Ballard Street by Jerry Van Amerongen for November 20, 2009

She is patient.

Extremely patient, Johnny.

This will be me someday.

Apparently it’s OK at other times???

Marcus, please settle down, have a sip of wine, and put your pistol away. Millie’s patience has a limit!

No, Cleo, with pigeons it’s cr*p, cr*p, cr*p, cr*p.

http://www.comicssherpa.com/site/feature?uc_comic=cscwy&uc_full_date=20191120

I used to have one of those pistols Marcus is brandishing. Fun times. I probably tried to bring it to the dinner table too. Youth is wasted on the young.

Cleo, you should be embarrassed to make that pun. Not that I’ve ever known a dog to be embarrassed.

Marcus has not yet begun to fight!

That’s rich coming from Cleo!

Hullo, all….

The artwork looks different to me tonight… even Claude and Cleo are… um… “cartoonier,” maybe?

But with Cleo on all fours, and “speaking” in a thought balloon, I’d think it’s an older strip.

An experiment, Nighthawks… or am I imagining things… again?

I know her appearance has changed a few times, a bit here, a bit there…. and sometimes only temporarily.

But I love the way she looks in some very recent, new strips… like Batbasset, for instance.

 

I wouldn’t say Cleo is making a pun.

The pigeons are making the pun…. and, clever birds that they are… they’re cooing it in writing.

I bet Nighthawks helped them.

 

Cleo does have an amazing talent, though.

I’ve always heard that dogs have sharper hearing than humans.

She just proved it by differentiating vowel sounds that to us, are identical!

 

Meanwhile, … it’s very late, but I didn’t want to not show up at all.

After not being here last night, I got thrown off the internet tonight by what turned out to be maintenance work on the DSL lines.

Of course, my ISP posted a heads up yesterday, on their website… and they knew exactly how long it would be … but who checks there, ever?

So…. when the connection finally comes back, you go there to search for a clue, and find out that had you only looked yesterday…..

Thanks.

 

I hope it means my DSL improves… but I’m not holding my breath.

Couple of replies to comments addressed to me yesterday….

sorry I wasn’t here.

 

Katina… I do think Sherpa will be fixed…. eventually.

But we’re using different definitions.

Sherpa was set up for amateur and unknown cartoonists.

People paid $100 a year to post their own strips there… great or awful… for a try-out with an “audience” provided by GoComics.

Good or bad, as long as they’re original work, and “family friendly”, GoComics doesn’t weed any out … OR pay them.

 

It used to look and function like regular GoComics pages… with similar forums, and navigation.

You could add the strips to your regular queue, and to your emails… but you would find them on the Sherpa page, not the page of syndicated strips.

 

Right now, the pages are broken. No forums, and some functions and links don’t work.

The $100 fee is suspended… but they’re not accepting new work.

GoComics says when they do, the next version will still be free.

That means you or I or anybody could draw a cartoon, no matter how badly, and post it there.

It would be listed on Sherpa; and open with a forum, and users could subscribe.

THAT’S what I call FIXED… it would be fine… and I’m crazy enough to think it’ll happen.

 

Tigressy … glad to help.

But I think what you’re calling my “method” is only part of it… the visible part…. truncating some of the odd bits.

Sometimes that’s not enough… you need an invisible bit… ie some code that disappears when you post it.

Usually it’s just to shut down other code that was embedded in the URL, probably to keep us from posting it.

Oops.

 

Other times, nothing I can figure out works. Every picture is different.

I’m no expert at HTML, but I’m obsessively determined… so I go to an old page someplace and test, until I either succeed or have to give up.

In re: “fixed” OMG! I hope so. It’s such a shame that some of the current sherpa artists, Cleo included, can’t be recognized as there is no link to the website from GC.

Wow! Thanks for all the highly technical explanations, all you knowledgeable folks! I just check in, enjoy the comic and comments, and never ask How or Why.