This comic is a spin-off from the normal comic strips that I've done. All of them have been one-offs and this is the first in a foray to do a weekly serial comic. Or monthly. Or every couple of days. I didn't really wait a week to get the whole thing done, but....whatever I'm going to keep making it with Abba. Heh heh. My other collection of comics. Anyways, rules of my comics, for people not yet familiar are: I can't draw, so I use images found on the internet and I doctor them physically or just with quotes to create a comic strip. I compose everything with Microsoft Paint and it's all written by yours truly. I didn't see any copyright info on a lot of the pictures used herein, but if you come across this site and the image belongs to you, I'll gladly remove it. I don't want to get sued in any form, and certainly not by Abba. But if Abba should see it, I'd be flattered if they left a comment before they sued me. K, thanks. Moving on.
This whole idea of a comic came about almost a week ago. Since then, I've been pretty full bore on it. I was speaking with a friend, Dave Beckner, who mentioned that some of his co-workers didn't really understand why he was listening to Abba at work. Though I'm not a huge Abba fan myself, I was extremely entertained at the idea of having a parallel universe where Abba actually worked for the government. Maybe not to the point that they were spies, and not quite superheroes. Somewhere in between. The concept early on would be that they would engage villains (both real characters, and some over the top supervillains). I was sure I didn't want Abba to use conventional weapons and instead, their modus operandi is their voice which will take on a power of its own. Throughout the series, I've promised strife, singing, and leotards and I'll see that through to the end. I'm really happy with the way it's turned out. Like some kind of bastard child of James Bond and Jem.
Due to lack of success, I deleted the guestbook page from this site. If you have any questions or would like to contact me and say hey, my e-mail address is itzarock@gmail.com. Thanks, and an addiction to ABBA is nothing to be ashamed of.
Update: 08/10/11: Chapter 17 is officially completed. I'll admit that I had a lot of false starts on this one and the rapid fire succession of the previous chapters burned me out a bit and I needed to take a little vacation away from the site. But over the last few weeks, I've been working on it here and there and now it's ready for consumption. I wouldn't call this a filler chapter by any means but there isn't a super amount of action present. The purpose is mainly to build up the pandemonium that followed ABBA on their Australian tour. After being introduced on stage by Kylie Minogue, we see the beginning stages of ABBAmania. That's the first half of the chapter, the second half is devoted to the press interviews. The interviewers here are all named Bruce, but I didn't work it too much into the dialogue. It was a really good Monty Python sketch. "Didn't your mother warn you about people named Bruce?" So that's that really. Still brainstorming ideas for the next chapter, and I hope to finish the whole thing by the end of Chapter 20. The next one will likely see more fame, and probably a threat or two from Madonna. You know she can't stay out of the spotlight too long.
Update: 02/11/11: Chapter 16 is now officially finished. I can honestly say I'm pretty proud of it. The idea was to introduce Kylie Minogue into the fray to help ABBA assimilate into Australian pop culture. As we last left off, the group had met Ted but truly had no idea what kind of ruckus would ensue at breakfast the next morning. Paul Hogan, of Crocodile Dundee fame makes an appearance as well, as the waiter at the Outback Steakhouse. And yes, that is an Outback in the Outback. The initial draft of this chapter was at least 5 frames shorter, but I decided it was important to do a song and dance number in this chapter. I had promised Ted that he had a sex scene, but changed instead to a rather racy version of the Locomotion. I don't think he'll have a problem with that. What does Chapter 17 hold? I don't know, I haven't written it. It's likely to be more Australia nonsense as we see ABBAmania truly flourish.
Update: 01/22/11: Whew! Chapter 14 was an engaging amount of work. With that being said, it didn't really take too long to get Chapter 15 up and running in the slightest. Chapter 15 is the first of a couple chapters starring Ted, who is without a doubt the biggest super fan of this web site bar none. I would say his performance is nee Academy Award worthy. He will be acting as a guide of sorts along with another well established singer, to Abba during their tenure in the land down under. The next couple chapters are all going to focus around Australia, which was a huge turning point in ABBA's success.
