West of Bathurst

Hello, everyone. I apologise for the increasing tardiness of the Saturday comics. This is the worst time of term for marking, and it's worse than usual this year because four of my five classes are about essay writing and thus have extremely heavy marking loads. As well, the fifth course has a very large number of students in it, and I've got myself into a bunch of musical commitments as well. I'll do the best I can to get the Monday comic up by Monday.

Regarding the comic itself: it has been observed by commenters that I sometimes seem a little unsure of how to end the comic. I do actually know exactly how it's going to end, but Casey's personality keeps getting in the way. So does Marie's, actually. Marie is a procrastinator, just like I am. She is currently acting as a bit of an enabler (for me, that is). However, now that she has finally managed to get out her first actual piece of advice to Casey, things should maybe start happening again. Possibly. I am aiming for Christmas as a deadline for the completion of the comic. It's a loose deadline, however. We shall see what we shall see.

Thank you for your patience, and I promise that I don't plan to delay forever. This last fortnight's plotline, which seemingly just delayed thngs more, was meant to draw some of the old threads together.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Panel 1: In the title panel of this Sunday-style colour comic, Barbara ponders the giant title page of a student essay. The essay's title is "Never Read the Instructions." Someone has scribbled on it in red ink the words "West of Bathurst" and "by Kari Maaren." Barbara is speaking into her red pen as if it is a microphone.

Barbara: We now go live to coverage of the title match.

Panel 2: Barbara holds a student paper in her right hand.

Barbara: In this corner, we have a single-spaced essay that goes sixteen hundred words over the limit and consistently misspells "writing."

Panel 3: She picks up a second student paper with her left hand

Barbara: In this corner, we have a paper that weighs in at seven hundred words under the limit and is based entirely on the student's off-topic conviction that all poetry is bad.

Panel 4:

Barbara: It's going to be a hard, vicious fight, folks. There's the bell!

Panel 5: She slams the papers violently against each other.

Barbara: Look at them go! The blood! The carnage! The complete disregard of grammar! Is there no end in sight? Can no one stop the madness?

Panel 6: The papers are very crumpled now.

Barbara: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a first! The papers have beaten each other into submission! They're both down for the count!

Panel 7: Barbara gazes despondently at the papers as Marie watches from nearby.

Barbara: Unfortunately, the real loser is the poor schmuck* who has to mark them.

Marie: And the crowd goes wild.

*Yes, I am aware that I misspelled "schmuck" in the comic. Oh, the irony.

Alt-Text: To tell the absolute truth, I prefer the papers that go insanely under the limit to the papers that go insanely over the limit, simply because the former take less time to mark.

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