Modest Medusa 24 Hour Comic: The Night Before Christmas
– Hi everyone. Here’s a brand new 24 Hour comic, brought to you by my recent Kickstarter! The goal of the Kickstarter was to create a collection of all my past 24 hour Modest Medusa comics, and teh special stretch goal was a brand new comic featuring the “origin” of Jake. This isn’t really an origin story, but it does explain what happened to Jake right before the very first strip, and why he’s out on Christmas eve carrying around a present. There’s more to Jake and Sheryl’s past than just this, but we’ll get to that some other time!
– The new Ghost Kiss comic will be up on Weds or Thursday. If you’re a Modest Medusa fan you should make sure to check it out! Also, the new issue of Combine will be launching next Monday. If you’ve been waiting to subscribe, now is your chance!
“They’re making margharitas in the teachers’ lounge,” is the proper response to “Merry Christmas.”
And liking the old Doctors over the new Doctors has moved Ms. Booth up in my esteem.
Ooh…backstory!
(I was gonna say, “Who’s Art and how did Carol take him over?” but you went and mentioned the Art Department along the way…)
My father had a stroke last Saturday. For the first time in a long time I had to endure being around my small-minded family members – the family I used to actively avoid and would be happy if I never saw ever again.
Now, my father’s been more open-minded and supportive of me in this last year, and I get the feeling he’s even stood up for me when I wasn’t looking. But now he’s laying in bed, unable to speak.
Well, I’m catching up with my mother and my sister, telling them how much I hate working for the government and how I want to quit my job and focus on my circus training. My mom starts in on me, telling me how I’ll lose my insurance and that I’ve got a good thing going.
So I tell her to shut up, and that it won’t matter once I’m rich and famous.
My sister jeers at me, asking how many rich and famous people I actually know.
Now, I do know quite a few successful people in the entertainment industry, but none that are BOTH rich AND famous. I think about it for a second, and reply, “Well, none yet, but I am networking.”
Yeah, to hell with all of them.
To make matters worse, the only man in the room who might’ve stood up for me no longer knows his right from his left. I know I should be sad, but seeing my dad like that… well, it makes me wanna do things. I wanna workout, record more videos, finish some costumes, and rehearse my routines.
I’m kinda a jumble of emotions, but one thing I know: working this job is depressing me, and is going to kill me. What good is insurance if I’m not happy?
I’m never going to let anyone tell me not to follow my dreams. I’m determined to be the best me that I can be, and not let the plebeians tell me what I love is not worth pursuing!
Today’s comic hits home for me, especially now!
Thank you, Jake, and Merry Christmas!
Thanks man. I know seeing my grandfather bed ridden with sickness was one of the things that finally convinced me to start making comics instead of just wasting time with dead end jobs.
Men experience grief and loss differently than women. It spurs them to manly actions and motivates them to do work.
Good luck to you, man. This sort of situation sucks for everyone involved. Might I ask if there’s anyone else in your family that you care about? (Excuse me, poor choice of words; is there anyone that cares about YOU?)
I know the feeling of the job that is killing you inside. I worked at Fidelity National Title immediately before housing crash, responsible for gathering reports for all the World Savings branches across the West coast (you’ll find World Savings no longer exists), and including Texas. The pay was awesome, but the job was soul sucking, worse than even the movie Office Space.
I burned serious bridges walking out a few days before Christmas… I wanted an extra day off so I could spend time with my family who did not live in the same city. I had never missed a single day of work, always busted my ass on the job, but they couldn’t let me have even a half day off before or after Christmas to travel.
Now, I’m busting my ass to finish with three Bachelor’s degrees so that I can get into a government job like you describe, Phantom, but my reasoning is different. I want to be able to provide for my parents (and brothers if they need it). A very good thing about a lot (but not all) government jobs is that once you have put enough time in, the benefits are good, but so is the paid time off and vacation time.
The work will kill me less if I can provide for my family and more importantly take vacations when I’m burnt out, I think I will be okay.
Of course, the thing that differs between you, Jake and myself is that I am not creative, at least with art or music or anything like that. I can probably write fairly decently (especially if I were to have a trustworthy, and more importantly competent, editor), and have no aspirations of doing anything but being able to live comfortably and take care of those important to me.
Good luck with your dad, and your aspirations.
.. and to Jake: how autobiographical is this strip? In the past, I’ve found I start out writing best when I can base stuff on my own life and experiences (even if changed, like throwing a Medusa into the mix, or changing my passed on pet cat into a Spirit Power Animal and adviser like Splinter the Rat).
The comic is always a mix between actual autobiography, metaphor and just stuff I make up. This is closer to teh former than the later, but not actually based on real events.
