Okay, my bad. Looks like the diamond-tipped bullet exited just under the fifth rib somewhere. Still makes it hard to carry much loot.
This page was brought to you by the color Orange. Because Halloween is coming.
Bobservations
The Ween II
Man, I just realized it’s been over a year since we started running 3 Minute Max! So this is actually my second Halloween post. Technically I’m a bit early, but the art on this page is so orange-and-black it is thematically required.
This year Halloween falls on a Thursday, which is sort of a bummer, because it makes parties on the previous weekend seem a little early to anyone who is still working on their costume (which is everyone) and Halloween parties that take place after Halloween just don’t seem to work right. Also, there will be barely any moon. But you can’t have a Full-Moon Friday Halloween every year, any more than you can have a White Christmas every year. You have to have the lamer ones too, so you can appreciate the good ones all the more.
I like Halloween as a festival in general, since it inspires creativity in the celebrants and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Also, I can buy pumpkins for cheap and afterwards fill them with blood and blow them up.
Hey, you have your traditions, I have mine.
I’m seeing the decorations go up in various places; when we first moved to our area we were all new families with small children and of course everyone got into it. Lots of decoration, lots of trick-or-treaters (real ones, small children in costumes wired on sugar and giddy with excitement) and parents with flashlights back on the sidewalk chattering with the neighbors.
Personally, I loved tormenting the trick-or-treaters. For a couple of years I wore a bloodstained wifebeater shirt with rips in it, used hairspray and a brush to rat my hair (which was pretty long back then) into a disheveled mess, didn’t shave for a week, and applied soot to my eye sockets. I would lurk by the door, and when the trick-or-treaters knocked, I would not answer. I would wait, as they waited, hearing them whisper to themselves about maybe no one being home, and then there would be a tentative second knock — at which point I would hurl the door open and burst forth, looking like a serial killer interrupted in his work, and bellow WHADDYAWANT!!???
Oh, I scared the pee out of some small children doing that. Literally, in some cases. They would flee in terror, shrieking, and would have to be coaxed back to get candy. The ones that were crying got extra candy. In a weird way it seemed to be popular though. I had to stop after the third year because I could hear the experienced ones warning the others as they came up the driveway.
So I switched tactics. Again, I waited until the second knock, but I just opened the door sleepily in my robe, and looked stunned to find children in costume on my doorstep. I expressed astonishment and regret upon being informed it was Halloween. I muttered something about having completely forgotten, but maybe I could find something… and I would shuffle off and come back with a basket of some of the oldest, most unattractive fruit I could lay in for the purpose. Brown bananas, withered apples, moldy oranges — maybe these would do?
It was so cute how polite the little kids would be. They would look very doubtful but assure me it was okay, and would start to take some of the least reprehensible specimens — when I would suddenly slap my forehead and remember oh yes, there was this other bowl — and I would pull out a huge bowl of candy bars.
So much relieved laughter and joy, and the ones who had been most polite got extra candy.
But the years passed, and the children grew older, and I think I knew the end was coming when the little girl who lived around the corner sashayed down my driveway one year in a harem costume that made it abundantly clear that she was not a little girl any more. I almost dropped the candy bowl.
Now of course, all the children are gone, and about all we get these days are the surly teens from other neighborhoods who show up reeking of weed and without costumes, demanding candy. They get the cheap stuff, if any at all.
But I know that out there in the Real World the original children are busy getting jobs and homes and married. And with any luck, before too much longer it will be time for the Grandchildren to start making the rounds and we’ll have real trick-or-treaters again.
I look forward to scaring the pee out of them.
–Bob out
Artist’s Notes:
Just gotta chime in really quick here- They bullet basically shot through the fleshy part of his back shoulder, near the Teres Major. He’ll live but he won’t be doing any pushups for a while.
Also, having a lot of great new pageviews from what we can I think safely assume are from the Comic Rocket and Collective of Heroes crowd- thanks very much for your patronage and all the compliments on the art and writing thus far.
