I’ve always thought there was something vaguely sinister about birds. I’m pretty sure this is what it is.

First comic back since the site’s sort-of-accidental hiatus! For the time being, comics will have to be hand-drawn and not coloured I’m afraid, because I just don’t have time to do full-colour ones all the time. That’s kind of what caused the hiatus in the first place. I’ll try to do as many colour ones as I can though!

I have finally returned after a protracted, job-switching absence. This comic is probably such a non-sequitur that it will alienate everybody except me. Enjoy!

P.S. At least it’s not a Ghost Crab comic. You guys seem to really not like Ghost Crab.

Also a second recommendation to DickensURL, which does the same thing but gives you a URL which is a line from Charles Dickens. Ours is http://dickensurl.com/4303/Old_Marley_was_as_dead_as_a_doornail.

So February 1st is Hourly Comics Day, which is more or less what you would expect – if you are inclined to draw comics, February 1st is a day to draw one comic per hour for every hour you are awake. I vowed to do it this year, forgot, and then did it anyway several days later. It did not go particularly well but here are the results anyway. I am very sorry.

Just to clear up any confusion with this comic, Halliburton really is totally all about rape. Actually, so are about 30 Republican Senators, including John McCain. Stay classy, everyone.

Oh yeah, and AT&T networks can’t handle the iPhone. So their solution is to tell people to not use their iPhones so much.

Oh, Australia. I love you but sometimes your government just goes Full Retard. Like the way you guys aren’t supposed to have grown-up video games, what’s up with that? It’s almost as outrageous as the number of inaccurate cultural stereotypes in this cartoon.

This is a pretty cheap joke, but it’s been floating around my head ever since I saw the first previews and I can’t resist it any more. Sorry everybody!

I worked super fast until 2:30am to get this up on the site on the day the iPad was announced, hopefully to get in slightly before the inevitable flood of iPad cartoons that will appear in the following couple of days. Here’s hoping.

Also, the middle panel of this strip is partly taken from a conversation I was having with someone on Reddit, pretty much verbatim. I asked the video thing, they said “It plays HD video, but not in HD” and then I said “does it play MP3′s, only not as sounds?” Just in case someone happens to read that somewhere and thinks I stole it. It’s okay to plagiarize if it’s from yourself.

UPDATE: People seem to like this comic. It rocked out at #1 on Is It Funny Today for pretty much the whole morning, and by the end of the day it’s still at #4. Now my two top comics on that site are the one that rips on Apple, and the one that rips on Microsoft. Thanks for voting!

Proof

UPDATE #2: I’ve also noticed this image doing the rounds on the internet, being generally more popular than this site (because everything is.) But I swear I didn’t see it until the day after I posted this. I didn’t rip it off, is what I’m saying. It’s just one of those lightbulb things…

This cartoon comes on top of the news that the US Congress, after folding on every meaningful provision in their healthcare reform act (such as a public option, tighter controls over insurance companies, making it illegal to not have health insurance and so on) they are now considering dropping the one token token gesture that they were supposed to keep in, namely the prevention of denying care for pre-existing conditions. Conditions such as, according to some states, being a victim of domestic abuse.

I’m not implying that the current congress is wussy on stuff like healthcare reform. I’m more sort of implying that their incompetence, corruption and cowardice in this matter is so colossal that I can physically feel how offended I am, and I don’t even live in America. Good luck with your inevitable Massive Violent Uprising, dudes. :O