This will be an interesting week, and I can’t tell you why until next Monday.

Wow actual drama / a sense of anticipation culminating in rote interest that flickers for a moment or two before the demands of the day and the quotidian idiocies flourish in their accustomed ways

Yeah, pretty much. But something different is about to happen, and I am happy that the norms are going to be sundered. Here’s the thing: it will be a pallid reflection of previous versions, because certain foundational elements are gone for good. The only problem is whether the government will stop me.

I’ve done everything the government wants. But I don’t know if it was enough. It’s entirely possible a simple bureaucratic error will surface, and if it does, there will be no appealing it.

I don’t know who to call to see if the government will stop me. It’s just hanging out there as a possibility. Now, I have the proper documents. But I can just see myself holding forth a sheaf and say “but I haf my papers!” Nein! Verboten! Geh wig!

Busy weekend, although it was the most maddening sort of stuff. Not a single satisfying nanosecond in the whole endeavor, aside from a good hamburger and a good scotch.

I read three webcomics. Or “Comics,” as they’re called. One is XKCD, which is nerdy and occasionally does something surprising that’s enlightening and instructive. The other is Penny Arcade, because I’ve been reading for it years, the quality has never slackened, and it reminds me of the days when I cared about gaming culture. (I don’t anymore. But you get used to the characters and the style.) The third one is the webcomic you think I should read and will say as much in the comments.

The best of them all, ever, was Achewood. It’s all subjective, but on the other hand I’m right. The art wasn’t the attraction, although over the years we grew immensely fond of the spare style: what if a guy who had rudimentary skills got better, often wildly inventive beyond his manifest abilities, but still maintained the feel of someone doodling in a college class notebook? It was the language that set it apart: no one else wrote like Chris Onstad, and I thought - and still do - that he was one of the premier humorists of the 21st centurt.

Anyway, here he is!

He came to down and we had coffee and I drove him and his lovely partner around to see the city. I was repaid with artisanal fluids of a bewitching nature. It really was quite fun, especially since my human contact is down to 1 these days, with the exception of Sunday football. (And that’s turning into a weekly funeral.) Just charming, smart, funny people.

Forgot to tell him: after I got a DM saying he’d be coming to town, I dreamed that he did, indeed, come to town  - in a big semi that said ACHEWOOD on the side in circus lettering. He was sitting inside on a chair with straw on the floor, and people were lining up to tell him about a cartoon he did 15 years ago.

There was a Movietone company, so that helps with the plausibility. Except they did newseeels.

TONY CANZONERI! No? Jolson, then

I always thought that the Jekyll - Hyde name sequence should have been inverted. Jekyll sounds like the madman.

We begin in the Church of St. Matte, just to start things off nice and holy so no one can say the movie glorifies animal immorality:

It's a very creamy world:

That's the Good Doctor's fiancee, and you might think "No was pretty in that way in 1871."

Then there's . . . the prostitute.

Yes, I buy that casting.

She may strike some as a bit chilly and reserved. Great beauty, but always cinched in some undefinable way, and a bit peculiar. Certainly the last you’d expect to play a hooker. But like a million million other men I fell in love with her in Casablanca.

The scene in which Hyde assaults the prostitute is one of the more humid things you'll see today.

Her father does not approve of the Doctor's oddness, and breaks off the engagement. This leads Ol’ Jek to take his chemicals again and hit the town as Mister Hyde, All-Time Leering Champ:

He doesn’t quite look homicidal, does he? But there’s a sense of animal panic about him, at first.

Tracy’s Hyde is not a lurid maniac, a gargoyle. He’s a selfish imp, an emotional bully, a psychopath who seems barely aware of his cruelty at the same time he revels in it. He wears excellent clothes and spits seeds on the floor. He ends up brutalizing Bergman in a way that makes Gaslight look like Love Story.

He gets more and more grotesque, and it seems odd no one recognizes one as the other. Well, it certainly looks like my old der friend, but he carries himself slightly differently, and his eyes are much wider. But you go with it.

It’s really surprising this one isn’t better known in the pantheon of Classic Horror, but then again, I’m not deeply steeped in the fandom. Perhaps it is.

		That will  have to do. Matches await!

Oh: sorry about the double Lance last Friday. It's Dreamweaver's fault. Command-S does not always save. You have to be in the document in a way I can't quite explain. It's not enough to have it open. You have to be in it, doing things. I had the right code, but apparently didn't save. Fridays are a beast, because there are so many links and images and moving parts.

The good news: next year we're going to have a Sunday Lance once a month. It was a pain, because it meant chopping a page into nine panels, but I have set this task for myself and can blame no other.