SCIENCE FICTION DOUBLES FEATURE pt.12
WELCOME TO THE 150th SCAPULA COMIC! Thank you everyone for your loyal readership and support; keep buying the books and spreading the good word and this strip might just make it to 250!
Evil versions of characters are always extremely popular in comics, movies and games for some reason; Venom, Bizarro, Red Hulk, the Dark Avengers, Wario, Mechagodzilla, the robot copies of Bill & Ted, etc, etc (and even evil versions of evil versions are popular too! Look at Carnage and Anti-Venom). You could be philosophical or academic and analyze the whole idea of the doppelgänger, or you could just say that evil is fun.
Inverto was originally a pretty straight-forward mirror flip of Scapula until I decided to be goofy and switch his arms and legs (no, he wasn’t going to have an ‘evil goatee’, that’s been done).
Also, don’t forget (and how can you?). next weekend is the Alternative Press Expo! Come on by and enjoy the show!
If Inverto is the opposite of Scapula, does that mean he’s actually competent at being good, instead of a screw-up at being bad?
150 nice 😀 and i gotta say hes not as world imploding as i tought he would be, infact hes kinda badass!AND HE KICKS WITH HIS HANDS! i like him(not his speech took me like 10 minutes to decipher his lines x_X)
It looks like Scap cant even get along well with himself!
It wouldve been funnier (not to mention more disturbing) if the clone reversed his SEX as well (betcha I just caught the eye of every reader here – I see you O Guilty One). A female Scapula would be an interesting plot device.
Anwyay, it looks like Inverto is something of an evil twin of an evil moron. It makes me wonder if the ‘dangerous Scapula’ misconception is going to go even further with the other villains yet.
150! That’s pretty impressive, good job!
I love Inverto, the backwards dialogue is like a puzzle. And the second panel where they exchange a classic Scapula face is great.
Could it be that he’s also the “invert’ of Scapula in that he actually has some intelligence?
OOoooh! Inverto! I’m loving this character! The design is cool and I like how the feet and hands are switched (I like how his punch is a kick)! He will definitely add a new dimension to this comic! 🙂
Is it me, or inverto looks like a chicken, with his hands and legs swapped ?
I would assume that since inverto is a scapula inverted, that a least he is smart ….
Ok, so Inverto is intelligent as well as upside down. But… shouldn’t he be courageous and self-sacrificing too :)?
And why did he punch Scapula with his foot? Much more effective to kick him with his hand 😀
Hahaha…
You should have seen the ‘display’ over here, Mr. C…
I just stole a mirror off the wall to assist in translation
(yeah, my mind is a powerful, powerful thing like that)! 🙂
Ha ha! Legs to stand on!
I must admit… the leg/arm switcho thing creeps me out. And I like how you went from glowing green last week to kick-out red this week… opposites on the color wheel… yet complimentary at the same time. Weird, eh? Nice going!
Yah! See you at APE! Wow… next weekend, already!
and inverto’s handfeet and the way his arm legs look he has the look of a bird…wich always kind of makes things look more…evil
I love how you can with your artwork imply a sly lack of intelligence in the character of Scapula and yet with a few strokes of a brush “Invert-O” is given a deep dark intelligence.So awesome.
Also I invested about 15 minutes of my meagre web-comic reading time, downloading this page, and flipping Inverto’s text so I could read it in context, because that was faster than trying to decipher it on the go. LOL (I plead visual problems) Though really, the action in the scene told the story best. Not complaining. It was kind of fun really.
Oh! and I forgot to say “Congratulations on your 150th comic!”
Ha Ha Love it. The hands & feet swap over is a great effect. Looks like Inverto is more than Scap bargained for. Reading that backwards text has strained my brain. I may need the day off work now to recover…
250…I was hoping for 249 and then you just leave us wanting more.
Loving the Inverto Scap. I guess somehow he found a extra set of balls in his creation.
