Girls with Slingshots - GWS Chaser #1

It's almost a little shocking that the very first strip wasn't about booze. I think I was trying to impress/not disappoint my parents.

So here we are, back at strip number 0001! In case you missed last week (WTF man do you live under a rock), GWS has wrapped up as a web series on Friday, and we're revisiting the old strips, starting today, now in COLOR!

Okay, so the first strip was already in color. When my colorist Laeluu sent me the updated strip, I wasn't sure she did anything to change it. (Then again, my instructions were "don't really change it.")

But upon comparing it to the original, maaaaaaan did I make Hazel and Jameson pasty back then! Or rather, I was working on a computer monitor that was on its way out, so they didn't seem pasty to me. Anyway, here they are with corrected coloring... and now there's some shading, and Hazel's eyes look more pre-caffeine than they originally did.

(Tomorrow's updated strip will make a bit more of an impact, as we peer into old black-and-white 2004 with TECHNICOLOR eyeballs, like we're suddenly in Oz.)

A quick tale regarding the GWS of Yore: originally, the strip was going to be about Hazel and Jamie - my two main characters from the accidental prequel Hazelnuts - as superheroines, Jamie on roller skates and Hazel on a skateboard. Their original outfit was the one you occasionally see them dressed up in throughout the comic, with my crappy I'm-not-a-graphic-design-major GWS logo on their shirts and wings on their backs. They fought crime!! ... on the playground, with slingshots... and jellybeans.

I'm not a big fan of violence or weapons, you see. The title "Girls With Slingshots" actually came from a theme I unintentionally started pre-GWS at conventions; people would request commissions of female characters, often with guns. I suck at drawing guns, and while I like shooting them, I don't like what they often do to people, so I would draw the female characters with slingshots instead.

Eventually, people started to request a "girl with a slingshot" for their commissions, and at some point I was asked "when are you going to put together a book of these 'Girls With Slingshots'?" And thus, the title was born.

But I didn't know what it would be about. I noticed that Marvel and DC had a lot of success with their superpowered, crime-fighting heroines, so I figured I should follow the flow and create a similar duo. Luckily, my boyfriend at the time (thank you, Tech Guy Allan) knew me well enough to know that I was really better suited to write slice-of-life comedy, and that I should stick to what I love. So I did.

So while this means that you've been robbed of another kick-ass female crime-fighting duo, it also means that you were given a comic that's about the things I love - personal development, ambling aimlessly through your twenties, cats, and dick jokes - and was therefore not written like it was a chore. You're welcome.

C'mon back tomorrow for some technicolor. And welcome back to GWS the way you first met it; thank you for returning to hang out in my corner of the Internet. :)

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