Writer's commentary

WOTF II

by Dave McAwesome

Originally, I'd planned WOTF II to center around Voltron. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on the big, 5-piece Voltron Lionbot from the 80s. A couple of friends of mine said they had it but didn't. It was on eBay for 40 bucks and I kick myself for not splurging. The worst part was that I had also loosely planned WOTF III as a sequel to the Voltron WOTF. Sucks for me. No Voltron.

Instead, I got drunk at a bar and wrote 95 percent of WOTF 2 in one go. Picture this: me sitting at the bar scribbling on note paper. Constant supply of beer bottles. Ignoring girls. Plastered. Writing about action figures. Nice, huh?

I had read the Bertrand Russell v. Father Copleston debates in college and thought about structuring WOTF 2 in a similar fashion. Thor being a god, however, would not really fit into the Bertrand Russell mold, so the story took a different shape. (I highly recommend the Russell/Copleston debates, by the way. It shouldn't be the ONLY thing you read about atheism v. theism, but I think it is a part of any good, well-rounded education. If you post a request in the forum, I'll recommend other worthy books.) In part 3, the idea of a god without believers is from a Harlan Ellison short story in which gods literally die when their last believer dies. I wanted to do something funny with that by imagining what the psychological effect on a god would be (fear, especially) if he were confronted with that. Plus, I needed some kind of dramatic element to add urgency to the conflict between Galactus, Thor and Zombie Pope. The three of them possess god or god-like powers, after all. I needed something that would create genuine peril for them.

I don't know what possessed me to shoot this on my couch. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get action figures to stand on a couch? In many shots, I am either holding one of the figures or I've stuck a guy's foot in between the couch cushions. In the pic where Thor is leaping in the air, I'm holding his cape.

I used a lot of speech bubbles in this one. I considered doing the entire episode as a comic strip, but that's too labor intensive. It would also either take too long for the page to load or the pics would be spread out over a million html pages and I hate, hate, hate having to click 'next,' read three words, click 'next,' read three words, click 'next,' and so on. More importantly, I like the mix of text dialogue and pictures better. Each picture has more importance that way (which is good, considering they can sometimes be a pain in the ass to make). The speech bubbles are not a preset in some photo editing program. I made them from scratch using a tutorial as reference. I like the way the shadows at the bottom of the bubble add depth. I found a free comic book font on the interweb.

I like the Duke/Snake-Eyes banter. They're kind of a wacked out Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show. The 'Galactus hungers not for Fritos' bit is my favorite thing in the universe.

I made a WOTF 2 graphic for the main page. I don't have Adobe Illustrator and I think that's what you need to turn fonts into 3D. My attempt here looks pretty weak.

Props

I made the Pope hat from a yellow post-it. I drew on a serifed cross. Kristin vander Fakename got me the spork from Taco Bell. Snake-Eyes' puke is Fun-Tac.

Stats

• When? Fall, 2005
• Number of beers consumed while writing - 10? I dunno.
• Number of gods referenced - 7 (8 if you count Snake-Eyes, who can be very god-like)
• Pictures - 25 (not counting the individual photos I add to larger composites) plus 1 video

Head on back to the main War on the Floor page.