#466 – fleeting spring

This concludes the internship arc! Hope you liked it. I've been working on a freelance animation job lately, so comic updates are coming along slower than usual. Hopefully I'll get in a rhythm with it soon. I really enjoy animation and doing both has been kind of nice, though time-consuming. Thanks to everyone who came out to TCAF and made it the best one yet! If I seemed tired it's because I totally was. But you folks are amazing, and I'd go to Toronto every weekend if I could.

60 thoughts on “#466 – fleeting spring

  1. Is the animation project something you'll be able to share when it's done?

    Nice seeing you at TCAF, hope the Cadbury's eggs weren't too melted for you!

    1. I'll be airing on TV, so yes!

      It was great seeing you too, and thanks for the gifts! as Kate put it, "egg dreams come true".

      1. Yay! Wasn't sure if it was the kind of job where you do it and it goes away and your name isn't really on it or what. Very exciting though!

        Ha, it was all worth it for her look of utter confusion when I pulled the egg out of my bag. 🙂

  2. Ha! Awesome. 🙂

  3. …goddammit Eve! Road to hell! Good intentions! Paving! What have you learned about trying to teach valuable life lessons to slackers and hippies?

    1. Road to hell? No way! that’s just corporatist boogey-man tales.

      Most of those storefronts will be open again in a month or few. The biz or bldg owners may not be making as much – but local unemployment will be a couple points lower and there’ll be more money flowing around the neighborhood. Short term pain = long term gain. Cite = http://keizai.soka.ac.jp/assets/pdf/dp/2009_01.pdf

    2. You learned that a national economy built on slave labor would eventually collapse without said slave labor? Just a hypothesis as it seems like many businesses seem unable to function without free or dirt cheap labor.

  4. I'm getting a Grapes of Wrath/Christina's World kind of take on that last visual. Nice.

  5. I gotta admit I feel a lot like Eve in the last panel these days …

  6. oh wow. am i the only one who was oblivious and didn't realize that was marigold in every comic she's shown up in with her hair cut(the arc aside, obviously)?

  7. Best overblown consequences of innocuous acts EVER. XD

    1. Hah, yeah!

      The larger point is pretty solid, tho.

      OK, I'm putting my own interpretation on here… but when the bankers and the landlords are able to decide the base cost to even keep the doors open of a business and they are always going to gouge as much as they can out of everyone, how can fun businesses really survive?

      Coffee shop owners and record store owners are not, by and large, robber barons. Their margins suck.

  8. I keep imagining a leany Statue of Liberty in the background with Eve yelling "You maniacs! Damn you all to hell!"

    1. I keep expecting Eve to yell "That's not true!! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!"

  9. Can’t… get… jaw… off… floor…

  10. Meredith, I see some real progress in the hand-lettering! I love how OP is at once a fertile ground of experimentation for you to explore techniques/styles and also consistently one of my favorite comics. Kudos!

    1. I second this about the hand-lettering!

      1. I third it. I copped to not loving it off the bat, but expected it would get much better. This turnaround is pretty great, I see it as an improvement now. Good job, great comic, hopefully the moral of this arc isn't too hard on your personal pet projects.

  11. And just like that, everything she enjoyed had been destroyed…seriously, this is like a Twilight Zone ending. It's great!

    1. There was time now! It's not faiir!

  12. Oh, I love those birds, animated by their tiny shapes, flying across the big, empty, bleak future up ahead.

  13. Is it wrong that I think Eve's "despair face" in panel 9 is cute?

  14. Aves Project Ideas

    This has absolutely nothing to do with today's comic, but years later, thinking of the crudely drawn dog proclaiming Olly's to be "the fukken shit" still makes me chuckle without fail.

  15. I agree about the lettering – It looks way more clean and consistent than just a couple weeks ago! Not that it looked bad before, just a wee bit shaky.