Update: 01/16/11: After a gratuitous amount of work, Chapter Fourteen is now up. It answers a few questions as to why Madonna is totally batshit insane. It also features the most action in my opinion to date. It's a whopping 10 frames. Chapter 14 focuses primarily on a fight between Madonna and the Wolf, who has a pretty awesome reveal. I could have made that into a gif, but I decided one was more than enough. Will ABBA escape their certain demise? Will Madonna use that hook thing again? And Gaga, will we find out if she's a, he's a, oh nevermind.... Enjoy the show.
Update: 12/22/10: Shame on me for letting this thing stay in limbo for close to a whole year. I've wanted to devote more time to the comic, but plans took precedence. Getting married and a full time job that has no down time (I primarily worked on this when I worked at Saturn, when it was god awful slow) definitely contributed to my laziness in making an addition. But now I am back in ABBA mode, I am determined and I will try to finish this as soon as possible. Last night, Chapter Thirteen went up. Subtitled "Enter the Gaga." That's right, Lady Gaga made her way in as Madonna's newest cronie. I'm shooting to end the story with about 18 chapters. Some new characters will be coming in, some familiar.
Some physical changes are underway as well. I recently abandoned efforts to secure a dependable PC, and went out and bought a MacBook. I'm loving it. It didn't come with any kind of drawing software whatsoever, so fellow Abbacomic fan John Bintz pointed me to a program called the Gimp, which was alright. But it still had a lot of photoshop type elements that made things over confusing for me. But soon after, I found a Mac Paintbrush utility which is almost the same blow for blow as Windows Paint, though it seems to crash a lot. Regardless, I'm still navigating the whole new system and even within that program, so some things will look a little neater. I like how Chapter 13 came out visually. I think I will do away with the colored fonts from here on out, and edit the other ones to be regular black, it just kinda looks unsightly to me.
I also did something for the first time with the comic too. I pre-scripted it before I even had the pictures secure. The entire comic was done completely on the fly before. Just whatever popped in is what stuck. But it was a bigger help to me in putting it together to be following a concise script. Not just with the lines of dialogue, but on screen action. It was like writing a play. A sick, twisted perverted play. About Abba.
This whole idea of a comic came about almost a week ago. Since then, I've been pretty full bore on it. I was speaking with a friend, Dave Beckner, who mentioned that some of his co-workers didn't really understand why he was listening to Abba at work. Though I'm not a huge Abba fan myself, I was extremely entertained at the idea of having a parallel universe where Abba actually worked for the government. Maybe not to the point that they were spies, and not quite superheroes. Somewhere in between. The concept early on would be that they would engage villains (both real characters, and some over the top supervillains). I was sure I didn't want Abba to use conventional weapons and instead, their modus operandi is their voice which will take on a power of its own. Throughout the series, I've promised strife, singing, and leotards and I'll see that through to the end. I'm really happy with the way it's turned out. Like some kind of bastard child of James Bond and Jem.
Due to lack of success, I deleted the guestbook page from this site. If you have any questions or would like to contact me and say hey, my e-mail address is itzarock@gmail.com. Thanks, and an addiction to ABBA is nothing to be ashamed of.
Update: 08/10/11: Chapter 17 is officially completed. I'll admit that I had a lot of false starts on this one and the rapid fire succession of the previous chapters burned me out a bit and I needed to take a little vacation away from the site. But over the last few weeks, I've been working on it here and there and now it's ready for consumption. I wouldn't call this a filler chapter by any means but there isn't a super amount of action present. The purpose is mainly to build up the pandemonium that followed ABBA on their Australian tour. After being introduced on stage by Kylie Minogue, we see the beginning stages of ABBAmania. That's the first half of the chapter, the second half is devoted to the press interviews. The interviewers here are all named Bruce, but I didn't work it too much into the dialogue. It was a really good Monty Python sketch. "Didn't your mother warn you about people named Bruce?" So that's that really. Still brainstorming ideas for the next chapter, and I hope to finish the whole thing by the end of Chapter 20. The next one will likely see more fame, and probably a threat or two from Madonna. You know she can't stay out of the spotlight too long.
