Comic #990: Put a Ring on It (Patreon)

This came from an intrusive thought I had when trying to come up with a comic idea around the concept of ring slots. I originally wanted multiple characters each one-upping each other about their ring slots, eventually leading to a depressed troll with fewer digits than everyone else. I suddenly had a mental image of Miji standing legs splayed open declaring he had 21 rings to the horror of the rest of the characters. I went back and forth a bit about whether or not to do it, because it's a bit crass, but in the end I decided to use Donald instead of Miji and it somehow felt less vulgar. Also he's done way worse (Mr. Bun comes to mind).

This is also a rare four-panel comic. I just couldn't think of a good fifth panel. Nothing I thought of made the comic any better, so I just decided to keep it at four.

Also the speech bubble over his crotch was a last minute addition. Originally He was going to have pants on and I was hoping the joke would come across anyway. In the end as I was placing the characters I realized I could use the speech bubble to make the joke a little more obvious.

It wasn’t until I started drawing the comic this morning that I realized I don’t ever draw my characters with 5 fingers. It’s always four. I panicked for a second thinking the joke wouldn’t work at all until I realized that if I just draw everyone with 5 fingers for a single comic I had a good chance that absolutely nobody would notice. So out of curiosity, was I right? Did any of you notice the characters had more fingers than normal?

Strangely enough I had a REALLY hard time drawing 5 fingers. I'm just so not used to it. I ended up having to take pictures of my own hands and use them as reference just to get it to look right.

I almost called this comic “Ring Ding Dong”. Maybe I should have. I was worried it might spoil the punchline.