SR 1 PAGE ONE-HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

You know what? Dialect is tricky.

Why do I have Vicious talking like a chimney sweep here? A Dick Van Dyke chimney sweep? Trying to crawl back into 2004 Aaron’s brain here… I think I was just trying to reiterate that V is indeed English, and the reader should be imagining some manner of English accent for the duration of the issue. It’s clumsy and unnecessary and kind of puzzling, but that’s simply how you do things early in your career. And late in your career. And if you continue making art in the afterlife, I suspect.

You’d never guess it from the pseudo-Cockney mess up there, but I’ve been positively steeped in British pop culture ever since I was little. Particularly comedy. Some of my earliest memories are of watching Monty Python reruns with my parents on PBS. An early bit of Kindertrauma was getting blindsided by the “Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Salad Days’” sketch when I was like six:

I loved those guys. Anything the Pythons were in, I would watch, good, bad, or indifferent. And it wasn’t just Python that fascinated me, but also The Young Ones, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, and dozens other obscurities that would flare up on PBS one Sunday afternoon before vanishing like a dream. (Still not 100% sure Alexei Sayle is real?) I wanted it all injected straight into my veins. Even Mr. Bean. GIVE ME BEAN VEINS.

It’s not surprising, either. I was an intensely reserved, introverted kid with a brain bubbling with wild ideas. Understated comedy that occasionally bursts into deranged, over-the-top madness had obvious appeal. It’s a very different vibe than what we typically got in the extroverted States. More of a ME vibe.

In college, of course, I fell down the British post-punk/gothic rabbit hole. (Still living there now.) And I kept on vibing with the British comedy scene as it head into that glorious early-aughts period that gave us The Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghi, Spaced, The IT Crowd, etc. Yep, I guess you could say I got to know English accents pretty darn well.

Not well enough to write this page, obviously, but it’s easy enough to shove this under the rug. Let’s do that now.

SR 1 PAGE ONE-HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN

Well, here it is, the last-ever page of Welcome to Statickland. “Now what?” is right!

I’ve written previously about why these pages are in the first Serenity Rose book and why it didn’t make much sense to continue. I still like them, though, and feel a sad little twinge looking at this final page. It’s just so unfinished, like a beloved, groundbreaking TV series canceled without a proper sendoff. ALF, for instance.

Where would Statickland have gone from here? Gotta admit, I did not plan that far ahead. It can’t be as simple as Humbly using the map in Mary Grissle’s head to go stab The Twitchriddle in the heart. Need to throw a few more compelling complications in the way…

The key would probably be to figure out who Mary Grissle is, exactly. Something about her story/personality should be in conflict with Humbly’s goals. For instance, maybe she was on her own quest to kill The Twitchriddle, but spending years trapped in a monster’s gullet made her too queasy to continue. Humbly has to talk her into it, or do a favor for her, or maybe find a way to steal the map from her head. A BRAIN heist.

Or maybe Mary’s goal is at odds with Humbly’s. She was on a quest not just to kill The Twitchriddle, but to replace him and rule Statickland with her own tiny iron fist. It could be she has her own army of acolytes bearing down on Humbly, and he has to stay a few steps ahead of them while trying to convince Mary to do the right thing.

Or maybe Mary Grissle is totally on Humbly’s side from the jump, but her map is damaged. It takes them to various bizarre corners of Statickland… Or even out into our world.

Again, writing is fun! Who knows, maybe someday I’ll see where one of these threads leads.

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

I don’t know, man. I don’t want to talk about the present.

Be nice to each other, if that’s still allowed.

Be even nicer to each other, if it isn’t.

NEXT WEEK: SMASHING CRAFTSMANSHIP.