Cartoon and Conquer – Commentary Gallery

 

Published 23/05/2014

The infantryman’s attitude toward viewing nature from the comfort of the indoors is basically how I feel regarding all scenic wonders and monuments the world over. I need not spend my money nor waste my time and energy looking at something only slightly more real than what I could see for free and in an instant with a few clicks of my mouse.

 

 

Published 6/06/2014

Don’t make a vow you don’t plan on keeping. ▫ A chimp stealing bananas is way too obvious, of course that was the one false report. ▫ I started getting concerned that I was going too far with the chimpanzee’s intelligence though, so I had to cut the story off before it could go any further.

 

 

Published 20/06/2014

I think solving a problem caused by stupidity by doing something even more stupid is a disturbingly common tactic. Ironically, for the infantryman, this move actually ends up working. Don’t expect the same results, people.

 

 

Published 4/07/2014

The chimpanzee’s intelligence reached the point where talking about it seriously would get anybody kicked out of the room. ▫ The officer in the middle is a tribute to General Carville. By tribute, I mean it’s not actually supposed to be him, it’s just supposed to look like him. ▫ The presentation used intentionally tiny type, but it isn’t just gibberish filler text.
Title: “PAN TROGLODYES – Chimpanzee”
Head: “Tiny animal brain outsmarts large human brains, Darwin would be confused”
Eyes: “Amoral optical sensors see no evil”
Ears: “Audio input receptors hear no evil”
Mouth: “Vocalizations lack speech pattern synthesis; speaks no evil”
Back: “Strong back able to haul twice its weight in hand grenades”
Right hand: “Projectile flinging mechanism”
Rump: “No tail means not a monkey”
Butt: “Special stink bomb projectile generator”
Left hand: “Theft-capable assemblage”
Feet: “All-terrain vertical climbers and stabilizers”
The see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil lines are of course a reference to the Three Wise Monkeys from Japan.

 

 

Published 18/07/2014

Antarctica is too cold to pack snow and it is very windy. Any snow sculptures would be very hard to make. ▫ Just thought I’d throw in the fact that polar bears don’t live in Antarctica, though I think the general population is starting to catch on to this better now than a decade or two ago. Perhaps because polar bears are in the news more concerning climate change.

 

 

Published 1/08/2014

I had a few scripts that were “emergency scripts”, with jokes I didn’t think were quite good enough to use, but could fall back on if I was hitting the deadline and didn’t have anything written. I never reached an emergency, but I did pull this strip from the stash when I decided I needed one more Allied strip before going back to continuing the story arc for the Soviets. Since the joke alone was subpar, I added a visual joke to increase its quality. Because the script was written long before this was drawn, it has absolutely nothing to do with the arc it is wedged in the middle of. ▫ The bullet hole arrangement was done using a real Mona Lisa silhouette and filling it with dots on a higher layer, then deleting the silhouette.

 

 

Published 15/08/2014

The tiberium garden pays off. ▫ As with #84, the text is intentionally tiny, but actually says something.
Top left: “Brotherhood of Nod Antarctic Outpost One Mission briefing – Operation: Leaping Orca”
Top right: “GDI insurgency. Enemy objective unknown.”
Bottom: “Deploy south, move around GDI base, avoid contact.”
The big green arrow is a reference to the mission briefings from the games, I actually intended to use an arrow lifted from one of the in-game maps, but I couldn’t get any that were shaped right and of good resolution. I decided the arrows weren’t unique enough to bother with anyway and used a different arrow.

 

 

Published 29/08/2014

Why does the reactor core need maintenance? Because the chimpanzee swapped it out for a flak shell, of course, that was on the list in #82. ▫ The picture on the general’s desk is the Red Alert 2 nuclear reactor. I gave it a solid blue background to elicit nostalgia from any modders, as the usual palettes used for buildings depicted the transparency as solid blue.

 

 

Published 12/09/2014

This strip used more copy/pastes than any other in the series, and probably more than the rest of the series combined. I needed to save a lot of time in order to draw the Orca Transport, which was done using a render from Eric Gooch’s collection as the draft. Once one transport was finished, it was duplicated and slightly edited for the following panels. I only drew the GDI infantryman’s body once, and the grenadier’s twice, different heads were placed on the bodies so they could still move around a bit. The rock is also duplicated.

 

 

Published 26/09/2014

This is another radiophobia joke. Working in a nuclear reactor is very safe, as the Desolator explains later. Worrying about dying is probably more hazardous to one’s health than whatever might actually be killing them is.