Archive for the ‘The Adventures Of Cynical Woman’ Category

ACW Episode 211 – Still not getting it

Monday, May 13th, 2013

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized comic!

Yes, we did eventually find a female super hero. Yes, she was all pink. Yes, my hair is pink, too. But sometimes it's blue. Or orange. In fact, my hair has been lots of colors. And while I like pink, I hate that people insist that pink is for girls, or that anything related to girls must be pink!!

The only other female super hero we could find was all in yellow, the other approved color for female super heroes. And yes, both these female super heroes were Power Rangers. And yes, we ended up buying them, because I was desperate and because Princess and Pixie love Power Rangers.

But I insisted on putting a cut-out of the Sensational She-Hulk on the cake. Because Shulkie ROCKS!!!

 

ACW Episode 210 – A failure to communicate

Monday, May 6th, 2013

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized webcomic!

So, this actually happened. I volunteered to plan a party for our Service Unit's leader appreciation meeting, and I decided the theme would be “Volunteers Are Heroes.” I spent weeks figuring out what to do for decorations, activities, party favors, food, etc. Then two weeks before, I went shopping for action figures to use as cake toppers and found out there is apparently no such thing as a female action figure. Major FAIL.

I've been in fandom a looooooooong time (about 30 years, in fact) and I'm familiar with how things work in the world of comicbook heroes. But honestly, the girls and I couldn't even find a Black Widow action figure, and last I saw, she was pretty popular these days thanks to the Avengers movie. So what gives?

On the upside, planning this party did rekindle my interest in comic books, a long neglected part of my geekdom, and I had the chance to spend plenty of time explaining to the girls about the different characters in comic books, especially the women characters. And this in turn led to me going into a local comic book store and starting up collecting again. Nothing major like I used to do. Pre-kids, I used to drop around $150 a month on comics. I can't afford that now. But I can afford a couple comics a month, and that includes some comics for the girls, who have become very interested in Cat Woman, Bat Girl, She-Hulk, and Wonder Woman. Too bad most of those titles aren't suitable for kids 12 and under (though we did find a Black Widow comic that was labelled as kid friendly, and Pixie snatched that right up!).

By the way, here's a quick look at some of the party decorations in progress. We ended up Photoshopping a picture of She-Hulk and putting her on the cake. It worked very well.

By the way, if you didn't see it already, Mich and I have started a new webcomic called Bitchcraft! The first episode is here. I'll be working to see if I can get this set up and running on every Friday, so keep coming back for more!

 

Episode 209 – HATS!!

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

Click in the thumbnail above to view the full-sized webcomic!

Whoops! I could have sworn I put this blog post together and scheduled it to go up yesterday. I know it was drawn and ready to go on Friday. Oh well, I guess it got overlooked in the pandemonium of getting ready to take Girl Scouts camping.

Anyhoo, here it is. I know I spend more time volunteering than I do on anything else, and it drives me crazy. And the Hubster is in the exact same boat. We love the volunteer work, but I feel like it's taking over too much of our lives at times. I'm hoping we find ways to balance things out a bit more. We'll see how successful we are at that in the future.

 

ACW Episode 208 – Mamas, don’t dress your babies up to be hookers

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized image!

I honestly believe this is the best strip I've ever drawn. The colors, the poses and expressions, even the inking came out great! And this is one of those “It really happened” stories. By the way, you can't quite see it in the comic, but those are “Hooker Baby Brand” undies. Available at all fine retail stores that are eager to help you turn your pre-teen/grade-schooler/pre-schooler/toddler/infant daughter into a sex object! I'm looking at you, Target and Walmart!

Seriously though, no child needs to wear a neon green/blaze orange thong. So why do our retail stores sell them in the Juniors section? I've seen classier undies in a Fredericks of Hollywood catalog. Our daughters should not be turned into sex toys, no matter how much money corporations think they can make off of that.

'Nuff said.

 

ACW Episode 207 – Cleaning?

Monday, April 15th, 2013

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized webcomic

Yes, I'm still trying to clean up my house. No, it's not going well. Yes, I'm still considering destroying the whole place and starting over from scratch.

 

ACW Episode 206 – back to normal life

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized webcomic!

Cookies are over, but I may never reclaim my “normal” life. I'm off to exercise and then battle laundry…

 

ACW Episode 205 – A particular shade of pink

Monday, April 1st, 2013
 

Soooooooo… There are a few new things going on here at La Casa de Madden. For starters, I changed my hair color again. I expect I'll be adding some streaks of dark purple, but right now my fluffy locks are the exact same shade as Easter grass. The reactions I got at Hubster's church were fun.

You may also notice that this week's comic is drawn a little differently. That's because I got a new Surface Pro computer. I love being able to draw right on the screen, and I'm getting used to Windows 8. Ever since I tore my ACL, I've been drawing the webcomic on the iPad, using Sketchclub, Adobe Ideas, InkPad and iDraw to get the job done. Needless to say, I've had to do a lot of experimentation. And I'll have to do some more. Today's comic was drawn using Manga Studio EX. I like the look, but I have to admit that Manga Studio is far more complex than it needs to be. So I may try next week to draw the comic using SketchBook Pro. Essentially, I'm looking for a way to sketch, ink, color and letter the comic all in the same program or app. I can do that in Manga Studio, but again, I find the program to be far too complex for my needs.

By the way, Girl Scout cookie season is finally over. I've spent most of the past week asleep. Hopefully, I'll be able to get my life back together now. We'll see.

Have a good week!

 

ACW Episode 204 – Oh great googley moogley, it’s finally over!

Monday, March 25th, 2013

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized webcomic!

My apologies for being late with this week's webcomic. You can see the reason why. The stomach bug hit everyone in our family last week, so when I wasn't busy being sick myself, I was busy taking care of everyone else who was sick. The Hubster can pretty much take care of himself, but I was up all night with each girl when they got sick, and I slept for almost two days straight when I got sick. The good news is that I finally finished our troop's cookie paperwork and so now I am all done with Girl Scout cookies. For this year anyway. Now if I can just avoid getting sick again…

 

ACW Episode 203 – My to-do list

Monday, March 18th, 2013

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized webcomic!

This is my life right now. Stuck in the final painful week of Girl Scout cookies. Ugh.

 

ACW Episode 202 – Smile!

Monday, March 11th, 2013

I am barely surviving cookie season. Our first weekend we had four booth sales out in the freezing cold. Princess couldn't feel her feet after four hours of selling cookies outside a Mexican restaurant. This past weekend I had to work on another three booth sales – two for Pixie's troop, one for Princess'. I write these posts a few days in advance so I'm just going to assume that I'm dead dog tired.

I apologize for not getting up the usual posts for “Rats!” on Wednesdays and for not having anything interesting to post on Fridays. I'm just too slammed with work for Girl Scouts to keep up with the usual schedule. That and the fact that I am still recovering from the ACL reconstruction have really taken a bite out of my productivity. I think next year I should just clear my calendar of everything except Girl Scouts and the webcomics.

We've got one more weekend of booth sales coming up. If I survive that, then I've got one more week to gather up all the paperwork and finish this cookie business off. Hopefully after that I'll get a couple days to recover and then I can get back to a more regular schedule.

We'll see.