Next in the series of Doll Tragedies, Barbie goes camping! But you’ve spent hours meticulously setting up your campsite just the way you want it – now what? Grill some burgers? Roast some marshmallows? Go for a hike? Tell a campfire story?
i don’t think so.
i don’t know about you, but when i was a kid, my Barbies had everything: the latest and greatest in fluorescent-and-faux-jean 80’s fashion; a huge, beautiful piece of real estate, handcrafted by my father’s own crafty hands; all the plastic food they could ever need, and more plastic pets under one roof than would ever be legal in any state. As the 90’s progressed, they even had ball-and-socket hip joints, enabling almost a full range of motion! (All the better for hot doll-on-doll sloppy makeouts).
So why couldn’t they just live out their fake plastic lives in happiness, thriving in peace and abundance?
Maybe they just felt like there was inexplicably something dark and different inside them, and they didn’t really fit in…
(Or maybe their fake plastic sister was just being totally annoying.)
Obviously, I should’ve gotten the apple butter…
So when we first started talking about doing this comic, Andrea told me a story about running into an old “friend” at a supermarket, and I told her I had a similar experience. Of course, there’s probably no way we were actually in the same supermarket at the same time, but through the magic of webcomics, Hatlee and Wes are (even if they don’t know it yet.)
Sorry for the delay. Gout continued to make my life hell for two straight weeks, plus I worked a lot of overtime at my day job, plus the laptop crashed about every fifteen times, plus I got waaay into the details while inking and coloring this one. Going to have to find an easier way to do that. Thankfully, I get a bit of a break for the next couple weeks, as Sadie makes a return appearance. And wherever there is a depressed, sarcastic 8 year old girl, her chain-smoking unicorn can’t be far behind.
Finally – yeah there’s only one off-brand of apple jelly left on the market, as it seems all the brand names have stopped selling it. The only problem is the off-brand apple jelly is made with high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar, so I have to avoid it unless I want to have yet another fortnight of gout. Could be worse, I could be stuck eating jam.
“Dear Diary,
Today has been a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.”
So begins an actual diary entry of mine from January of 1994. i was 8.
Other gems from this record of my childhood include, “I had a bad headache but Mommy didn’t help me.” “Things have been SO bad this year I feel my whole life is falling apart.” “I have so many bad things that happened or are about to happen I have nightmares.” Complete with illustrations of my enemies scribbled out, cut into pieces, and smeared with something red and waxy.
Finding this diary came as a bit of a shocker – and i have to admit that i laughed so hard at some of the entries that i cried – but then i realized, it explains a lot.
And what better way to deal with that baggage than in a comic?
“I wish my family cared more about me and my feelings. Now there acting like nothing went wrong today.”
PS: All of these stories will tie in together soon. We promise.
Our sincerest apologies for not getting the comic up on time. We were… delayed…
Last week we noticed that the dryer was making some very loud banging and scraping sounds. Luckily, we rent, so we called our Landlord and he agreed to replace the dryer. Unluckily, we rent, and our Landlord decided to replace the dryer himself.
He half-asses everything. The entire house is a ramshackle conglomeration of canted angles, unfinished wood, exposed nails and general shoddy workmanship. But whatever, at least we’re not paying for the upkeep.
Case in point: when the new dryer was delivered, the deliveryman informed us that the fixtures were old and out of date and the ones the Landlord purchased were the wrong size. So they left the new dryer and the Landlord had to go out and buy new ones and install the dryer the next day. Our upstairs neighbor had first dibs and then we started on our growing pile of dirty laundry.
Then over the weekend I noticed a distinct odor of rotten eggs emanating from the stairwell in the basement outside of the laundry room. And the next day it filled the entire basement. Sarah said she smelled it as soon as she walked in the house. I called the gas company and they sent someone out and, yep, there was a leak. Two, in fact, at each point where the Landlord hooked up the new line. So now the gas is off, our laundry pile is mountainous, and the Landlord has to come back out and fix his mistake that he wouldn’t have made if he hadn’t done such a shitty job in the first place.
Also, this weekend my mom was visiting and I had to ferry her around to visit my grandma for Mother’s Day.
So what does all this have to do with not getting the comic up on time?
Nothing, I was just lazy and didn’t finish it. Sorry. It’ll be up before the end of the night probably.