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Description
This is a concept I've been working on for a while now, so strap in, people.

First off, I've been itching to start doing regular comic strips again. Because I haven't done one since the Easter Playboy Bunny was knocking on my door. And it's not like I don't have ideas; I have a literal collection of story prompts and concepts that I just didn't have the time or brain power to pick yet.

But I settled on this one first because it takes care of one of the most frustrating aspects of writing: world-building. However, that's only a frustrating aspect of writing in the sense that I'm frustrated at how many shows in the late 2010's and early 2020's seem to screw this up when it's so damn easy to do. Star Vs, Steven Universe, Friendship Is Magic, RWBY, the Voltron Reboot, High Guardian Spice: all of these shows, and god knows how many more, screwed up the concept of world building. Either by using too much of it as an attempt to cover up a severe lack of willingness to write an actual story, or too little world building and leaving a lot of unanswered questions.

My stance with world building is a lot like my stance with lore, representation and redeeming bad characters: I'm not pissed at the trope itself, I'm pissed at the fact that whenever a show screws up on this, it's because the writers are too lazy and would rather pander to fans than do any goddamn work.

So, how is this comic an example of world building? By explaining this:

Ruben Falcon's story of On The C.A.S.E.! takes place in the year 62023. Or at the very least; the 62Ks.

"But why put Ruben's story so far off into the future? Why the 62Ks?" I dunno, why does Futurama take place in the 3000's? Why does Bioshock Infinite take place in a floating steampunk city in the 1910's? Why does the Flintstones take place in a prehistoric world where cars, televisions and blenders exist?

Answer: to distance itself from the real world as possible.

I know I've introduced this series as a sort of self-insert thing, given that Ruben is literally just a caricature of myself. But any chance of this being exactly like my everyday life went right out the window that second we established that Ruben is a brilliant inventor, a private investigator, a brick sh*t-house of muscle, a (reluctant) ladies' man, a world traveling adventurer, a multiverse travelling adventurer and a goddamn superhero.

And as I said earlier: I like using the multiverse trope. So I can easily just say this is just me from another dimension. Which makes sense. I mean, literally everyone on the planet just finished watching a movie where most of the premised is defined as "Spider-Man, but from an alternate universe where he's [blank]".

Hell, the entire reason I started writing stories about myself like this since I was a kid is because if I wrote stories about my actual life, I'd bore myself to sleep.

"Yeah, but, why 62K exactly?" Oh, because I got the idea when I was watching a YouTube video one night, saw the upvote count was at 62K and it literally just sparked the whole concept from there.

But making Ruben's world take place in a future opens up a lot of opportunities. For one thing, it'll explain why the city Ruben lives in looks the way it does. I always draw buildings in Ruben's hometown of Collision City as weird, steampunk-y buildings with large machine bits sticking out. And during this world building I kinda blew up that idea to the point where Collision City is now less its own city and is now just part of a retrofuturistic version of New York City. Basically a cross between the aforementioned Futurama and Bioshock Infinite. But that's a story for another day.

Along with New York City, I imagined a lot of redesigns of places like London, Egypt, and tons of other places in the world. Not to mention Brandon "Liar94 " Hunt; regular brainstorming friend of mine and 4 year champion of the International Tuba Juggling Contests, brought up something interesting. The fact that if this takes places soooooooo far off into the future, then things like war, pollution, and all those other things destroying the world based off of our pettiness would basically be dealt with. It's like, it's so far off in the future, humanity has already adjusted or even solved those problems.

Sort of like Star Trek, but with significantly less onesies.

And, best of all, while Star Vs A Forced Happy Ending, Friendship Is Mandatory, Steven The Universe Revolves Around Me, High Guardian Spite, and all of those other shows I mentioned earlier screwed up the basic concept of world building the same way they always screwed things up: making things so overly complicated. And why? Because the 30-something year olds in their children show's fanbase demanded everything be super dark and gritty and intense and the showrunners were more willing to suck their dick than actually put the effort to write a story.

Meanwhile, I managed to establish this massive bit of world building with a, f*cking, gag! A joke! A comedic comic strip on the same level as a friggin' cartoon cat who hates Mondays and eats lasagna!

BTW: Happy 45th birthday this week, Garfield. Big fan of yours.

What I mean is, the best writing advice I've ever learned is to keep things simple. Not everything needs to be a mulit-part saga with dark themes and romantic relationships that take over a decade to go anywhere. I'm only partially exaggerating. I've learned that lesson the hard way and I don't plan on forgetting it anytime soon.

Side note: I was originally planning on coloring this comic over the course of over a week--which is why the signature date reads the 11th. But let's just say this has been a VERY stressful week or so and I wasn't even able to think about coloring this. But I honestly think this is fine the way it is.

Hope you guys like it as much as I did.

This comic and these characters (C) Me, because I am one of these characters!

