Well, my left tonsil still makes up about two-thirds of the total mass of my head, but other than that, I’m well enough to do the goodness again. Incidentally, that background you see there is an actual room from Saint Peter’s University Hospital (remember?) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. HOW INCREDIBLY COOL IS THAT, YO??? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Of course, don’t let your excitement cause you to forget to vote. I’m also going to try and put together the final episode of Paul’s Big Adventure some time next week. Keyword: try. I make no promises, unless you take the word promise to mean “pledge to maybe do something possibly if I feel like it.”

CURRENT MOOD: Farfagnugen

I tried something new with today’s comic. I hate drawing backgrounds, so rather than go to the trouble of drawing a whole freakin’ classroom, I found a couple photos of classrooms, ran them through Adobe Streamline, and used the output. I kind of like the effect, though it’s obviously not something that can be used everywhere. Hate it? Vote. Like it? Vote from several different computers.

Before we came out of hiatus, Al Nennig sent me a second guest comic that I kept forgetting to put up. Here it is!

DONATIONS UPDATE

Goal: $70

Total received: bupkes

Bloody monkey chunks, come on guys. It’s the cool thing to do. It’ll get you girls, lots of girls. Unless you’re a girl, of course, in which case: can you do me a favor and hook up with some random guy to get him to donate me some money?

CURRENT MOOD: Car

Whew. Okay. Here it is. The comic, I mean. Quite a bit more Xeroxing than I would have preferred, and a background might have been nice, but it was like, yo, I gotta get this done. Maybe I’ll fix it when I make Taco Man and Burrito Boy: Special Edition, in which I redo the space sequences with computer graphics, add in deleted scenes that were redundant anyway, and replace all the guns with walkie-talkies.

Ahem…SERIOUSLY READ THIS PART

A whole buttload of new readers came in this week thanks to the ad I had at C+A+D, which is awesome. But here’s the thing: that ad cost me $70. American, no less. I cannot keep up investments like that continuously without help. PLEASE, click the PayPal Donation button on the left side of the page, and consider tossing TMABB a few bucks. I didn’t want it to have to come to begging for money, but hey, I’m poor. I’m allowed.

To make up for it, if we raise enough money to offset the cost of that $70 ad, I’ll reward y’all with a super sparky awesome wallpaper, my thanks to you.

And as long as we’re on the subject: as of this writing, Tee-mab is #30 on buzzComix. Once the ad at C+A+D comes down, this is going to slip drastically, but if we can top out at #25 before then, I’ll make another wallpaper in addition to the donation reward. Deal? Good. So vote like you mean it.

CURRENT MOOD: Tomfoolery

Comicry. It’s for reading. Vote.

CURRENT MOOD: Hop

Guess what, baby doll? Daddy’s back!

Man, it sure felt good to be drawing again. I didn’t realize how much I missed the comic until I sat down to work on today’s. I feel a tear coming on. Oh! Oh God! OH MY GOD! Nope, Cheeto.

Now don’t forget to show your appreciation by voting! Make daddy happy!

CURRENT MOOD: Sahasrala

It’s a comic, and it loves you. Do the votey thing, and I’ll love you too.

This isn’t a gaming comic, I know, but dude, I got Knights of the Old Republic last Wednesday, and, like, aww man, it’s like, taking over. In fact, I’m even gonna cut this newsie short and go play some more.

I wonder how bad my eyesight will have gotten by the time I finish it…

CURRENT MOOD: Olfactory

Got some comicry for ya’s. Read, vote, you know the game. Not that I think voting’s a game. I actually think voting is deathly important. So, like, you know, do it.

Speaking of voting, Holy crippin’ crappy crip did ditching the splash page do the trick. Got twice as many votes as usual on Monday. Thanks a bunch, guys! *hi fives for everyone, along with big, wet kisses and heinie slaps (not wet) for the girls*

So with Teri, that’s now every major character that’s gotten color. I tried to make her hair look like it’s not naturally blonde. I hope it works for you. Moving downward, I made her top pink because I want Teri to be the type of girl I would never date in a million years, and I have a firm rule when it comes to pink: I wouldn’t touch a pink-wearer while draped in a body-length prophylactic. Incidentally, I also very much prefer brunettes (idealy with a reddish tint).

Anyway, keep up the good work!

CURRENT MOOD: Santa

I honestly don’t know what/if I was thinking when I put this together (read the last spoken line like Jerry Lewis), but you’re stuck with it, regardless. Maybe I decided there wasn’t enough senseless, unwarranted weirdness in the comic. Maybe I wanted to draw a nice wild take. Maybe I just wanted to draw myself again. It’s not that I do not try to explain my reasoning in anything. It’s that I try not to explain my reasoning in anything.

Now vote.

I’d like to reminisce for a moment. I remember a long, very long time ago, during the Cartoons by Gaspirtz fiasco on The Funny Papers. All had tired of that sickly rotating banner sitting in the 1st Place spot on the list. The great Straub even went to the trouble of parodying it. Then, one morning, I spoke to a young Canadian named Pierre-Luc, who asked me to check out his new Top 150 list, Top Webcomics.

And it was good. All of the members were small, unknown artists, still trying to make names for themselves. The site even featured a randomly chosen banner that cycled through every single comic on the site, so even if you never got any votes, you knew people would still see your link.

It was a time of glory and everlasting wuvness. Top Webcomics grew. Countless aspiring comics joined the list. The site branched out to feature an affordable hosting service for new comickers to take advantage of. The sun, it seemed, could not shine brightly enough on this plucky young toplist.

And then, something went wrong. Servers disappeared. Websites vanished. Fingers pointed at Pierre-Luc, who could do nothing but vanish entirely.

Time passed. Top Webcomics found a new master, and began to rebuild. It seemed the troubles of the past were gone.

And then it freakin’ happened again.

And again.

And again.

I was one of the first members of Top Webcomics on that day so long ago. And today, well, it’s down for about the umpteen-billionth time. It seems those shining days of glory are gone forever.

In closing, sheesh.

Just wanted to get that off my chest. Anyway, you’ll notice that the splash page is gone, and that the comic is no longer right out smack on the front page. I’m gonna try something new. I realized long ago that a lot of people probably weren’t seeing my pathos-ridden pleas for votes when the newsies were way down yonder below the comic. That was the inspiration for the splash page. I later realized that the splash page must have been freakin’ annoying, so we’re going to give this a go. Unfortunately for me, this will force me to post more newsies, but I can live with that. Gives you more to read, anyway. But here’s the deal: if we start getting less votes, the splash page comes back, a’ight?

A’ight. Enjoy the comic. VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!

In other news, you might’ve noticed the Merckam, over on the left there, preaching the good news of my new computer. I don’t have the Radeon 9800 XT that I want yet (I’m waiting for the ASUS board to come down in price), so I’m using my old GeForce 2 GTS, which is bottlenecking things like crazy. Still, Photoshop and Illustrator are hella fast now. My favorite part, really, is my sound-insulated case. It’s so nice and peaceful in my room because of it. My old machine sounded like a vacuum cleaner.

Good Lord I’m long-winded today.

CURRENT MOOD: Gordita