The Primest Of Directives

[actually posted on 4/25/14] Still playing catch up and still a week behind on comics. I sketched this comic on a plane and drew it in a Canadian hotel room. Convention permitting, I will be posting some more comics over this weekend. I’ve also got a pretty sweet guest comic lined up for while I’m returning from Calgary Expo on Monday.

CALGARY FANCY BASTARDS!

Calgary Expo 2014

I will be at Calgary Expo as part of Cyanide & Happiness in booth 622. It’ll be me and Rob Denbleyker doing stick figure dick sketches, and I’ll also have some HE prints and shirts.

RE: This comic
I have made a lot of comics about Star Trek, many of them about TNG. When someone asks me about TNG is like I’m Madonna, it’s 1997 and someone just asked me about Kabbalah. I burst like a dam of interest, enthusiasm and information. Seriously. Try it sometime. Ask me about Data’s journey to become more human. Ask me about Dr. Crusher’s diminished role in Wesley’s life, and how we was a child raised by a bridge crew (AND SCIENCE!). Ask me about how bad Troi was at her job. SPOILERS: She was TERRIBLE at it. Anyway, I freaking love TNG so hard. It’s the one fandom that shaped me the most. I love a lot of made up space stuff, but TNG is the made up space stuff that changed my brain the most. Hell, I dare you to ask me about how much I hate Dr. Pulaski. Go ahead. I DARE YOU. 

STORE STUFF!
Some of the shirts in the HE Store on are MAJORLY on sale, because they aren’t going to be printed again. Some are down to the last few sizes. Get ’em while you can! There are also some great PRINTS and POSTERS in the store. Your walls cry out for them.

Apparently they found an extra box of Lil’ Wils hiding in the warehouse, so there’s maybe 50 or 60 of these little dudes left between now and the heat death of The Universe.

becomepatron

COMMENTERS: What made up stuff made the biggest impression on you? Was it made up space stuff? I hope it was made up space stuff.

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44 Comments

      • I hated her too….she just didn't fit in with the crew. As for her exit from the show, I think it would have been AWESOME if she died by falling down a turbo lift shaft like her character did on "LA Law" with the elevator shaft!

  1. Is the character in the strip supposed to be someone we know? Because it looks like Patrick Rothfuss to me…..

  2. "Data, SOMETHING'S GOT MEEEE!" –William T. Riker, pre-beard, on the dangers of parlaying with inky black pools of hate.

  3. Seasons 5 and 6 are now on Netflix (in the UK) and I've been in 7th heaven. There are some awesome episodes and lines…. my favourite, probably out of the whole of TNG is Q saying "You're dead and I'm God!". Hilarious.

  4. How about Worf's lack of combat skills pre-DS9? Even Troi, a woman that's like 2/3 his size, took him down!

    • Michael Dorn joked about Worf's apparent wussiness. It was to show just how much stronger his opponent was, but he complained that they didn't show his strength enough for people to get that.

    • Despite having a few great eps focused squarely on him, Warf was probably the most underused character on TNG. Considering how much they did with him and the rest of the Klingons on DS9, you can really see how he just sort of stood in the background and fired torpedoes or opened hailing frequencies.

      • I've heard that Worf was actually intended to just be a background extra at first, like Lt Kyle in TOS or Chief O'Brien on TNG.

    • No idea why you're getting a thumbs down, but giving you a thumbs up for B5. Seriously, that show was amazing. I was SO into TNG, and then DS9 came out and was even better–and then B5 came out and blew them both away. Fantastic stuff.

  5. Oh no! The metamorphosis has started! RUN! RUN LIKE THE BORG IS ON YOUR TAIL! SOON HE WILL REVERT TO HIS TRUE Q FORM AND FORCE US TO RECITE THE PRIME DIRECTIVE AND THE RULES OF ACQUISITION IN KLINGON WHILE GIVING US A DETAILED LECTURE IN THE INNER WORKINGS OF THE MATTER ANTI-MATTER REACTION ASSEMBLY! RUUUUN!