I’ll try and get a little more input into this blog section in the future- I’ve been insanely busy over the past 3 months and Bob has basically been running everything himself- but I foresee a little bit more time available to me now, so expect cool things from the artist’s notes section here.
And the middle right sidebar contains the Top Webcomics Vote button- click it! Every click will add an explosion to the next chapter of 3MM!
-Max
Okay, just found this. Love it. No seriously, awesome comic.
However, some things just seem really out of place.
One, who the hell do our protagonists work for? No-way the whole operation is 4 people and a mild superhero.
Two, our hero seems waaay too gung-ho about the whole thing. Why didn’t he ask any hard questions when he was first brought to the lab? Even a soldier should be able to question that situation.
Three, at the beginning of the story, when the bank robbery happened? That one lady in the purple shirt who set the alarm off had half her body exploded. Pretty sure pistols don’t do that. Minor thing, but still.
I know this is a comic and everything but man, this is getting to me.
Glad you are enjoying it! In semi-answer to your queries:
One– Yep. Just them. Although there is going to be some upcoming inference that Cicertech as a whole may be a larger company with buildings elsewhere that contain office workers and drones and pointy-haired middle managers and this is just a small secret research annex where the neat stuff happens.
Two– He probably would have but there wasn’t time. Hostage crisis in progress. And he had a debt to repay.
Three– Here I shall fall back on the Rule of Cool. 🙂 In this case the graphic initiation of violence by the villain is what justifies the hero’s desperately lethal response.
Oh, and we’re just getting started on the wildness. Do stick around!
Don,
Glad you like it!
One- 4 people seems like plenty to me.
Two- He’s got no self-esteem apart from saving people’s lives.
Three- You have a point. So the death of the bank teller is a little comically over the top but I kind of needed her death to be drastically different from Sophie, who was also shot. That way you can laugh at the bank teller dying, and cry for Sophie.
There are lots more mistakes, though. Keep looking, you’ll find them!
-Max
Believe me, I’ve seen a lot already. Those three seemed the most egregrious to me, though. So I chose not to mention them, since I don’t want to appear TOO negative. I like the story too much!
It’s always tricky trying to anticipate creative types, like web comic writers for instance, but I just thought of one way this story line might proceed.
It hit me when I saw the third panel above and realized that the driver doesn’t look that dissimilar to Max. Add in the fact that they were both shot in the upper body, also that the one witness never saw the driver, but did see Max but didn’t see how he got out of the inferno… The public may end up with a hero to celebrate after all.
Feel free to remove this comment if it’s too spoilerish!
Fynch and Max have a very similar body type and face- but they are not related. I sort of styled him as an Anti-Max. A Wario-Mario kinda relationship.
-Max
I don’t think Paul was implying that they might be related, just that they were similar enough that if Fynch stumbled out of the conflagration with a bullet wound, the guard who survived might misidentify him as the guy who had saved his life. Comic hijinks ensue! Or not.
hmmm…
I know we will see this particular villain again, but it doesn’t look like he’ll look like he does now.
He just might look a little singed about the edges.
Well, he’s not really walking into the fire, he’s just being silhouetted by it.
silhouetted and surrounded.
Yep, it seems like the avatar randomizer has been demonized. I’ll FTP in and just flat out delete that one and see if it reshuffles.
Okay, that seems to have kicked it loose. New avatars for everyone!
Bob,
Totally not comic related but a Halloween story nontheless….best costume and scaring the pee outta kids when when I was in Colorado Springs at Peterson AFB back in the late 1980s.
I dressed up in full Chemical gear with a mask but bare feet and had a toe tag on my foot and laid down next to the sidewalk as a “decoration”.
I’d not move until the kids went up and got candy. There were some “Man that looks so real” and then as they were leaving…I’d reach over and grab some kid’s leg. MUCH Screaming Ensued. Good Times, Good times.
Hee hee!
I’m gonna remember that one. It’s a good idea.
I didn’t remember it until my mother showed me some 2nd grade photos (some were B-n-W), but I dressed up for the school’s Halloween party and night as the Big Bad wolf and carried a toy M-16 a case any macho huntsmen got any bright ideas (my dad’s idea).