As you’ve acknowledged, our situations are different, thus mileage will vary.
I have no family, no strings, nothing I’m attached to. But I’m very creative, and I hate working in a field that actively chokes my creativity. (I work in mental health, and cleaning literal shit is not my favorite task.)
If I do become rich and famous following my dreams then it won’t matter that I don’t have a job that provides health insurance. I’ll have enough money and clout I can afford it myself ^3^
Sincerely, thanks for sharing. Good news: Dad stood up for a whole 2 minutes! Yay!
Also, ironically, I’m working overtime today. Holiday plus overtime! Also, I have an excuse to avoid my horrible family 😀
Congratulations on choosing to pursue your dream! I know that entertainment-related jobs are fairly difficult to live from, but you don’t actually need to become rich and/or famous. Neither of those are important for happiness. If you do what makes you happy, then you can overcome higher hurdles than when you do unpleasant things.
I admit that I am a programmer, that I like it and that I consider myself lucky that I like doing it, so I “have a good thing going” and don’t need to contemplate daring to leave the comfort of the office job to do something artistic that’s risky both regarding salary and safety (depending on what kind of circus disciplines you wanna do), but Kudos to anyone who does it. Entertainment has always been a difficult field and ever since casting shows have become famous the whole business probably has become exponentially more difficult to find a job in. So… I think you have a good chance to make it if you don’t explicitly try to become rich and/or famous and you could become either or both of those if you are quite a bit luckier than the average artist, but I think that it’d be better to take this whole business step by step and see where it leads you to.
Thank you, Alex, that’s very supportive of you. I wish my family could see it that way, too.
“But your job provides good insurance.”
Mom, you missed the part where I told you I’M NOT HAPPY. No amount of insurance is going to help me with a crippling feeling of not ever wanting to get up out of bed. But being a circus performer does!
Ahem, sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Ironically the thing I enjoy more than spending time with my family is being stuck at work. I took an 8 hour overtime on Christmas day just to avoid them, and it was an easy shift. Made holiday PLUS overtime, earning 3x the amount of money! Best of all, it allowed me a reason not to see my family. So yeah, it can be a good job, but y’know where I’m going to spend all that money?
Circus training, camera and microphone equipment, circus rigging, colorful costumes, a staff of cameramen, editors, makeup artists, etc…
Obviously I’ve thought about it more than not at all. The thing that allows me to live comfortably, and to practice my art, is the thing I want to leave to do my art. I’m walking a metaphorical tightrope until I can cross to the other side and fully support myself with my hobby.
Yeah, and even if I do become successful, and not necessarily rich or famous, I’m sure my family would still find reasons why I’m wasting my life. Buncha hosers.
Y’know the old saying, “Blood is thicker than water”? People assume it means that you can’t choose your family, but the saying has an older variation. “Blood of the covenant/battlefield is thicker than water of the womb.” It’s the latter variation that I prefer to live by ^3^
You’re welcome!
It’s even more impressive that you’re apparently planning on creating a circus of your own, in contrast to trying to join an existing one. That ups the risk you’re taking quite a bit what with equipment and salaries for your staff. If that’s what you really want to do, then by all means go ahead, but why not try to join an existing crew?
No wonder he was so grumpy that day…
And every day since ^_~♡
A Margarita is a tequila-based Mexican cocktail, a Margherita is a cheese and tomato pizza. (In case anybody gets the wrong idea about whats going on in the teachers lounge.) I’m sure a lot of teachers could use a stiff Margarita after dealing with kids all day!
I LOVE getting the story of immediately-before-the-comic-started. Because people rarely wonder about that time, but then you see it and you’re like OHH
I did it once for my 10 year anniversary. Wasn’t as good as this though
Have you been doing you comic for that long? Wow. Impressed.
Heh! Eh.. well.. coming up on 14 years now. With a couple year break in the middle
Soooooo… Amy from Futurama teaches art? I always thought of her as more of a scientist.
i didnt need my heart… thanks.
I’ve been re-reading the series, and now that I’ve gotten to this strip again I realized something. Jake and Ms. Booth had only dated for a year and already she wanted to move in together and was talking about having kids. Does anyone else think a year is a little too soon for those things, even if they went to school together before that?
I think for some people it’s fast, and some it isn’t. Different people move at different speeds.
That’s very true. It’s just that after seeing so many people I know from school getting married and having children so soon (talking early 20’s), I have to wonder if any of them think that they should take time to live their own lives for themselves before dedicating the rest of their lives to someone else.
Always a good question.
I had the feeling Jake & Boothe were an item. A one-year relationship seems kind of sudden, but I understand the feelings on both sides.