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Strip 24: “Post game wrap-up,” says my notes. I guess this was where I meant to insert any unresolved exposition, and give Penny one final chance to defend the morality of her decision to go evil. I also wanted to end on a clear indication that she was now in charge, so I stole from The Godfather again.

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Strip 25: Epilogue. The end of the story was originally meant to be that last scene at S.H.I.T., but I had some stray notes involving a possible sequel to this thing. They involved a vision of Fort Burr some time in the future (25 years, I think… though I may be saying that because of Twin Peaks), where Penny rules things with an iron fist. There, we see an aged Canopenerman, embittered over the loss of his friend (not lover!) Melonhead. Initially, he seems as angry as ever, but it becomes clear that he’s just old and tired and kinda going through the motions. He’s taken it upon himself to care for Melonie (get it?), his dead partner’s daughter. It’s pretty clear what I was stealing from with this bit. My original idea for this story would have been pretty elaborate, and I have absolutely no intention of ever doing it now, so I figured I’d just throw this in as one last acknowledgement of where my favorite character ended up.

(If anyone at all cares, here was my basic story for that last great saga: Canopenerman and Melonie team up with an amalgam of Ed and Robot 6, an aged Director and… someone else, I think, to attempt overthrowing Penny. In the course of their adventures, they would have learned of the existence of several “elementals” of basic forces — not only Caffeine and Evil, but also Comedy, Chickens and some others. They steal the essences of five of these elementals and attack Penny with something like the Infinity Gauntlet. But they realize too late that she’s been manipulating them to gather these artifacts to enable her to overthrow Evil and herself become the absolute embodiment of darkness. The end.)

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Strip 22: This is where the story was all heading. Penny’s been beaten down, nearly killed and humiliated in every possible way. And so, when Evil returns to her and makes his offer again, she accepts. The whole series was really supposed to be about this moment, and I’m kinda disappointed that I didn’t have the patience to see it through, because it’s kind of a cool idea at the core. Superhero comics (and pretty much all other entertainment that operates on that simplistic level) put forth this world in which two polar opposites exist: good and evil. Evil basically exists to do whatever it wants: to steal, to blow up things that it doesn’t like, to rule the world if it is so inclined. And good just exists to stop evil. I ask you: if you lived in a world like that, which one would you choose? Virtue (as represented by comics, cartoons, et. al.) is a lot of work, and it’s typically thankless. (Look at, for instance, Spider-Man. “Action is his reward.” What the hell kind of reward is that?) Evil, on the other hand, is a good time. You get power, respect and more often than not, a much cooler outfit than the good guys. Penny’s endless efforts as a superhero, her constant obstacles with absolutely no payoff, were ultimately building to the moment when she has this revelation. Evil is fun. Fort Burr works better without superheroes. And so (using a process I kinda hinted at way back in issue 3), she’s distilled down to her purest dark essence and embodied with the tantalizing powers of Bad. Yay, bad. (Oh, also Evil gives a little speech that links the origins of evil in Fort Burr to the misguided project that the Director and Loretta were working on about 10 strips ago. I bet you forgot about that. Apparently, I did too.)

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Strip 23: My notes are pretty simple on this one. They reference the “all family business is settled” sequence from The Godfather. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, apart from maybe that last little bit where it’s kinda hard to tell that she wipes out the supervillain prison/castle. I probably shoulda made that bigger, but I really wanted to end with that menacing image of her flying away.

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Strip 20: Penny, in her hour of supreme desperation, is let down by one of the remaining few allies she has: the Caffeine Elemental that provides her powers.  It has chosen this, of all times, to lecture her about neglecting her duties as its herald, and despite an impassioned argument on her part, decides to strip her of her abilities.  (The idea here, if you hadn’t guessed yet, was to make things as bleak as possible for poor Penny.  I think if you hadn’t guessed this, you’re kind of stupid.  Or not paying attention.  And I can’t really blame you if that’s the case.)  So the big soda can sends her back into mortal combat with the monstrosity that she barely had a chance with when she did have superhuman abilities.  Fun!

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Strip 21: Unsurprisingly, Penny gets her ass handed to her by Thursday.  I never did enjoy drawing fight scenes very much, but it was kinda fun to do one between a normal human being and an unstoppable killing machine.  This ain’t Terminator — you’re not gonna jump on a conveniently passing car or chase the guy into a conveniently placed steel mill.  No; you’re going to get hurt, or possibly die in this situation.  Evil shows up to give an “I toldja so” speech.  Oh, I stole a fairly popular panel for this one.  Guess which one.  Go on, guess.

