Uninformed Bob

[Greg Stephens]

This is going to be about a guy who posts on internet message boards a lot, isn't it?

[Scott McCloud]

This is going to be about a guy who posts on internet message boards a lot, isn't it?

Ha!
So true. Though just as often, it's over-informed,.

(Present company excepted, natch. )

--Scott

[Nick Douglas]

Does this mean the next installment will be "Opinionated Jeeves"? These are getting predictable, eh.

No offense to Saint McCloud, of course. By the way, nice redo on the quadrilateral's requitement.

[Zem]

So, wait. Is this one going to be sketched out, then detailed each day? Or are you going to leave it in rough sketched form and then just add more panels every day?

[rgdoucette]

Looking at the first few panerls of Uninformed Bob, I like the unformed (that's unformed not uninformed) work in progress look of it. One joy of reading on-line comics is learning how comic aritsts draw/create their art. Some letter and use the remaining space to add their artwork (Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary). Some hand draw everything. Other use computer graphics for the lettering but draw the rest. A few like Greg Dean's Real Life use Adobe Illustrator exclusively.

It appears that for Morning Improv Scott McCloud uses multiple techniques, but looking at For Meadow of the Damned and Uniformed Bob scripting comes first, maybe with full computer lettering, then sketches. After completing the drawings in pencil, I would guess they are inked, pencils erased and scanned. Final coloring is done by computer.

[Scott McCloud]

Actually, I feel confident that we'll all be a bit surprised by Uninformed Bob before it's over. Stay tuned.

[Guest]

In panel 2, it looks like Bob's saying something slightly different in the lettered version than he is in the handwritten version (which is hard to see).
Like this:

Written: "Actually, there were two Elvis *something* Presley.
Lettered: "Actually, there were two Elvis Presleys, Timmy.

The lack of "Timmy" in the written one doesn't really change the meaning, but the fact that "Presley" is singular there seems like it might alter it.
Though, now that I look at it more closely, the *something* looks like it might be "Presley Elvis," making it "...there were two Elvis Presley Elvis Presley." So maybe it's just placeholder text Scott used to get the approximate spacing right before he chose the exact wording.

[NatGertler]

Of course, now we get into the discussion of whether it should be "the 50s", "the '50s", or "the 50's"...

--Nat (proud to be living in the aughts!)

[Greg Stephens]

Either of the first two is correct. The last one is absolutely wrong, but, sadly, you see it the most.

Edit: Allow me to amend that statement- If you mean to say "during the 1950s, everything was cool", then an apostrophe is wrong, wrong, wrong, because you are neither contracting nor possessing but if you mean to say "it's a 1950's diner," then you could be correct, since it could be reasonably said that the decade is still in possession of the establishment.

[Scott McCloud]

Edit: Allow me to amend that statement- If you mean to say "during the 1950s, everything was cool", then an apostrophe is wrong, wrong, wrong, because you are neither contracting nor possessing but if you mean to say "it's a 1950's diner," then you could be correct, since it could be reasonably said that the decade is still in possession of the establishment.

Bearing in mind that I have since added the leading apostrophes which I do consider the best form, I'd have to say that "1950's diner" would still be wrong. If the decade still possessed the establishment as you said, it would be a 1950s' diner. Perhaps if the year 1950 possessed it, that would be the correct form.

Which proves, of course, that we all need to get out of the house more often.

[Greg Stephens]

Right and double-right!

Apostrophe usage is a pet peeve of mine, but I was typing faster than I can think. Uninformed, indeed- see the first post of this thread- oh, sweet irony!

[Nick Douglas]

None of which answers the question, what about Elvis 3, the Elvis of the 7-11's (which takes an apostrophe for its plural, according to the AP Style Book I leaf through for fun -- I really need to get out more)? (And should that be a period, as it follows a somewhat rhetorical question? Should I ask rhetorical question man, or would he be unable to answer due to his very nature?)

Oh, dear, Mr. McCloud, you've got me thinking hard. You tend to have that effect.... (Yep, use four periods for a sentence-ending ellipsis. Okay. I'm done. I swear.)

[Guest]

Actually, the use of the "plural apostrophe" is proper on single letters and on numbers. A good example of that is the ol' Oakland A's, which were not the Oakland As.