    And yeah TCAF was a blast! I was that weird guy with a beard and troll-horns on who felt like an asshole for not being able to buy anything. x3 I was just happy to meet one of my favorite comic artists though :O

    1. Don't worry dude. I bought the new book AND pre-ordered (for myself :p) too cover for your empty pockets.

      P.S.: You guys should check out Eff-Nocka's [the afro-stoner] origin's at NockForce.com, it's by Meredith's friend, Ian Jones Quartey (of RPG-World)!

  16. What is that mysterious ball of floating hair in the distance?

    1. Flying Spagetthi Monster

      1. That was exactly what I thought when I noticed it.

    2. Or a tumbleweed. Desolate, empty space… Makes sense. More than FSM.

    3. a tumbleweed probably… or a portal to the dimension of dooom!

    4. Marigold's dreadlocks.

  17. NOT THE RECORD STORE
    EVE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
    :'(

  18. Not Cutesy's! Eve, you @#$% socialist monster!!!

  19. Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying unpaid jobs are a good thing?

    1. Perhaps its more that the businesses relied so heavily on unpaid labor that the sudden disappearance of interns caused a "mass extinction".

    2. Unlikely, but having lived in 3 places with similar neighborhood vibes I think it's likely that these shops stopped being profitable a long time ago and were propped up by un/derpaid staff who were either desperate or drunk on the idea of working at that specific place.

  20. This is undistilled Octopus Pie right here. I could hear strings playing in my head.

  21. American Capitalism only functions with slave labor?

    1. A call to arms?

    2. My thoughts exactly. The owners must have been making some money or they'd have closed way before this. If it were me, I'd stand in the middle of the street and yell, "You are all a bunch of thieving bastards!"

    3. The overhead of opening shop in the big cities is so high that the cost of staying in business becomes unaffordable.

      This is why, when taxes are raised in a city, businesses who can afford it will move their operation just outside the city limits into a cheaper suburb.

      This is also why illegal immigrants and under the table work is used. To avoid the excessive overhead of taxes, rent, artificially high energy costs, maintenance, etc.

      Unpaid internships… are dumb. They're a way to dodge paying people to do menial work, for an iffy promise of experience, connections, a possible future job, all of which are the equivalent of "Exposure".

      Unpaid Internships are a product of greed, and of the aforementioned high overhead costs of the higher tax rates.

      Capitalism functions best when the government isn't adding weights to the free market system with too many regulations.

  22. Ha ha, wait… everyone she knew was working unpaid jobs? How can they afford to live in New York City? I’ve never figured out how to cook and eat “this will look great on your resume!”

    Eve collapsing in the street under the weight of her revelation is pretty great though lol

  23. Is the last panel a nod to "Christina's World"?

    1. I caught that earlier ^. I like to think Meredith is acknowledging some of her SVA art history credits.

  24. Ah, the short, fun story arc about how Eve brought down western civilization.

  25. Then they all started their own web-comics and made themselves rich.

  26. Never has the title "Apocalypse Waitress" been a more fitting title for Eve Ning.

  27. NNNNOOOOO, nnnnoooooo!!!

  28. There are a whole lot of empty storefronts out there in the malls, city streets, and suburban highways. It's sad considering the many jobs lost due to that.

  29. Humm… Eve brought about the brace down of society… I did not see that coming.

  30. Intern’s Strike Paralyzes New York City!

  31. -=] "I" [=- will intern to keep that record store open!

  32. "Pretty soon we're all going to have to start demanding what we're worth." I officially proclaim this to be the mantra of our generation. Not that I'm being a pretentious bastard or anything… (looks around self-consciously)

    1. On one hand, I'm down with that mantra. On the other hand, I'm secretly concerned that unpaid intern is exactly what we're worth, and I don't want that information becoming public knowledge.

  33. Seems a bit unfair and sad that the people who create the things we love are often not monetarily compensated for their work. 🙁

  34. thats pretty much what happened to all the little 'indie stores' in the nearby city the moment a big modern mall opened in the heart of it and hired out to all them interns.

    Damn citys a ghost town now and folks only go for the mall.

  35. Love the imagery in direct contradiction to the words.

  36. That's pretty bad if all those places were basically run by interns…how does everyone pay for their bills?!

  37. Yes, that's got to be 'Christina's World'. Good stuff

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