Teen Living, by Comixkid2099

so...it was suggested that i post my own homemade comic strip, and now i shall do so. Some background info: The genesis of this strip dates back to the summer before my senior year in highschool. That is when the first page was created. As time went by, i would take long breaks from the strip. At one point, the strips were all even missing, and i didn't know where they were. Now i try and do a couple of strips every week.

This is the first page, which introduces some of the most important characters in the strip. This also has a little recurring theme which is the lampooning of all sorts of popular culture. I try and keep a ballancing act between the life of teenagers (from a comedic viewpoint) and the absurdity of popular culture.

this page introduces the final major character, Coach September. A minor character, Cheesepuff girl, is introduced here, but unfortunately, the orange aura that surrounds her didn't show up well.

i sorta redefined the look of Coach S in the final panel on this page. i think i like this look better, though he does go through some more changes.

It was this storyline that officially made Lance a major character. In his first appearance, he was the stereotypical stupid jock (i hated football players in highschool). Then, at the time i did this storyline, i had two friends who both quit the football team at the same time. I decided to show what the coach would be feeling if that happened, and my only football player i had was Lance, who had only made one appearance. Now, he is one of two of the most major characters.

This was the beginning of an interesting idea. It was summer, and i showed each character doing different things durring the summer, but not necessarily interacting with each other. So, Lance in the summer and Jeff in the summer are still kinda part of the same storyarc, but their individual stories are not connected.

Lance failing the Teen Living class becomes something of an ongoing joke. It's especially funny when Coach S told the class that they should never fail it. This also marks the introduction to Luke, one of my favorites.

Astute readers will recognise the guy working at Tool's R Us as the same guy who mistakenly brought Emma a Bagle when she asked for a Beagle.

i enjoyed these, ck.

This is the end of my summer vacation massive story arc. I had fun doing it, but ultimately, there are too many stories i can do that must be in the school, so i won't be doing it again. Also, i don't want to loose any of my cast members, and if they go through another summer, some of them will graduate. i don't want that. Also, the first appearance of Mrs. Winslow, another faculty member.

In the previous page, i redesigned Franklin. This is his first major storyarc post-redesign. i like this version better, and it's weird that he doesn't look anything like he did in the very first strip (top of the page). Also, this page brings two more minor characters into the cast. Luke, who we've already met, and now Dale, who will have more appearances later.

once again, Lance failing the class is revisited for more humor. This is also one of the first examples of a young September strip. I've always felt that September was the only staff member that was on the side of the students, even if he was strict sometimes. So, i wanted to show that he had more depth than what we had seen. i think i have maybe 3 more young september strips as of now, and probably more in the future.

My sister plotted the top one. Initially, after introducing Dale in his premiere strip, i had no intention of bringing him back. in my mind, he was not old enough to be in high school, which is where this strip takes place. But, for some reason, my sister plotted this with Dale and CPG. So, to humor her, i used both of them. I don't think i changed anything from her plot to the final page. If anything, Dale can still be as old as i planned, it's just that with his large cranium, he is smart enough to skip a few grades. Also, this pairing of CPG and Dale becomes a fixture of the strip in later stories.
Luke solo strip doesn't work as well as i thought it might. His delivery is good, but i don't think i'll be doing many more of these, unless something outrageously hilarious comes to mind.
The deer urine story...at the time, my longest story arcs were less than five strips long. I wanted to beat that, and do an epic story. Ultimately, it just wasn't the right story to experiment with, and by the sixth or seventh strip of this sequence, i was ready for this story to be over. It wouldn't be until the big halloween story that i would have subject matter and enough characters to do a longer story arc.

And so ends the Deer urine storyline. Like i said, it felt like it was dragging on, and the only real reason i made it so long was because i wanted to beat my own record of the length of a story arc. I have to say, in retrospect, the Cthulu mask being stolen was alot funnier than i thought at the time. though i think the usage of masks as humor might have been overdone a bit.
Also, this gives us a new character that probably won't see much screen time. It also connects to a bit of foreshadowing from the Summer Vacation storyline.

At the time, when i concluded Jeff's time at Summer camp, i had no plans to bring back his Counselor. But then when i had the Governor's son, i just thought it was funny to have the two extremes be brothers. Also, the penguin that was introduced a while back gets a not so subtle redesign in the middle of the strip. i like the shorter beak better, so that stays, if i decide to use this guy again.
And we now get the very first mention of Prophecy of the Broken Sword. I wanted a fictional movie that i could have the characters talk about, and if i ever wanted to use the characters to vent my own frustrations toward any sci fi fantasy franchise, i could just have them talk about the Broken Sword series. Although i do not want this to get to layred with geek references, so i will limit the references to just a few strips.

some are pretty good ck.

13 pages. i could color these. and i'd really like to put it up you know where.

Hey, I just read ALL of them!

Some are really funny, and every strip has a nice lil story to tell. Great ideas. It must have been difficult to keep the story in 3 pics, right? I must admit, my fave character is the manly cooking lady with the tattoo... ^_^ "My water tastes funny" lol

Just curious, have you been drawing while school lessons? I did draw in math a lot... lol

These are great,CK.I just noticed that someone had commented and took a look.I had no idea you were doing these.Reminds me of the comic strips you see in the Sunday papers.Awesome!I also now see where you got your avatar from.

thanks for the comments guys. truly appreciated

Sif, yeah sometimes, i might have a funny idea, but there would be no way to fit it into 3 panels.

Sean, yeah, i more or less based the format on Garfield and Dilbert.

Has there to be 3 panels always? just curious... Cause, if you have ideas that would take more than 3, you could still do them. I think you are good in parodies. Just perfect for a superhero parody.

Hehe, I like Garfield a lot. He is one of my idols lol.

I pretty much keep it to three panel strips. Each strip is supposed to stand by itself, but some of them build on each other. But even the ones that build on each other can still stand on themselves.

I feel like it would look really weird if i had done several pages of 3 panel format, and then decided i had a gag that worked better if it took up half the page. It just wouldn't feel consistent to me.