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Strip 18: Penny returns to her only friends in the world, Len and Mike. (Incidentally, the characters’ full names, never meant to be revealed in the comic, were Len Unne and Mike Ortneigh. Get it?) Her world is crumbling — her boss is against her, her super-team is dead, and the public she’s sworn to defend is frightened, irritated or indifferent toward her. Len and Mike reveal some convoluted conspiracy stuff involving… let’s see here… a monster factory, apparently. (Hey, these notes are 5 years old. I don’t really know what the hell I meant here.) They suggest that she confront the only person in authority that’s shown her any real support: the mysterious Administrator. She does, and we finally (well, for the third time) reveal that he’s the mysterious devil creature she’s met before. Whee.

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Strip 19: Evil (I never gave him a proper name — just “Evil”) makes his pitch to Penny: stop trying to be a hero and give in to self-interest. Though her will has been worn to a nub, she still manages to resist the temptation of greater power with absolutely no responsibility. (I had attempted to foreshadow this skewing of the classic Spider-Man argument in Penny’s discussion with Smart Alec earlier, but I wasn’t terribly happy with how that turned out). She’s called away to yet another emergency: the monstrosity that killed her team is on the rampage again. (His name, again never stated anywhere, was Thursday. Get it?) She gears up for the fight of her life, but suddenly finds herself being drawn away… Incidentally, though I’m pleased I tried something new with this storyline (the silouhetty effect I nabbed from Sin City and Miracleman), I think I really overdid it by this point. Oh well.

So you’ve probably noticed the sort of gradual petering out of humorous (or even attempted humorous) dialogue in the last few strips. This is because I never actually finished the script for this story. The first portion was an edited version of something I wrote back in 2003, and the rest was drawn based on the rather sketchy notes I had for the direction of the second half.

Here’s the thing, though: this story was all based on workplace conflicts I was experiencing over five years ago. Those issues have long been resolved, and it’s not terribly easy for me to put myself back into that mentality long enough to wrap things up entertainingly. I tried for a little while to attempt dialoguing what I had, but my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. In retrospect, I should have written it all down while I was still feeling it.

The bottom line is, I haven’t lived in Tales of the Odd’s headspace in years. I’m going to continue posting the art for this final storyline, since it’s already done… but rather than trying (and failing) to write amusing dialogue to go with it, I’ll just tell you what was supposed to be happening there. Then, after I post the last one, we can forget any of it ever happened. Deal? Deal.

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So, strip 16. The aftermath of my “Penny’s superhero team dies on their first mission” bombshell. (I was pretty proud of that development when I outlined it, but I don’t think I implemented it as well as I might have.) There’s an emergency council meeting, in which the Director tries to take advantage of the situation and seize power. The Administrator reasserts his position that Penny is actually in charge of superhero recruiting, and agrees to allow her the opportunity to try again. So she heads off to Professor Baldi’s School for the Uselessly Mutated, which was meant to be a parody of… the obvious, and a sly nod to the Bendis board. I’ll let you figure out who you think is who here, if you even know any of these people. The strip ends with Penny realizing just how uselessly mutated these kids are, and flying off in disgust.

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Strip 17: Man, I really wanted to do a sequel to Brain Hotel. I put together a pretty detailed outline not long after we finished the game, and stuck it on the back burner in hopes of getting to it someday. Then, when it looked like it probably wouldn’t happen (there just isn’t enough time), I took my notes and incorporated them into this last Tales of the Odd story. Then the poor thing got pared down further and further as I attempted to focus the story on the primary storylines, and before I knew it, it was gone. I did have a hole in Bouillabaise for an unspecified action sequence though, so I tried to at least throw in some indication that yes, Robot 6 and the Botsmith live in the same world as Penny. This strip was meant to feature the Botsmith attempting to take revenge on his creation, and also to show Penny’s mounting frustration with a city rampant with crime. I think it came out pretty well, visually speaking… but it’s nothing like what I wanted. (That pitch involved, among other things, the Botsmith and Judge Mental teaming up against Ed Arnold and Robot 6. A running joke would have involved Judge Mental’s mind being put into a super-powerful robot body, but still focusing almost entirely on his irritating levitation abilities and ignoring his vast arsenal of weapons. It woulda been hilarious. Trust me.)

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Somebody posted this to the YouTube recently — it’s a walk-through of the game I made with Pinhead Games a few years ago. The particularly odd thing about this is, it seems to have been made by none other than President Bush.

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