Comic #172: The Shoveltusk Problem (Patreon)

Originally Published: January 11th, 2009.

Man, that's a solid first panel, especially for 2009. I really went all out. There's some good detail in there. I feel like you gotta see them in HD to appreciate them.

This one is my favorite:

This one is a close second.

This one I could have done better. I should have had it's head rolled back or something. I'm guessing my thought was the shoveltusk was resting on it's antlers. I couldn't even make out the fourth leg at first... I thought it was it's tail.

This is another one with too many panels that are doing nothing. If each panel looked different it might be okay, but in my opinion if I barely change anything in every panel it just ends up being no different from reading a script. There are exceptions of course, and sometimes having nothing change can be part of the humor. Chief O'Brien at Work comes to mind as a great example of small changes making a comic better. But in that case, the fact that nothing happens is kind of the point. I was just being lazy.

I'm surprised I didn't keep Narya bald with how often I was changing his appearance in the early days. But I guess that didn't really start being a bit until around comic 200 or so.