Since I won’t be posting comics on Wednesdays from now on, at least for a while (see the previous entry), I figured I should blog more in general, and/or occasionally dig up some other artwork I’ve done. First out is a t-shirt design I did for my friend [real name withheld!] aka Condatis and his metal band Svartpest. Now, I wouldn’t know the first thing about designing one of those “traditional” metal logos, so we decided to take the image in a slightly different direction — and admittedly it is kinda tongue-in-cheek from our end, but I still think it ended up being pretty cool.

Also, as I’m not particularly well versed in various metal subgenres (the metal I usually listen to is more of the drawn-out, sludgy and droney kind), I’ll let Condatis do the proper introduction of the band, with the artwork I did following below:

Svartpest! From Fosnavaag, Norway, this band has been headbanging since 1999 and despite sore necks still do so. Raw, cold and brutal metal only the Norwegian Vikings have the knowhow to make and perform! Svartpest made their grim debut with the album “Ved Den Drabelige Inngang Til Helvete”, released on Baphomet / Red Stream in 2003. Svartpest departed however with Baphomet just when the new album “Mjödfest” was about to be released, due to “technical problems”. Featuring Freadiablo (Necrophagia, Gorelord, Grimfist) on guitar and bass, Condatis aka Likskrik (Fuck Frikyrkja, Dominate, Regin) on vocals, and Fug (Necrophagia, Trønderswingers) on drums. Svartpest is now looking for a new label, so if anyone out there likes (or hates just enough) to sign us, feel free to contact the band!

An amusing bit of trivia: The idea for this comic was conceived while making this image (when my mind wandered off to think of rats and mice in general). And yeah, new comic will be posted on Friday!

As I cleverly teased along with the most recent strip, I apparently had found some “hidden” goodies in the Photoshop file while preparing it for upload. Quite frankly I had completely forgotten about this since this strip is a few months old, but evidently I decided to redo the last panel for some reason. This happens to me sometimes; I almost finish a comic, zoom out a bit in Photoshop, and suddenly it’s apparent that an alternate take would work better. Very frustrating of course, but it’s all for the best – if I can muster up the willpower to do the necessary changes, that is.

Anyway, here’s the first version of the last panel, which works OK as well I guess, but I felt a lot of the elements didn’t quite work. (Note that the coloring isn’t completely finished, and that I with this version probably meant to remove the “Yaaayy!” speech balloon from the third panel.)

So, is it better/worse, or just equally as unfunny? Let me know what you think.