Greetings and salutations travelers. Welcome to this week’s blog. Let’s dive right in, shall we?
So how about that Bandits strip reveal? How many of you had guessed that they were going to find a baby in the pickle patch? Now that the reveal is in the past, I can talk a bit more about the ideas behind the new feature.
As I said in a prior blog, the new strip is inspired by recent events, namely, my friends Fab and Lyne giving birth (from what I hear, Lyne did most, if not all, of the birthing) to their son Owen Alfani. The idea started bouncing around in my head a few months after they announced Lyne was pregnant. I wanted to time it so that the reveal would occur the day Owen was born, but that didn’t pan out. The reveal was actually drawn the day after Owen was born (which was about a week and a half before he was officially due by the by. I thought I still had time!).
But why the Bandits? Well really why not? I’ve been using the Bandits in side gags for a while now and I’ve grown rather fond of them, so I decided I would give them a storyline of their own. By making their storyline a separate feature I can go on for as long as I like and at whatever pace I feel the story dictates without interfering with the main strip.
Also, there’s a certain synergy with the Bandits. The baby who inspired this storyline is named Owen. The Bandits’ names are Nolan, Wilson and Clive. I’ll leave you all to connect the dots. It may give some of you a hint as to what the baby bandit will be named.
Timeline-wise, the Baby Bandit storyline occurs roughly six months after strip #300, which was on Todrick’s birthday. Bear in mind that strip #300 was an interlude and actually happens AFTER the events of the current storyline in the main strip, which started close to two months after Todrick’s PREVIOUS birthday, and concludes roughly six months after that. Confused yet? Here’s how it breaks down (the numbers in brackets are the number of months between events):
Todrick’s Birthday (2) Start of Current Storyline (4) End of Current Storyline at New Year’s (6) Todrick’s Birthday (6) Baby Bandit Storyline
Because I want to keep the main strip roughly in line with in the time of year it is in real life, at the conclusion of the current storyline we’re going to skip ahead to whatever time of the year it is (which won’t be before April at the earliest) after Baby Bandit. That means that exactly one strip (#300) occurs in the 16+ months that will pass between the conclusion of the current storyline and the beginning of the next one. This would be a great opportunity to make some changes without necessarily having to depict them in the strip, like say Chae moving to Bree. Actually, I may decide to tell that story as the next storyline, I haven’t decided yet.
Okay, I’m getting hungry so that concludes this week’s post. Have a good seven and we’ll do it all again next Monday! Carja V.