Update: 02/11/11: Chapter 16 is now officially finished. I can honestly say I'm pretty proud of it. The idea was to introduce Kylie Minogue into the fray to help ABBA assimilate into Australian pop culture. As we last left off, the group had met Ted but truly had no idea what kind of ruckus would ensue at breakfast the next morning. Paul Hogan, of Crocodile Dundee fame makes an appearance as well, as the waiter at the Outback Steakhouse. And yes, that is an Outback in the Outback. The initial draft of this chapter was at least 5 frames shorter, but I decided it was important to do a song and dance number in this chapter. I had promised Ted that he had a sex scene, but changed instead to a rather racy version of the Locomotion. I don't think he'll have a problem with that. What does Chapter 17 hold? I don't know, I haven't written it. It's likely to be more Australia nonsense as we see ABBAmania truly flourish.
Update: 01/22/11: Whew! Chapter 14 was an engaging amount of work. With that being said, it didn't really take too long to get Chapter 15 up and running in the slightest. Chapter 15 is the first of a couple chapters starring Ted, who is without a doubt the biggest super fan of this web site bar none. I would say his performance is nee Academy Award worthy. He will be acting as a guide of sorts along with another well established singer, to Abba during their tenure in the land down under. The next couple chapters are all going to focus around Australia, which was a huge turning point in ABBA's success.
Update: 01/16/11: After a gratuitous amount of work, Chapter Fourteen is now up. It answers a few questions as to why Madonna is totally batshit insane. It also features the most action in my opinion to date. It's a whopping 10 frames. Chapter 14 focuses primarily on a fight between Madonna and the Wolf, who has a pretty awesome reveal. I could have made that into a gif, but I decided one was more than enough. Will ABBA escape their certain demise? Will Madonna use that hook thing again? And Gaga, will we find out if she's a, he's a, oh nevermind.... Enjoy the show.
Update: 12/22/10: Shame on me for letting this thing stay in limbo for close to a whole year. I've wanted to devote more time to the comic, but plans took precedence. Getting married and a full time job that has no down time (I primarily worked on this when I worked at Saturn, when it was god awful slow) definitely contributed to my laziness in making an addition. But now I am back in ABBA mode, I am determined and I will try to finish this as soon as possible. Last night, Chapter Thirteen went up. Subtitled "Enter the Gaga." That's right, Lady Gaga made her way in as Madonna's newest cronie. I'm shooting to end the story with about 18 chapters. Some new characters will be coming in, some familiar.
Some physical changes are underway as well. I recently abandoned efforts to secure a dependable PC, and went out and bought a MacBook. I'm loving it. It didn't come with any kind of drawing software whatsoever, so fellow Abbacomic fan John Bintz pointed me to a program called the Gimp, which was alright. But it still had a lot of photoshop type elements that made things over confusing for me. But soon after, I found a Mac Paintbrush utility which is almost the same blow for blow as Windows Paint, though it seems to crash a lot. Regardless, I'm still navigating the whole new system and even within that program, so some things will look a little neater. I like how Chapter 13 came out visually. I think I will do away with the colored fonts from here on out, and edit the other ones to be regular black, it just kinda looks unsightly to me.
I also did something for the first time with the comic too. I pre-scripted it before I even had the pictures secure. The entire comic was done completely on the fly before. Just whatever popped in is what stuck. But it was a bigger help to me in putting it together to be following a concise script. Not just with the lines of dialogue, but on screen action. It was like writing a play. A sick, twisted perverted play. About Abba.
