Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all you fine Zoology readers! And if you don't celebrate Christmas...Happy Tuesday! Hope it's one of the better Tuesdays you have this year.

Today's comic is a bit of a callback to last year's baby Baker Christmas storyline, and it'll make a bit more sense if you're read it. So if you haven't, go check it out. It starts here...

http://thezoo.comicgenesis.com/d/20061211.html

(What a difference a year has made in the quality of art in the strip).

Zoology Merchandise is Here! Nope, I didn't forget!

Okay, so I managed to put together a little Zoology store. Sorry, nothing fancy like plushies or anything yet...so far it's just shirts, hoodies and the like. I'll try to get other stuff done eventually! Right now there's 5 designs. In the next day or so I'm also going to put up colour versions of the Baker and Shandy w/Logo designs and the Angsty design. I tried to make everything as cheap as possible so a shirt won't put you in the poorhouse.

If there's a certain design/shirt style combination you don't see, just ask me via email or in the comments here and I'll make something up for you. You might even be able to convince me to draw you a custom shirt design if you want (although it will cost you more than a standard shirt).

The Zoology Giftshop!

Click Here to check out what products I can slap Zoology designs on. If you have any requests, just ask!

And hey, if you buy something send me feedback telling me what you though of your purchase once you get it. I'd love to get a picture of your modelling your shirt if you're the brave type.

Family Reunions...

Should Baker meet his family again?

That's a question I've been mulling over in my mind pretty much since I first drew his mom and siblings back last year. Like I said in the last post, it just seems natural to me that at some point you have to do a baby/kid version of your characters and when you do that you also kind of have to show their family. Can't have baby Baker raised by wolves!

So since then I've had various ideas pop into my head from time to time...one of his family members could show up at the zoo, or maybe Baker to go on a quest to rediscover his roots. I think these could be good stories, but at the same time Baker having to leave his family gives his backstory a nice tragic little twist. It also sort of establishes Shandy and others as sort of a surrogate family instead of mere friends.

Any of you fine readers have an opinion on the subject? Leave me a comment...help chart the course of this here comical strip!

Apologies and Bonus Ramblings!

Sorry Wednesday's comic was a bit late...there was a bit of an ink related disaster and a couple panels had to be redrawn. My most humble apologies!

So anyways, as you may notice I'm kicking off a month-long Halloween themed storyline. I've resisted doing anything like this before because quite frankly I think Halloween has become overblown in recent years. Yeah sure, I loved hauling 30 pounds of candy home in a sack when I was a kid, but even then I was under no false impression that Halloween was an important holiday...it was the day where I put on a mask and begged strangers for candy, nothing worth making a huge deal of. Apparently the opinion on Halloween has changed amongst a good slice of society because the amount of Halloween junk they try to push on you these days is rivaled only by Christmas it seems. Talk of Halloween starts almost as soon as October begins (or even earlier) and of course the "Lol...tradition is uncool man" crowd the proliferates on the Internet love it precisely because it's so meaningless and are in the process of beating it to death like they have pirates, zombies, pictures of cats or whatever thing we're supposed to be enjoying ironically at the moment.

And uh...now I guess I'm on the Halloween bandwagon too. Seriously though, I think it's going to be a really good story, so I thought I'd stop being curmudgeon about the Halloween thing and just go for it.

Oh, and the story also marks the return of lil' Baker! I grew up in an era where those in charge of making cartoons were so creatively bankrupt that the only idea they had for new shows was to take an established cast of characters and make them kids or babies...and thus Saturday mornings were packed with shows like "A Pup Named Scooby Doo", "Muppet Babies" and "Tiny Toons". So to me it just seems natural...if you create a cartoon character you have to someday do a kid/baby version of them. There's simply no way around it. While we're on the subject, how adorable would baby Shandy be? Very adorable I think...I need to do a baby Shandy storyline.

Anyways, that's enough rambling for one day. I wouldn't want to spoil you.

Character Profile: Baker!

Name: Baker
Species: He’s a sheep!
Breed: Poll Merino
Astrological Sign: Scorpio
Beauty Secret: Weekly hoof pedicures.

The fluffy hero of our scintillating story! Baker lives a quiet and rather dull life, but is actually relatively content with his humdrum existence with one of his few big dreams being to finally defeat the Wall and at last meet up with his dear friend Shandy. Baker loves Shandy but has never met her face to face, and in fact doesn’t even know that she’s actually a monkey (he imagines her to be another sheep like him). Baker has an impressive knack for getting into trouble, often through no fault of his own…a fact that has led to some bouts with depression. Baker was separated from his family while young, had to essentially raise himself and as such tends to internalize his thoughts and feelings and is closed off to even his closest friends to a certain extent. Life in the petting Zoo has steadily become more complicated as Rose, a kind (and cute) girl sheep, arrived on the scene a while back…Baker finds himself drawn to her in a way he perhaps hasn’t felt with anyone before, even Shandy. Baker’s rogues gallery of villains also expands as he not only has to contend with his enemy the Wall but the cute-but-sadistic lemur Mortimer, which whom he seems to be establishing a not so friendly rivalry.

I'll be posting more profiles in the future and you'll be able to access them all at This Link!

"I wonder what kind of sheep she is?" "I wonder what kind of monkey he is?"

I'm about to share with you a deep dark secret never before revealed on this site. Zoology isn't the first comic I created...yes, earlier in life I had a torrid affair with another comic strip. Me and Zoology have an understanding about this.

Here it is.

(Note: Don't bother with the archive dropdown, it no longer works for some reason...just use the next/previous buttons).

"Of Monkeys and Mutton" was the precursor to Zoology...Zoology Beta if you will. Unlike Zoology that has a very loose format, following a number of different characters or groups of characters, Of Monkeys and Mutton followed Baker and Shandy only.

Of Monkeys and Mutton also had a really cheesy title...I still cringe to write it. There's a reason why I went with the ultra-simple "Zoology" for my follow up attempt at a comic strip.

I thought going for a very restrictive gimmick/concept for the strip would really get my creative juices flowing and masterful sequential art would be flowing from my pen like nobody's business as a result. Didn't really work out that way. It was too restrictive, and as you can see within about a dozen strips I was already introducing new characters, thus straying outside the original concept.

Still, out of this failed attempt that didn't even make it 20 strips, blossomed a much better one that's gone nearly 400. Shandy and Baker arguably remain the heart of Zoology and this is where they started (they certainly look different these days though...particularly Shandy. She must be hitting the gym, because she looked pretty stickish back in the day, didn't she?).