Inverto’s amazing! ^_^
WOW! Look at all the readers who came out for the 150th shindig! Maybe I should make a big ballyhoo out of every post from now on; tune in next week for the ultra-mega-super-deluxe-awesome 151st comic post! Woop-woop!
@Hoomi Hmmmm….good theory. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what he does next!
@BarbaricBob Hand-kicking and headache-inducing, those are the marks of a real badass! I’ll bet even Chuck Norris couldn’t do that.
@Treike Ooooooh, you said SEX! I’m gonna’ go tell the teacher!
A female Scapula copy? I don’t remember if I considered that angle; there was an Earthworm Jim game where the hero’s evil twin turned out to be a female version of himself. Now I’m just wondering what a ‘girl Scapula’ would be like (she’d probably be more ballsy).
Now stop glaring at the Guilty One; you know he goes on-line for SEX and nothing but!
@TheMonahan Thank you, good sir (ma’am? I can never tell who my readers are). I never thought I’d last this long, but here we all are, reminiscing like old friends.
It’s safe to say he’s smarter than Scapula…but isn’t everybody?
@alecho Glad you enjoy the new weirdo on the block! We’re definitely going to have some fun with this guy.
@mehdi I noticed the bird-similarity, too; just a creative bonus from the way he’s constructed (I pictured him as vulture-like…but if you say chicken, we can go chicken).
@AndyW He didn’t punch Scapula because he didn’t want to get his boots scratched!
Courageous and self-sacrificing?…or just a bigger bastard? Time will tell.
@SpilledInky Berke Breathed did a ‘Bloom County’ strip where he wrote the dialogue backwards; apparently he saw someone trying to read the results by turning the newspaper upside-down. He got a real kick out of seeing that.
@SquidRowMommy Now I’m thinking: should I have only switched one arm and leg? Bilateral symmetry is so normal in our minds that we tend to subconsciously freak out a little when we see this ratio altered (that’s why fiddler crabs are so nightmarish and horrifying!).
I’m so hyped up about A.P.E. and seeing my weirdo, wacky cartoonist friends! Hooray!
@BarbaricBob the Second Vulture or chicken? You decide.
@Jande You poor readers…I’m actually making you all WORK to enjoy the strip! That takes real commitment on your half, which is really flattering.
Sorry about your eyes (I hope there getting better), and I guess people with Photoshop will have a much easier time reading this than those without. Ah, the benefits of being an artistic type.
@Jande the Second Thank you for following along! 250’s right around the corner.
@TonyMcGurk Hey, that sounds like a perfect excuse to get out of work!
“Boss, I can’t come in today. Reading SCAPULA racked my brain.”
“That’s all right, McGurk. Half of HR is out for the same reason.”
@Bearman Now that’s got me thinking…where would Inverto’s privates be? Or how would they have been altered in the botched creation?
That’s for you all to decide.
@Kate Happy you approve, Kate!
I keep a mirror next to me so when I need to look at something stunning, there-I-am! …but I can also hold it up to your comic to read your inverted text as well! Actually, reading text backwards Isn’t that hard. [grin]
Congrats on 150! I’m glad one of us is going to make to 200! [wink]
I’m not wrong to point out that Inverto’s head is coming out of his #ss, am I? Wonderful, fun strip! I like how Scap gets almost somewhat competent when he’s pissed. And a hearty congrats on your 150th! That’s a crap-load of Scap, well done!
@jynksie Further proof that constant vanity will help you excel in life (well, excel as a webcomic reader). As for me, well, I have the ‘Herman Munster’ skill of making mirrors explode when I look at them!
Are we now in a race to make it to 200? If so, then that punk George Ford is laughing way ahead of us from ‘Addanac City #1,258’!
@MarkStokes Yeah, you could say that, but doesn’t Scapula already have his head coming out of the same region, metaphorically speaking (and when Knuckle Sam gets her hands on him, it might be in the more literal sense)?
“A crap-load of Scap”…I’m going to have to use that line when and if I make “The Complete Scapula” book collection.
Wow.. he was able to come up with a cool name for himself as soon as he was born… Not many people can do that!
