032: Tend your mental garden - Panel 1 032: Tend your mental garden - Panel 2 032: Tend your mental garden - Panel 3 032: Tend your mental garden - Panel 4

032: Tend your mental garden

March 29, 2023

I had the punchline for this joke for a few months before I was able to massage it into a comic. I worked on it for a long time while walking the dog. I just couldn’t see it for a long time, until it just sort of fell together. I think the missing piece was giving Sam a hobby I didn’t personally have: gardening.

The face R-0Y is making in the first panel is a little nod to the original Macintosh OS. This is the “Crash” icon you’d get when your Mac wouldn’t start up for a catastrophic reason. I recently acquired a Macintosh Plus and I wanted a little representation.

I purposely left the background blank in panels one and four. It adds contrast with the other panels, but I feel like it’s more “graphic” if I don’t feel the need to express every little background. Also—as mentioned previously—I hate doing backgrounds.

Keep working on an idea until it works. The creative process takes time.