Description
This is a concept I've been working on for a while now, so strap in, people.

First off, I've been itching to start doing regular comic strips again. Because I haven't done one since the Easter Playboy Bunny was knocking on my door. And it's not like I don't have ideas; I have a literal collection of story prompts and concepts that I just didn't have the time or brain power to pick yet.

But I settled on this one first because it takes care of one of the most frustrating aspects of writing: world-building. However, that's only a frustrating aspect of writing in the sense that I'm frustrated at how many shows in the late 2010's and early 2020's seem to screw this up when it's so damn easy to do. Star Vs, Steven Universe, Friendship Is Magic, RWBY, the Voltron Reboot, High Guardian Spice: all of these shows, and god knows how many more, screwed up the concept of world building. Either by using too much of it as an attempt to cover up a severe lack of willingness to write an actual story, or too little world building and leaving a lot of unanswered questions.

My stance with world building is a lot like my stance with lore, representation and redeeming bad characters: I'm not pissed at the trope itself, I'm pissed at the fact that whenever a show screws up on this, it's because the writers are too lazy and would rather pander to fans than do any goddamn work.

So, how is this comic an example of world building? By explaining this:

Ruben Falcon's story of On The C.A.S.E.! takes place in the year 62023. Or at the very least; the 62Ks.

"But why put Ruben's story so far off into the future? Why the 62Ks?" I dunno, why does Futurama take place in the 3000's? Why does Bioshock Infinite take place in a floating steampunk city in the 1910's? Why does the Flintstones take place in a prehistoric world where cars, televisions and blenders exist?

Answer: to distance itself from the real world as possible.

I know I've introduced this series as a sort of self-insert thing, given that Ruben is literally just a caricature of myself. But any chance of this being exactly like my everyday life went right out the window that second we established that Ruben is a brilliant inventor, a private investigator, a brick sh*t-house of muscle, a (reluctant) ladies' man, a world traveling adventurer, a multiverse travelling adventurer and a goddamn superhero.

And as I said earlier: I like using the multiverse trope. So I can easily just say this is just me from another dimension. Which makes sense. I mean, literally everyone on the planet just finished watching a movie where most of the premised is defined as "Spider-Man, but from an alternate universe where he's [blank]".

Hell, the entire reason I started writing stories about myself like this since I was a kid is because if I wrote stories about my actual life, I'd bore myself to sleep.

"Yeah, but, why 62K exactly?" Oh, because I got the idea when I was watching a YouTube video one night, saw the upvote count was at 62K and it literally just sparked the whole concept from there.

But making Ruben's world take place in a future opens up a lot of opportunities. For one thing, it'll explain why the city Ruben lives in looks the way it does. I always draw buildings in Ruben's hometown of Collision City as weird, steampunk-y buildings with large machine bits sticking out. And during this world building I kinda blew up that idea to the point where Collision City is now less its own city and is now just part of a retrofuturistic version of New York City. Basically a cross between the aforementioned Futurama and Bioshock Infinite. But that's a story for another day.

Along with New York City, I imagined a lot of redesigns of places like London, Egypt, and tons of other places in the world. Not to mention Brandon "Liar94 " Hunt; regular brainstorming friend of mine and 4 year champion of the International Tuba Juggling Contests, brought up something interesting. The fact that if this takes places soooooooo far off into the future, then things like war, pollution, and all those other things destroying the world based off of our pettiness would basically be dealt with. It's like, it's so far off in the future, humanity has already adjusted or even solved those problems.

Sort of like Star Trek, but with significantly less onesies.

And, best of all, while Star Vs A Forced Happy Ending, Friendship Is Mandatory, Steven The Universe Revolves Around Me, High Guardian Spite, and all of those other shows I mentioned earlier screwed up the basic concept of world building the same way they always screwed things up: making things so overly complicated. And why? Because the 30-something year olds in their children show's fanbase demanded everything be super dark and gritty and intense and the showrunners were more willing to suck their dick than actually put the effort to write a story.

Meanwhile, I managed to establish this massive bit of world building with a, f*cking, gag! A joke! A comedic comic strip on the same level as a friggin' cartoon cat who hates Mondays and eats lasagna!

BTW: Happy 45th birthday this week, Garfield. Big fan of yours.

What I mean is, the best writing advice I've ever learned is to keep things simple. Not everything needs to be a mulit-part saga with dark themes and romantic relationships that take over a decade to go anywhere. I'm only partially exaggerating. I've learned that lesson the hard way and I don't plan on forgetting it anytime soon.

Side note: I was originally planning on coloring this comic over the course of over a week--which is why the signature date reads the 11th. But let's just say this has been a VERY stressful week or so and I wasn't even able to think about coloring this. But I honestly think this is fine the way it is.

Hope you guys like it as much as I did.

This comic and these characters (C) Me, because I am one of these characters!