That's great - although man your pencil does improve when you turn it on yourself, such skin tones!

About the writer's strike? I read your skreed and I think that the problem is actually Hollywood itself. No-name writers are just terribly disposable people. As I was telling Silvervulpine the other day, writers are like bassists in a heavy metal band. If one of us dies on stage, you can pretty much grab anyone out of the mosh pit and have the band back up and running by the second set. The Hollywood writer packs words into formulas and occasionally cracks a funny joke. They might as well be factory workers fearing replacement by robots.

So, unions form out of self-defense, if not against greedy producers then against the throngs of other writers eager to do their jobs for next to nothing (people like me ) and because this is the only control on their wage they do whatever the union tell them to. Non-union writers? We make less than most illegal immigrant fruit pickers, and that's on a good day. Starving artists throw us scraps of bread. So I don't blame the writers for picketing. If they don't support the union they can kiss their jobs goodbye.

On the whole it is sad, sad to see people being so greedy, but that's our world. Those who do the least amount of work often make the most money - and usually through tricks like this. Maybe the office workers should form a union of their own, as well as the stagehands, best boys, hair stylists.... Eventually Hollywood would shut down and everything would be made by Bollywood. I always wanted to see a Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel done as a musical


In the meantime, here's an interesting idea for a show: FanFic! It's reality TV meets the serial drama. In each episode a cast of no-name actors work from a script taken from some kid's fan fiction website - in all its rough hewn and unspellchecked glory. It may not be good but it'd probably be a hell of a lot more entertaining then what we get now.



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Great strip!

While I can see the point of writers getting paid royalties for new media sales I fail to see how a strike is helping their cause. Especially when they berate others for going to work.

Yes, they may need fair compensation but by preventing other groups from working they certainly can't be making a good point.

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"Yoda is an alright guy, but he still fits the description of "huge asshole." During the first minute he's on screen, he steals Luke's food, a flashlight, and beats R2D2 with his walking stick."

I've had a lot of practice drawing and coloring myself -- I'm very narcissistic.

You're right, there is a huge section of America that dreams of being a Hollywood writer. I'm sure there's at least one person in every TV watching household that says at some point to everyone else, "I could write better crap than that!" I know I have. And I know I could. So knowing that, it surprises me that these faceless writers have the nerve to strike about anything. They expect people to have sympathy because they're missing out on DVD and Internet royalties, and that at any one time 48% of the work force is unemployed? Sounds like the trappings that come with the personal choice of pursuing an unsecured field for a career.

After doing a little recon, I found that one sticking point between Hollywood and the writer's guild is that 20 years ago the WGA agreed to cut their royalty percentage to help the industry get the VHS market moving, with the promise that as soon as it was established, they'd get that percentage back. I'm completely for them getting what was promised to them back, but to go about trying to get it back in the manner they are makes me sick. It's like when PETA assaults innocent people with paint and verbal harassment for wearing a fur coat ... even if you have a noble cause, you kill your own message with irrational/childish behavior.

I would totally love to see a show like FanFic!. I'm not praying this strike lasts long enough to wear Hollywood is forced to make it!

To me, it's the ultimate douchebag move...especially given how well the average writer is compensated already. Junior writers -- who from what I can tell are the lowest rung of the guild -- still average about 50g's a year. That's more than a lot of blue collar service and factory people in this country make in a year. I'm sorry, but Jay Leno's nightly monologue has never been 50g's worth of funny -- nor has anything else for that matter.

Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment...

It's my understanding that the Standard of Living in L.A. (and the immediate vicinity) is practically double that of the rest of the country. So a $50K job roughly equates to $25K elsewhere. The majority of production companies obviously don't want original ideas, so getting a good gig is probably difficult to get and just as hard to keep.




Wow, that left a bad taste in my mouth.

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"Yoda is an alright guy, but he still fits the description of "huge asshole." During the first minute he's on screen, he steals Luke's food, a flashlight, and beats R2D2 with his walking stick."

"Pursuing an unsecured field for a career."

See. I just came back from the bars so take everything in this one with a grain of salt (kinda like a margarita but without the fancy glass). See. I think writers get fooled into their careers. My high school guidance counselor told me to join the peace corp and that was about it. Burn all guidance counselors!

Really, I think the problem with writing is that we're all too gullible and the only thing you can do with a degree in creative writing is either write or teach other people to write, which in turn means either starving yourself or fooling other people into writing. People wonder why I don't teach writing and really it comes back to the old adage of "give a man a fish and he'll eat a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life." Except. When it comes to writing and teaching how to write, it's more like, "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish - but first make him sign an agreement to give you the first seven fish he catches with 10% interest, all the while knowing full well that the lakes in your area have been overfished or are burned out by acid rain - and he'll probably lose his house. Then what kind of bastard does that make you out to be?

Bartender! Hit me!

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