Interview from Matt Allred about the 3MM comic. Read it here!
Running Into Trouble
This is one of those pages where I stuck a lot of effects into the last panel, and Max decided to take them all out because he felt they were just in the way.
I actually agree, I just didn’t have any opportunity to add stuff to the other panels and I didn’t want to look like I was slacking.
You know how it is. When all you have is a hammer, etc. But I was happy to let him make the final creative decision here. Got enough on my plate.
We have lived in our current house for almost 28 years now. And like all houses, ours is constantly trying to fall apart. Currently, I’m fighting with the sprinkler system. Again.
Sprinkler systems use plastic pipe, which is kind of fun to work with when you are first laying them out; it’s like an adult version of TinkerToys. You have pipes and connectors and valves and bushings, and you can glue it all together and bury it in the ground and it works, so you forget about it. You’re just watering some grass and a couple of tiny trees and shrubs.
But years pass and the PVC pipes start to get brittle with age and the trees grow tall and strong and support themselves with huge gnarly roots and the shrubs become huge and dense and covered in thorns and attract bees. So when the pipes eventually crack (and they always do, because the huge gnarly roots start pressing them against subterranean stones) trying to dig said pipes up again is difficult, to say the least. Trying to dig them up without doing even more damage is impossible, at least for me. I’ve been trying to find the source of a dribbly leak in a pipe somewhere in the embankment behind the retaining wall. Needless to say, the place where the water is seeping through the wall is nowhere near the place where the pipe is actually leaking. I was able to at least determine that much before my attempts to unearth the pipe resulted in my shattering it completely.
So now I have to chop through roots and unearth rocks and make a hole big enough for me to fix the pipe where I broke it — just so that I can turn the water on and pressurize the system enough to find the place where the original leak was, which of course is still in there somewhere.
All so that the DWP can raise our water rates again. Yeah, yeah, #firstworldproblems. I don’t care. Everyone needs a nemesis, and the sprinkler system is mine.
As it happens, the strip’s artist and his wife are now looking into the possibility of purchasing a house of their own. I wish them well. And as regards yard maintenance, I have but one word of advice for them.
Concrete.
— Bob out
