When Trump was going to bro-hang with Kim Jong-un, America turned to Google and asked ‘where is Singapore?‘.
Unfortunately, the US State Dept forgot to Google it before releasing a statement accidentally saying that Singapore was in Malaysia. This has since been retracted, of course, but the fact remains that the group of people in charge of dealing with the rest of the world seem to know very little about said rest of the world.
Mat
A sweet photo & video did the rounds during the week claiming Meghan Markle’s beagle was driven to the wedding ceremony in a Rolls Royce with the Queen.
A friend posted that this dog was now a regal beagle, I tried to work the phrase “You can’t spell ‘beagle’ without ‘regal’!” into the comic strip. After a few attempts, I realised the phrase was getting in the way of the comic strip and it was better off without it.
(It turned out that this was not a photo or video from the ceremony, but was taken a couple of days before. Identity of mystery dog unconfirmed.)
Mat
You might not have heard, but Prince Harry married Meghan Markle.
The comic strip also refers to the story that Claire Foy got paid less than Matt Smith for their roles in the first two seasons of The Crown. The producers say that this has now been rectified for the future seasons.
Mat
After seeing Avengers: Infinity War, I had to do a comic strip with Thanos. Middle-manager Thanos may cause fewer computer-generated explosions, but he’s still got a job to do.
The Marvel movies are now impossible to evaluate on their own because they all tie together, referencing the previous films and planning out the next bunch of movies. Each film is an episode in the most expensive television series ever made.
What continues to impress me is that with such a large cast, everyone got some time in the spotlight. The tones of each different group of heroes – the playfulness of Spiderman and Iron Man, the retro goofiness of Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy, etc – all meshed together to show that all this is truly one big universe and any character can feasibly end up in a scene with any other character.
Mat
Announcing that Facebook is going to launch it’s own dating app is like saying Facebook is launching an app for sharing photos of your pets: that’s kinda how people are already using it.
Mat
This comic strip is partly based on our cat Spikey. We had a doggy door for 2 years and he never used it, but when our newest dog Winston showed up, the dog conducted a training session for the cat and now Spikey uses it non-stop. He was wary at first due to a couple of tail-trapping incidents but he got the hang of it.
Mat
Earlier this week, Ipswich in Qld announced it was too expensive to properly recycle so they were just going to dump it all in landfill. After a lot of attention and outcry, the council has reversed their decision and just asked the people to stop putting cheesy pizza boxes in the recycling.
It’s good comic strip fodder when there’s a topic that puts the characters on opposing sides.
Mat
It was tempting to make a frivolous comic strip this week, but my instinct said that the difficult thing to do is probably the right thing.
Last week, our dog Rory was very unwell. She couldn’t keep anything down, she stopped eating and drinking and seemed to be in a great deal of pain and discomfort. We couldn’t tell if it was stomach-related, muscle-related or something else entirely. She spent fours days being cared for by the amazing team at Dandenong Veterinary Hospital – she had lots of IV fluids, her blood work done, an x-ray and an ultrasound.
We still don’t know what caused the illness, and the treatment of the symptoms helped her get through and heal up.
She is almost better now, but she had us quite worried.
Not being able to ask her about her illness, or tell her why she was being left in the care of the vets, compounded an already difficult ordeal.
Mat
I took a couple of weeks off from making comic strips to visit with family.
Happy Easter and April Fools! This comic strip was inspired by the Cadbury Salted Caramel mini eggs – delicious but impossible to get into in a hurry.
Mat
I don’t remember who said it, I think it was on some reality tv show or other, but the phrase ‘I’m a big believer in…’ stuck in my head and I just had to put it in a comic strip.
Mat