  6. Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek TOS. I hit puberty in the late 70s and those were constantly being run on TV and I loved the hell out of them. I still do. I also adore ST:TNG more than I probably should. It also explains why I seem to have a thing for tall slender dark-haired men of a science/nerdy bent (my boyfriend is an astrophysicist who's also a gamer). I love me some Holmes and Spock (and later, Data and Picard).

    • Not really. Picard was always supposed to be a surrogate father to Wesley, since he was directly responsible for sending Jack Crusher to his death.

      • I could swear I read somewhere that the writers had intended to reveal that Picard had a fling with Beverly while she was married to Jack, but they eventually dropped it. Probably because it would have made Picard look like a colossal dick, especially considering how brusquely he treated Wesley at the beginning of the series.

  7. "What made up stuff made the biggest impression on you?"

    Star Trek: TOS. I was drooling over the Motorola flip phone because it slightly resembled an original series communicator. I love my iPhone, even though it doesn't "flip open", but I'm still waiting on the transporter technology. "Beam me up, Scotty!"

    Not so sure about the food synthesizers, though. Food that looks like lumps of Playdough is not so appealing. I was also pretty excited about my first talking car, although I'm kind of over that now.

    Oh, and the Jetsons. I'm still waiting for my flying car, dammit!

    • I'm still surprised and disappointed that they haven't done a special-edition flip cell phone that looks like the TOS communicators with a default ring that makes the same chirp. Seriously, we have the technology. Why is this not a thing? It could be a basic call/text flip phone and you could still charge $500 and WE WOULD BUY IT. WE WOULD BUY IT, NOKIA, DAMN YOU.

  8. "Ask me about Dr. Crusher’s diminished role in Wesley’s life, and how WE was a child raised by a bridge crew…" This is a very revealing typo.

    I suggest Will Wheaton get a bodyguard before you end up wearing his face from a 'transporter accident'.

  9. Pssssh. This strip is not news, Joel. We always knew you had a crushing crush on Crusher.

    "I've got a course you can plot"…in the backseat of his 1978 TransAm!

  10. Joel my mother just passed away and i've spent my entire 27 years living with her. alny advice to becoming self sufificient?

    • I\’m sorry for your loss. I spent my entire childhood trying to find someone to be a father figure to me, since my own dad wasn\’t interested in the job. From about age 11 on, my mother kept me clothed and fed but pretty much ignored my emotional and mental well being. I had to learn to be self sufficient out of necessity. I\’ve moved out at 18 and I\’ve never really had the experience of relying on parents for advice, stability, money or any other kind of support. I don\’t say this to suggest that I\’m great because I learned to raise myself. I just want to give you some backstory before I say that I have no idea what you should do or how you should be feeling right now. I was forced into self sufficience at a very young age. I wish I had someone helping to prop me up into my late twenties. I guess just take the lessons you learned from her, or by her example and try your best to apply them yourself.

      Maybe getting a roommate would ease the burden. I wish you the best.

    • Man, sorry to hear that.

      Years ago I heard about a book of practical advice for everything from how to reset a breaker to where to buy shower curtains. A couple of friends put it together after one of them came home to find her teenage daughter frying cheese. "What are you doing?" "Making grilled cheese." "Um… You know you need bread for that, too, right?"

      I'm not 100% sure this is the same book (all I remember is that it was written by two women) but this one might be it:
      http://www.amazon.com/Life-Skills-101-Practical-L

      Googling "book how to live on own for the first time" seems to give good results, as well. There's a lot of background stuff that happens to keep everyone fed and dressed in clean clothes and stuff, and it's not at all uncommon for people who haven't had to do those particular tasks often to not know how. Books like these are designed to provide exactly that info. Maybe check a few out.

      Good luck! 🙂

    • Nah, that show's never been great for me. I heard they got bought out and moved to a new venue, so it might be improved this year. I will probably wait a year or two and give it another try.

  11. This is exactly how I am with my husband! He'll bring TNG (or anything Star Trek related) and regret his politeness/joke immediately. Luckily he turns it around and talks my ear off about programming.

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