Evil Jim: Week Fifty-Eight
04-26-04 through 05-01-04
Elevator animation not working? Here's the regular version of this strip.
Artists' Comentary:
166
This is the second strip I made during 24 Hour Comic Book Day. (423 being the first...you'll get to it next week.) From here on, strips were produced in numerical order on that day.
Frank: Powered by Yahoo! Maps. That is an actual map of Saratoga's west side. My high school, which is not indicated on the map, is across the street from the cemetary in the bottom left corner. That "Blue Streaks Blvd" road is actually the main road through the parking lots. Go Blue Streaks go!
The cryogenic chamber originally said "666" on it, but I decided to erase it to make his introduction more of a surprise. You can still see parts of that number in the smoky areas of the picture.
This is 666 from Pat's Evil Penguin webcomic. Used with permission, and following continuity.
167
What a mess. This was one of those "I'll draw it now and write it later" strips. The massive amounts of text and poor blank space inside the panels caused massive difficulty when putting this together. Not my best strip by far.
You can see here that Jen is much angrier than she'd ever get in real life. I felt the need to drive home the point that Jim's an asshole, so I'm getting all his friends angry at him.
Can you tell this is in Jen's room? Even though it uses a background we've only seen in one strip before?
168
I decided to come right out and dump the exposition because the story had been getting way too complicated. These are all friends who wanted to be in the strip, who I had only recently met. I figured "yeah, EJ needs all the help he can get." So when they asked to be put in, I obliged. This is all Lydia's fault, actually. She and Jen were looking for evil people to lead her evil minions. So that's basically the origin behind this plot point. You'd have to know these guys in order to get the jokes.
Nick and Juli wear the same type of hat and both have long hair, so their designs were very similar. Although Nick wears glasses and is taller, that's about all the difference my limited art skills can achieve.
Josh likes the game Guilty Gear. I gave him a shirt that has two G's as gear-shaped things as a reference to Gizmonics Institute, the evil corporation from MST3K. Hence, Josh asks what I mean by "Gizmonics." One year from the posting of this strip, Josh managed to get an internship with Majesco, the company that currently is licensed to make Guilty Gear games. Lucky bastard.
Juli's wearing a picture of Jack from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas becuase she tries to always wear a Jack-related item of clothing.
169
Ripped directly from Utena, the Student Council (formerly the ASIC executive board) has one of their ritual meetings. I added the animation of the elevator after making EJ176, which was my first official use of animation in Evil Jim. The original version of 169 can be viewed by clicking the link above that strip. Also, we see the frames around each Council member, and their little platform built into the side of West Tower. Peter's Ohtori laptop with the rose symbol on it, Eric's Whack-A-Diglet (Eric's impression of this strip: "Bah. Stupid Pokémon."), and Jim D. and Art doing what they do.
Some people got the impression that the "Rose Duels" were actually DDR matches. That's not the case. I wore out the DDR angle in Part I. The duels are actually fought with foam bats, which we'll get to in a couple weeks.
170
Pat officially likes this strip, with "everybody with their weapons and 666 actually not buying it." This also explains the continuity difference between Pat's fascination with Belldandy and Evil Penguin's fascination with Hello Kitty. Pat was happy to see there finally was some explanation for that, so I'm glad I'm handling at least ONE character right. (see the next commentary)
---423---
Jim's Commentary:
After the events in part I of "End of Evil," Matt expressed concern over my portrayal of CC as a madman who had no real sense of duty to his faith or even any semblance of compassion. To correct this wayward tangent of his character, he proposed this strip, which I agreed to draw. It's a very nice collaboration that I think definitely sets his character straight. Why is it a 400 Series? Even though it IS in continuity with the rest of Evil Jim, I felt it had to be set apart from the current storyline in order to prevent unnecessary confusion. This is more of a side-story, a "Meanwhile, CC is doing this..." subplot. At the time, we hadn't decided whether or not to bring CC back into the series before Evil Jim's conclusion. But--spoiler warning--he DOES come back in Part IV to play a major role in Evil Jim's final stage of character development.
This was also the first of 10 strips that I completed during 24 Hour Comic Book Day 2004.
Matt's Commentary:
This 423 strip was something I approached Jim with. You see his handling of my character, while good made CC into what I was trying to get him away from and make him more of a character above, a hypocrite. I went over this a billion times with everyone but after looking at this strip (Which is one of Jim's best in my opinion and most powerful) and with my writing and Jim's revision, I think me and Jim really made an amzing thing. We did an amazing thing. The Evil Jim, version of CC evolved and in such a way that now the previous arc makes CC look even better because he betters himself in the end. I could even somehow alter this maybe even just a little. Maybe not at all and fit it somewhere into the OFFICIAL CC continuity. The change was a bit fast but there was no way to do it where it wouldn't have been but it still works. oh does it work.Him even feeling remorse about Betsy, a person whom he's never really met and to realize he was wrong, it just moving. I find it funny that I wrote that about her when I never met her. I'm assuming if CC showed up at the funeral, everyone would blame him. He has alot of repenting to do then I suppose. I think this whole thing turned out for the better. For CC and for Jim and me. Thanks Jim, my vision can finally be seen completely.