You can see this usage documented on these sites:
http://www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/maplewoods/ ... ophes.html
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/ ... apost.html
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/ ... ling/pizza

This site suggests that it is right for single digits but not for years:
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/apostrophe.htm

It seems to me that the usage is growing less common on years, but it is a traditional usage and I would not consider it completely archaic yet. (But I do think we need the leading apostrophe on the '50s, at the very least!)

[Scott McCloud]

After completing the drawings in pencil, I would guess they are inked, pencils erased and scanned. Final coloring is done by computer.

Um, actually that's all done in Photoshop with a Wacom Tablet. I just dimmed the layer with the original rough and used it as reference (what you saw in that early version) and deselected the layer when the final drawings were completed.

Apart from the first MI which was from an old mini, the Improvs have been all-digital from start to finish. I haven't penciled a comic in ages.

[Guest]

As a Point of Information, "The world used to be Black and White" is an old Calvin & Hobbes gag

[Guest]

I always heard it as a common childhood misconception. Like Mount Rushmore being a natural formation.

Did C & H include the Oz stuff too? I don't recall that one.

[Guest]

Thankfully, most comic strips in the newspaper today aren't as repetitive as Uninformed Bob (although I can think of a few that are--Blondie, Andy Capp, Rex Morgan MD, etc.)

<p>

[Guest]

Boo to zwol for splitting my post! As I was saying, in many cases, the original creator of the strip died or was fired, and a team of starvin' artists and bad writers took over.

[Aris Katsaris]

I always heard it as a common childhood misconception.

I certainly hope it's not that common.

[Lemon Aid]

As a Point of Information, "The world used to be Black and White" is an old Calvin & Hobbes gag

I was going to say that.

I thought it was telling that the art doesn't change (or the wife's comment at the end) from the first to second strips. It helps in defining this as some sort of stereotypical humor idea. Hopefully Scott's going to expound on this idea (as he seemed to allude up there ^) later on. Hopefully.

[Aris Katsaris]

Scott's keeping the same ending panel, so I wonder if he takes it further and to save space and loading time further he starts reusing a single pic for the bottom half of the first three panels too... Though that'd be rather silly, wouldnt' it...

[Alexander D.]

Actually, the use of the "plural apostrophe" is proper on single letters and on numbers. A good example of that is the ol' Oakland A's, which were not the Oakland As.

You can see this usage documented on these sites:
http://www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/maplewoods/ ... ophes.html
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/ ... apost.html
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/ ... ling/pizza

I'm not really convinced by these sources. The first two are pretty unofficial sources -- and the first even advocates the apostrophe in pluralizing numbers, which I'm sure is wrong.

The third source is poses more of a problem -- since it's drawing on the OED, which IS an official source, it carries much more credance. The Chicago Manual of Style clearly contradicts much of what is being said here. Namely, numbers and abbreviations should almost never have an apostrophe (the one exception being abbreviations with multiple periods, such as M.A.'s) -- and as for letters, there is no apostrophe, but the letter itself should be italicized.

Personally, I prefer the CMS's take on this. It just makes more sense to me to draw a clear distinction between how plurality and possession are represented.

On the other hand, what we may be seeing in the disparity between the OED and the CMS is simply variance between England's English and America's English. There's a good bit more of that than people tend to realize.

[Alexander D.]

according to the AP Style Book I leaf through for fun -- I really need to get out more)?

I'm not too fond of AP Style, personally. I lost all respect when they officially did away with serial commas.

(In my defense, I'm an editor. It's my job to take these things seriously.)

[NatGertler]

I think we have to be wary of using the term "official" with any grammar text. The OED does not dictate language; language dictates the OED. And the Chicago Manual of Style is just that -- it aims to dictate a single style, which is helpful when you're trying to simplify arguments or maintain a standard style across multiple authors. By meeting that style, you may be guaranteed to be grammatically correct, but that does not mean that to violate that style is to be grammatically incorrect.

(One of the web pages I was looking at says that you should have the apostrope when pluralizing a lower-case letter or abbreviation, but not an upper-case one. That's because "Those guys are DDSs" is clear, but "Be sure to dot your is" is not.)