Another slice of life strip (Issue 106). Tess is an avid reader. Actually, avid is not quite descriptive enough. She devours books. As her teacher last year told us, you never want to tell a kid, “stop reading” but with Tess, you had to. Her nose is always in a book. She easily reads several hundred books a year. Linus, on the other hand, doesn’t like to read. We are hard-pressed to get him to read anything at all. That is, unless it is video game based. Give him a 300 page book on Pokemon and he’ll tear through it. I always thought it was dorky that they made books based on cartoon episodes, but considering that’s the only thing my boys will read (Monty is right behind Linus), I can understand and appreciate them now.

Strip #97 finally gives our readers some information about the paperboy. And, to our astute readers, it may even give them the hint to what movie we are parodying with this whole storyline.

Oh, and I should note that this is the first strip that has even the remotest hint of a political commentary. It was not intentional. Frankly, I am not into Bush-bashing, or any political bashing for that matter. Certainly I have my opinions of these issues, but a fun family-friendly comic is not the forum in which to get on my soapbox. So, fear not, this isn’t the start of a precendence. However, Verde’s line originally was written to use the word bush. By capitalizing it, the phrase has double-meaning, and still is very much in-character for Verde, considering he works for the mayor and therefore has political preferences.

Strip #98 is just a simple slice-of-life comic. No, it’s not over the top funny, but it’s amusing…and true. The story about the hot dog/pigs-in-a-blanket actually happened at Tess’s school a couple years back. I should note, the pigs-in-the-blanket were supposed to be pancakes wrapped around a sausage link, but instead the lunch ladies used hot dogs. Dott’s reaction was pretty much the reaction of the whole school. Tess said that the kids were so grossed out, they gave them all free ice cream to make up for it.

As for the flooding of the bathroom, I think any parent who has a 2 or 3 year old can relate to this. That whole “too quiet” moment, when you realize your little one is getting into mischief. Our kids love of water, and flooding the bathroom happens every few months. Why, you ask? Well, kids need to use the bathroom, and they need to wash their hands. Believe me, it can take just a couple of minutes to overflow the sink and start a waterfall. If someone isn’t constantly playing potty police (which is sometimes not possible), these things happen. Of course, having older kids who are *supposed* to be watching little siblings but aren’t is just as plausible in these parts. Makes us consider getting those automatic sensor faucets they have in public washrooms. Hmm….

Black Friday has actually become as a much a holiday as Thanksgiving itself. Though it has many definitions, predominantly the term “Black Friday” is used to mean the day after Thanksgiving, when most retailers start getting Christmas shoppers. Since holiday shopping sales (meaning the 8 weeks or so in November/December) often account for as much money as the stores makes the rest of the year together, they essentially go from being in the red to the going into the black on their financial books.

This comic (issue 94) was yet again inspired by Linus. Even though in real-life he is a bit older than Max, Linus does provide a lot of material for this character. The other day while watching a television commercial for After-Thanksgiving early bird specials, Linus proceeded to tell us why it was called Black Friday. His explanation (which was identical to the one Max gives) made me laugh out loud. Kids are so innocent and their sincerity is priceless. Of course, I explained the real reason it was called that to our son, but I thought it would make a great strip. Particularly since a lot of people will be celebrating the long weekend (as well as starting their shopping) and won’t be checking the site until Monday or Tuesday. We wanted a small stand-alone strip before jumping back into an ongoing storyline.

On another note, Max and Ada are on the floor coloring in this strip. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. Our kids are all very much into art and drawing. I think we go through more crayons and paper than about anything else. High priced toys and gadget hold nothing over pencils and notebooks. Even though this is a “smiley comic” we really try to add little bits of real-life to it. I think a lot of parents can relate to sitting around while their kids draw and color. Oh, and of course Mike taking a nap on the couch! One of the biggest compliments we get on Bitmap World is how expressive and descriptive we make the smilies and their world. It’s a conscious effort on our part, and we’re delighted people take notice.

Hoping our American friends had a great Thanksgiving, and that everyone has a great start to the year-end holiday season!

