Chapter Four of PRACTICAL DEFENCE is Now Live!
Come for the hot fresh comics, stay for a personal coda to the Olympic Games!
Happy August, Dear Reader. If your summer has been lacking in a little Mediterranean Pirate Adventure, I'm happy to say that the first instalment of Chapter Four of Practical Defence Against Piracy is up, ready to read, right now.
Plus, instead of doing what I've done with previous instalments — sharing chapters four-to-six pages at a time, each week — I'm uploading Chapter Four in fewer instalments. Probably two or three, depending on how the story breaks. This is because I don't like updating my websites, and serving the story in such small chunks doesn't benefit the reading experience, anyway.
Enjoy!
THE PILLARS OF HERCULES RETROSPECTIVE
Over the past few weeks, I've been sharing a retrospective look back at the third Delilah Dirk book, Delilah Dirk and the Pillars of Hercules. Think of it like a cross between a director's DVD commentary and Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, if you're familiar. It's been fun revisiting these books with the benefit of the little bit of objectivity that the passage of time has granted.
DD3 was a difficult book to finish — how do the results hold up? Should I frame it and put it on the wall or set it on fire and chuck it in the swamp? Are those my only two options?
… assuming you're a paid patron, that is. And in case you've missed the news, if you would like to become a patron, do not sign up using the iOS app. (It's safe to say: do not use the iOS app at all, if you can help it. It's just not a good or useful app.)
HORSE DRAWINGS
I'm pencilling Chapter Five right now, and Chapter Five involves drawing a LOT of horses. So I took a day to either procrastinate aggressively or conscientiously prepare myself for the challenge ahead, by drawing from a paused video replay of the Olympic Equestrian Cross Country event. (If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, the image carousel above might look strange for you.)
I love doing this type of drawing. It's a shame I don't make time to do more of it. I should, too, because while it felt indulgent at the time, drawing the horses in Chapter Five has since been much easier than I was anticipating.
I also love the Olympics, and I am sad that they're over. I get the same melancholy feeling after an Olympic Games that I do after returning home from a good vacation. Underneath… all this (gestures to self)… I think I am an idealist, and (regardless of my biases) I do secretly believe in the Olympics' notions of peace and international good will through sportsmanship.
And then there are the biases. Well, here's my mom, furthest to the right, running a 400m heat in the 1968 Summer Olympics, held in Mexico City:
She was an Olympian! She held the national record for the Women's 400m for several years. After her own athletic career, she spent her life helping youth work toward their own similar dreams. Plus, this year, the same Women's 400m preliminaries were held on what would have been her birthday.
You would think being in The Olympics is something she would have talked about… at all, ever… but she didn't. Not around me, at least. For the longest time, I never understood that, but I think I get it now.
So since she neither can nor would toot her own starter's pistol, I will do it here, and wish her a belated birthday, too. I hope you enjoyed the Olympics, and if you didn't, couldn't, or wouldn't have wanted to, I hope at least its ideals have a place in your life somewhere.
— TC
