donating to them at http://www.cbldf.org/

For a fuller story, I should note that this strip, and particularly the character of The Fox, was something that had been in the works since the summer of 2007. As part of a charity auction for the CBLDF, I offered up a guest appearance in Dear Pirate. The winner also had control over what their character would end up looking like. Hence, a fox.

I’ll be having a few more appearances by The Fox in the future, along with another new character coming very, very soon. I have it on good authority that he’s already on his way.

Also, it appears that one of the two questions asked for Monday’s comic came from Joe D, who’s the Joe of Joe Loves Crappy Movies. It’s a strip that I’m actually quite a fan of, even if he pointed out (correctly) that I’m a bit of a lazy pirate, and sometimes it takes two years for a question to get answered.

dern

singletary 

This comic missed getting onto the site on Sunday by 30 minutes. I’d like to claim California heritage on this, as a note that in California, there’s still 150 minutes of Sunday left.

But still, this will count as the Monday update for this week.

There’s a lot of new readers coming in, so I thought I should note that this is how we do things around here. Normally, people send in questions, and then they’re answered by Pirate Pete. And yes, he’s clay.

But at the same time, there’s a lot of other bits of insanity floating around here. There will often be posts of a sculpture of Paper, Rock and Scissors battling in a ring of death, or the most recent Bat-Kirby side-tracking. Just think piracy, advice, clay, and strangeness, and that almost starts to explain Dear Pirate.

dern

Yeah, you’d like me to say something about that.

]]> http://dernwerks.com/dearpirate/2008/10/20/sunday-sunday-sunday/feed/ http://dernwerks.com/dearpirate/2008/10/17/the-bat-kirby-strikes/ http://dernwerks.com/dearpirate/2008/10/17/the-bat-kirby-strikes/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2008 07:48:03 +0000 Administrator Dear Pirate http://dernwerks.com/dearpirate/2008/10/17/the-bat-kirby-strikes/

Sometimes, weeks just don’t go as planned. This would probably count as one of those weeks, as I unfortunately did not get to sit down on Tuesday to make this comic. Instead, I got to sit down in the wee hours of Friday morning.

This means there will be a weekend update on the site, plus some more goodies to come next week. And then Halloween week? Well, that’d be telling.

dern

had a reason to bail on Bonds.

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