We didn’t plan on having a Thanksgiving themed strip. But this was an idea that actually came from real life. Linus’s school had a food drive where they assembled baskets of Thanksgiving food. They were raffled off through a hoop-shoot. The winners didn’t actually have to make a dunk, they won simply if their name was selected from the hat. Then, for fun, the student and teacher competed with the other groups to see who could get the most hoops. Linus was so excited and proud when he came in and announced that he had Thanksgiving dinner taken care of. This actually had more significant meaning since Jim is still out of work and money is tight. Anyhow, using that as a starting point, we thought it would make a cute story for the Pixels. Of course, their ending was a bit more surreal than ours.

When looking at Strip 86, some of our readers may think that we chose Harry’s name specifically for this reason/joke. That’s not true. When we were coming up with names for the characters, we tried to give most of them meaningful names. Such as the next door neighbors are a neon green, and all of their names (for the mostpart) are variations of green. And Mr. Smiley being ironically named so because he never smiles. The majority of the other characters have names that are computer terms or related to the computer field. I simply wanted Harry to be different. And Harry seemed like such an ordinary name–honestly Harry Potter never came into my head once when thinking of this. As for Leroy, since he is Harry 2.0 (their equivalent of Jr.) I thought he needed an ordinary, if not seldom used these days name.

It wasn’t until a few weeks into the strip when I was looking on another website and saw the classic “Happy” emoticon that I realized that smilie was Harry! And then of course I noticed the spelling sameness/difference. It was so funny to me, and perhaps a bit profetic. So, I did this strip.

Oh, and I am editing this entry to add that Dott’s story about how she got Cyan’s name really happened for me. I saw Katherine Hepburn in Woman of the Year. Her character’s name was Tess. I just fell in love with the name, and thus that is how my first daughter got her name!

Mysteries of the Move. What is really funny is that this actually happened to me. Not quite in the same fashion, and not a cellphone, but when I was a teen, I lost something in my house. I can’t even remember what it was now, but it was important at the time. Me and my mom ended up moving some time later. After settling in the new place, I found the item. But, it wasn’t in a box, it was just lying behind something. The question was, how did the item get packed up, moved to the new house, unpacked, and lost again? I guess that is why it is called a mystery.

Strip #97 finally gives our readers some information about the paperboy. And, to our astute readers, it may even give them the hint to what movie we are parodying with this whole storyline.

Oh, and I should note that this is the first strip that has even the remotest hint of a political commentary. It was not intentional. Frankly, I am not into Bush-bashing, or any political bashing for that matter. Certainly I have my opinions of these issues, but a fun family-friendly comic is not the forum in which to get on my soapbox. So, fear not, this isn’t the start of a precendence. However, Verde’s line originally was written to use the word bush. By capitalizing it, the phrase has double-meaning, and still is very much in-character for Verde, considering he works for the mayor and therefore has political preferences.

Strip #98 is just a simple slice-of-life comic. No, it’s not over the top funny, but it’s amusing…and true. The story about the hot dog/pigs-in-a-blanket actually happened at Tess’s school a couple years back. I should note, the pigs-in-the-blanket were supposed to be pancakes wrapped around a sausage link, but instead the lunch ladies used hot dogs. Dott’s reaction was pretty much the reaction of the whole school. Tess said that the kids were so grossed out, they gave them all free ice cream to make up for it.

As for the flooding of the bathroom, I think any parent who has a 2 or 3 year old can relate to this. That whole “too quiet” moment, when you realize your little one is getting into mischief. Our kids love of water, and flooding the bathroom happens every few months. Why, you ask? Well, kids need to use the bathroom, and they need to wash their hands. Believe me, it can take just a couple of minutes to overflow the sink and start a waterfall. If someone isn’t constantly playing potty police (which is sometimes not possible), these things happen. Of course, having older kids who are *supposed* to be watching little siblings but aren’t is just as plausible in these parts. Makes us consider getting those automatic sensor faucets they have in public washrooms. Hmm….