The Only Explanation

STRIP #2
It's easy to jump to conclusions when your husband's addicted to online poker and he suddenly volunteers to spend the day with your parents. Luckily for her, though, they're not broke (SPOILER!), but I wouldn't be surprised if he had just busted out early in a couple Sunday majors.

I'm sure I'll work their names into the strip soon, but I'll go ahead and tell you now that the husband is Corbin, Violet's the wife, and the little girl is Scarlett. Corbin is of course named after "Major League" star Corbin Bernsen, Violet is named after Violet from "Peanuts," and let's just say that Scarlett is named after Scarlett Johansson. I'll probably introduce another character or two before the end of August.

You might have noticed from the credits above the strip that the artist is named Tiger Claw. He told me that he didn't want to use his real name because "whenever I use my pen name, good things usually happen," but I secretly think it's because he dislikes the writing and doesn't think too highly of the strip's chances for success. So if you ever want to find out the artist's name, tell all your friends about the strip and make it super popular! I wish I could draw as good as him, but unfortunately I can't draw at all (proof here). I'm very nitpicky about the art in +EV, though, to the annoyance of Tiger Claw, I'm sure. I asked him to change about a million things (mostly facial expressions) after seeing the pencils for today's strip, and I thought you might be interested in seeing that, so I hope he doesn't mind --

I've already heard a ton of praise for the art in the feedback I received for the first strip. Tiger Claw's doing a great job. Keep those comments coming. I'll probably set up a +EV message board soon.

I haven't played much poker in the past few weeks because I've been working on writing a low budget horror movie that I hope to actually film as well (more on that in coming weeks, I'm sure), but I played a few satellites yesterday morning to the PokerStars Million and one to the Ultimate Bet $200K. Busted out early in all of them. Oh well, there's always next week.