@JerryBenedict Actually that’s the almighty Narrator who gives him the title…odd, because I don’t remember there being a narrator in this comic. Egad! It’s haunted!
I like where this may be going. Bizarro-Scap could be mistaken for a bad-ass Scap (a la Venom) at first. It would be nice to see this guy really get the world afraid of Scapula’s might (providing that he can hide the real Scap somewhere). I really like the face in panel 4. Vier sinister!
@George What will become of Inverto? Will he achieve everything the real Scap set out to do, or will he fail even worse?
In any event, I’ve written enough of these ‘cliffhanger’ responses, so let’s all just follow along and see what happens next! Mwa ha ha haa…
Well, I can tell you one thing. It’s shocking how easy it is to read Inverto’s reverse text after pounding down a 40 of JD with a tequila chaser and a cup of green tea. Mind you I had no idea what the heck Scapula was saying…… well until I got over the hangover.
(On a side note, he strikes me as a little more of a shrike, but that could just be because they’re the evilest of all evil birds…..)
Rest assured, I have contributed my fair share of celebrating to your 150 hun! Then I got a wicked flu. So I drank some more. Now I’m sober, so I dedicate this bottle of 18 year old Crown Royal to your achievement!
The rest of you slackers, pound a few back in celebration! My hangovers get lonely…..
Like Jynksie, I keep a mirror on my desk to look at my beautiful visage and for helping me draw certain perspectives. So I held it up and read Inverto’s text that way. I like him! He’s AWESOME. Scap is once again in sooooooo much trouble! Congrats on 150 strips! 😀
@LadyJenn I don’t know if drinking the good stuff makes it any clearer, but I will warn my readers not to operate any heavy equipment if they’re using your method of comic reading (and give your car keys to a friend).
The evilest of birds, without a doubt, are pigeons. No further explanation is needed.
Hope you feel better, and if Dr. Jack Daniels is prescribing any more ‘medicine’ I’d say it’s time to get off that HMO!
@Longtail A mirror has a million different uses while reading webcomics, such as catching the sun’s glare and blinding anyone reading over your shoulder (let’s face it, that’s an annoying habit).
Happy to know you’re enjoying Inverto, and hopefully he will please you as much as he’s pleased the other loonies around here!
Speaking in a much more sober frame of mind, allow me to say congrats on making something that actually made me go ‘Eh?!’ when I realized that it was not, in fact, the liquor that put that image in my head. Panel one officially marks the ‘Jenn has begun wondering what trauma you have lived through’ phase of any truely unique webcomic hehehehehehe.
And while pigeons are evil little monsters, the ones that don’t live in cities are actually kind of good eating, just FYI. I recommend open flame spit roasting. City pigeons on the other hand are toxic little abberant life forms.
I. Love. Inverto. There, I said it. Classic!
you know it just hit me that if inveto is realy a reverse clone of a evil man
wil that make him a good person saying bad stuf?
and wil he SUCK at being good and screw it up until he ransoms the world for a bazzilion katrilijon mamimillion dollars?
It would be funny if inverto was gay; after all he is “inverted”, and there’s already a lesbian in the story…. Sorry , if my mind is so twisted.
@Lady Jenn Ohhh, a “squabivore”, eh? I’d imagine even putting a fingertip on a pigeon means you’ve contracted more diseases than a Detroit prostitute during the flu season. The country ones are probably uncorrupted, but I’d still imagine they’re chock-full of rich pigeon poo.
Trauma? Ummmm…I was once attacked by a man with feet for hands and have now channeled that awful memory into a comic. Oh, the pain, the pain of it all!
@ChrisWatkins It’s funny, because I thought Mira Mira would be more to your liking. Perhaps Mira Mira Anewaa and Arisa Nishimori went to school together? Now THAT would be a backstory worth telling!
@BarbaricBob Or will he just contradict himself out of existence? I should have added a panel where he disappears (>pop!<) out of the universe.
@mehdi I think it would have been funnier if Inverto was a dog. Damn, that would have been hilarious!
