Monday, February 2, 2009

Sleeptalking Elly

11 comments:

DreadedCandiru2 said...

Ah. Super. She's like Mike; only aware of the future in her dreams. All she's done here is give John an incentive to dig his heels in about the train issue. About the only good thing I see is that she isn't wishing she'd gotten him to have a vasectomy to preclude a third child.

April Patterson said...

OTOH, maybe the reason she was concerned about what she might have said while sleeping is that she knows more than she lets one--and doesn't want John to be clued in....

Anonymous said...

Hi all,

First time commenter. Love the strip, and your artwork improves with each one. Personally, I think this is the point where John gets the idea of buying model trains, which means they're all now trapped in an endless recursive time paradox. On the other hand, the fact that the Sobinskis moved away 5 years early means that time can be rewritten in a snap now, so who knows?

Personally, things are so screwed up in FOOB at this point that I half expect to see Doctor Who show up to see what the trouble is.

April Patterson said...

Thanks for the kind words, Doc Sane.

I've noticed that sci-fi stories where characters travel back in time and try to change things often have these characters reaching the same ultimate end, though through an altered path. So it's possible that the foobs might be able to change various things and still end up where we saw them in August of 2008. OTOH, we could have something like Back to the Future, where Marty McFly standing up to the bully in the new-past changed things substantially.

Personally, things are so screwed up in FOOB at this point that I half expect to see Doctor Who show up to see what the trouble is.

Seriously. Do you think he'd flee in fear? :)

Anonymous said...

I've read a few stories where it ends up that going back in time is what makes the stories work. In other words, it's the actions in the past that specifically cause the future to happen as it's remembered in the movie.

Twelve Monkeys and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures are what come to mind with those type of stories.

But then, your story doesn't seem to fit into THAT sort of story.

April Patterson said...

godozo--the kind of story that leads to hours of "wait a minute, how could...." Did you watch Futurama, where the main character (blanking on his name) turned out to be his own grandfather?

Destroyer of Worlds said...

*snerk* This is perfect! I'm loving your premise more every time you turn out a new strip! Now I want to know where does John stand in all this? I'm going to hazard that while Liz remembers all the gory details, and Elly and Michael dreams about the future, that John doesn't remember anything at all. After all, he was just a train man caracture in the last couple years. So his brain had gone to the big comic strip in the sky long before any of the others before the reruns. So he'll be running around wondering why everyone is insane...

Or maybe you'll do something entirely different. I don't know. This is what a comic strip should be...you don't know what will happen even as the story unfolds.

Holly said...

Love the duvet cover!

If The Doctor did turn up in this time-travelling mess, hopefully he'd pause just long enough to take April (and possibly Evil Becky) away as companions, never to return. He'd offer to fix April's cellphone so she could call her parents, but she'd shrug and chuck it out of the TARDIS.

I could also imagine Elly confronting The Doctor with her mother's home remedies for time travel paradoxes, trying to insist that her mother's way of fixing things was far better than getting a doctor involved.

April Patterson said...

Thanks, Destroyer of Worlds--certain things I have planned, more or less, while others develop as I react to what we're seeing in the strip. I'm having fun with it. :)

forworse, I've been playing around with textures and patterns in PaintShop Pro--had to give them a funky cover for their bed. :)

Holly said...

April You did a great job with the textures and the teal and lavender theme. I've done just one strip showing their bed, but left it all in grey -- perhaps that represents the level of excitement in their marriage by that point in time. Your strip is set somewhat earlier (or later, following a partially-remembered time jump), when there might still have been something happening in the bedroom on occasion, hence a hint of colour.

Now if only I could get my scanner working because I've a double strip I can't post! I guess one of the upsides of going back to work after all these months is that I have a scanner there.

April Patterson said...

forworse, the lavender/teal was a happy accident!

I hope you are able to get your scanner going. I know what that's like. :(