Okay Then, Where Were We?
Page 004
Tyler here, or “Tissue Tyler” according to AI’s latest shame labeling of my corporeal form. Sorry for being slightly behind schedule. Last week “Tissue Trina’s” adventures as a globe-trotting, human artist finally encountered the one certainty in life that is not death according to “Founding Fleshling” Benjamin Franklin.
Yet, despite losing all of last week to the antithesis of human creativity, Trina still managed to deliver a page of comic art more powerful than the most bureaucratic tower of tax documents. Her pirouetting leap from my concept to her execution has yet again exceeded my wildest expectations. You can enjoy the latest page below as I attempt to exceed my own expectations in getting out of the way of her wonderful work.
—We now return to your somewhat regularly scheduled programming and reveal how exactly Todd plans to save the day for our sweet youth Timothy—
This is a NSFW comic. This dispatch contains everything we have made available from the beginning (all four pages). You are getting the full comic with every post until we hit whatever the upward limits of Substack might be. Thank you for joining us early on this expedition into the furthest reaches of the New Media Age.
**Trina’s work is most resplendent on the largest monitor you can open the above CBZ or PDF files on — but for our toilet scrolling compatriots eager to see if this is the page where Todd finally joins you on the porcelain, I have embedded a version below:
Sadly, when this comic goes to print*, this scene will be resolved with a mere flick of the reader’s eyes to the adjoining page. But you fine Gumballerinas, who so kindly support this page by page roll-out, get the gift of basking in suspense. You also give the gift of our basking in your basking.
Want to join the… “bask”et?
Corny shit like that pun is exactly why I am nothing without the artistic life-blood of this project: Trina Dasgupta. If you want more of her experimental sketching and other wonders checkout her IG: @Trinscope.
It has been pointed out how miserable I am at self-promotion, so perhaps the time has come to share a dollop of who we are as co-creators?
In addition to being an amazing comic artist and collaborator who brings the brilliance of a morning sun to our every interaction, Trina Dasgupta is a kick-ass, Montreal based, CG artist specializing in layouts and animation. She has a ton of impressive credits with all of the major companies that Writers are rightfully striking against, but my favorite part of her résumé is this:
I mean, why even bother putting all those skills and credits on the résumé, Trin? I feel like you just flash that sketch and all other candidates will be dismissed. That’s certainly how I am approaching things with MY new résumé:
Gumballerinas are familiar with this sketch Trina made of me —and volley of micro-aggressions and harassment that accompanied it— thanks to our “Boops”. Boops are sent to subscribers on weeks we don’t have a new page. We share peeks at the making-of process and tales of our suicide-prone AI Lawyer: Steward.t.
Steward.t is a piece of emerging technology who resolves Trina and my behind the scene spats**, uses deep learning to solve problems like developing AI to identify AI being used in nefarious ways, and often powers down after realizing there is no point in serving our species.
What’s that? I have offered nothing about who the me behind “Me” is? Well, sucking at self-promotion is kind of the main thing about me. But maybe this counts:
This AI Art was sent by Substacker
of , a clairvoyant who uses Substack to provide the public service of psychic readings on your favorite coffee mugs. Though she body shamed her own AI rendition of me (“big pecs, tiny head”), I still highly recommend her page…Mysterious Mugalisa reached out after being inspired by Gumball Man enthusiast Curta’s obsession with using AI Art to satisfy his craven need for more Gumball Man pages. You can see Curta’s AI collabs in our past posts; the true value is in proving Gumball Man does not yet exist in the database of plagiarism known as AI Art. More importantly, if Curta’s Gumball Man prompts start to look anything like our comic….. we will at least have a pathetic demarcation that our comic is a success and gets to live on in Steward.t’s predicted dystopia. Yay.
was even tempted to get in on the action and engage with the Bob Ross meets Hamburgler approach of AI Art — taking her own swing at Gumball Man:
It is such a privilege to stand in this strange proverbial lighthouse and witness the intriguing supporters gathering in our cove.
Speaking of lighthouses — and the authors who occupy them — in closing perhaps we can add value to our stack in the AI fashion: offering you another — albeit far superior and more accomplished — Substack creator’s freebies.
Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon should need no introduction. BKV as fans like us call him, is arguably the best writer of his generation and responsible for the somehow increasingly relevant, sci-fi epic, #1 comic Saga with artist Fiona Staples and letterer Fonografiks. Niko is a full-on master artist as can be evidenced at
, where he and Brian are currently unfurling their HAND PAINTED, explicit sci-fi/romance/horror graphic novel Spectators. They learned to walk on Substack so that the rest of us can slither — and you can spectate it all happening yourself for free.Their story is so captivating that I literally scrolled through and clicked open every single Spectators post with my heart in my throat… only at the end realizing I could access the entire story in a neatly compiled pdf right here.
At least go see how their Spectators measures up to this AI version:
Damn, even with my spelling error there is one panel that is strangely pointed in the right direction. That’s how you know you’ve made it in whatever the next stage of the Information Age shall be. Artificial Age? Post Human Age? Gumball Man Age?
Find out soon.
Even a garrulous blabber-mouth like myself can’t summon enough words to thank you for supporting us in our early stages while we create this story.
THANK YOU, and ummm, see you in the Boops?
-The TDs
*Even if I have to do it on my inkjet printer.
**Of course we don’t REALLY have spats. The fact I get to work with someone as talented, dedicated, driven, and outright wonderful as Trina is the most creatively validating aspect of my existence.
***This is just more asterisks