Hun, I just got back from Africa. Just inhaling air there probably exposed me to more diseases than medical science can logically fathom even exist! As for the birds, after you snap off the head, you just crack open the ribcage and pull open, then rip out the works in one nice tidy gob that goes in the fire. Then cook. Thoroughly. Like until charred on the outside. Note plucking feathers is in fact step one.
I have to ask….. is it hard drawing Inverto’s reverse color scheme after drawing Scapula all this time?
My pocket philosopher has a long, convoluted idea about Inverto being A) a corruption of Scapula and nonbiological materials, B) also likely made of Scap’s recesive gene strand, and C) lacking the survive-but-fail gene so common to Scapula and his fellow loathsomely lousy supervillains, taking in place a succeed-but-vulnerable-to-death gene.
He’s wordy.
@LadyJenn Does your pocket philosopher have “DON’T PANIC” written in big, friendly letters on the slipcase? If it does then it resembles another ‘pocket philosopher’ that I know of…
Lovely details on the pigeon disemboweling, no doubt learned from some hidden tribe in darkest Africa, where pigeon explorers are captured and have their heads shrunken down (well, more so…they ARE pigeons).
Coloring Inverto is easy; drawing him was a bit of a challenge. Regarding Inverto’s genetic build-up…ummm, little bit country, little bit rock-and-roll? Or should that be little bit yrtnuoc, little bit llor-dna-kcor?
My eyes hurt a bit from trying to read Inverto’s dialogue… but totally worth it! And congrats on comic #150! Here’s hoping for 350…
Sadly my pocket philosopher isn’t quite so handy as the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy (although he did get me to read those books, too). If he had a slogan on him it’d be ‘Curmudgeon for life’ I think. In spite of being a cynic, he’s a pretty good guy….. plus he’s canadian, which means he’s automatically about 80% sweeter than the rest of the world outside of some tiny european countries.
The pidgeon cooking bit was actually from me Pa. Although while in Africa I did learn how to shrink heads, and for that matter how to section an elephant for proper cooking. Though, fun question, if you shrink a pigeon’s head enough, will it’s puny little brain finally connect to something?
‘Yrtnuoc’ is now my favorite word to use to drive people crazy hun, hehehehehehehe. And I’m going to have to make a D and D villain now named ‘Lord Nakcor’ just to see if anyone catches on!
Somehow Inverso reminds me of those evil versions of superheroes, like Bizarro and Venom, I wonder why?
Sorry for the late reply; APE started today and I’m pretty wiped out…but never too wiped out to deal with my pesky, er, attentive readers!
@ChrisABolton Thank you for your kind words and support, and who knows what will happen at 350? Maybe by then ALL of the characters will be speaking backwards!
@LadyJenn “Canadians in Darkest Africa” sounds like some forgotten leatherback-tome resting on a dusty bookshelf someplace, somewhere…but hey, I’d read it!
‘Lord Nackor’…y’know, that’s really clever, if you think about it! I think you’ve got yourself a webcomic character at last! He can live in a hollowed-out elephant carcass and shoot birdbrains out of a peashooter! Make it happen!
@ToCoWu Probably because I subliminally stole the idea from them…I didn’t MEAN to, it just happened (read my spiel under the comic).
Gah, if only I could draw……
This is not going well, but what’d I expect from something Scapula created.
If Scapula is ever made into a film, and this arc is featured, and Inverto is not animated by Ray Harryhausen, I will be severely disappoint.
@GBeans If I could meet Harryhausen (and not fall apart in a fanboy stupor), I would probably beg him to do just that.
Then he’d stare at me blankly and tell his bodyguard (a certain Mr. Joseph Young of Africa) to throw me out!
A fiendishly clever idea, having Inverto speak backwards. Readers spend long minutes figuring out what he’s saying, so more eyeballs and time on the ads.
Wait a sec–what ads? I see a flaw in the plan.
1. Character speaks backwards
2. Readers spend more time on the page
3. ???
4. Profit!!!