Slopes and Sam

24-05-05 by Sam

You may have noticed my recent penchant for satirising the music industry, and today’s strip is no exception.  This doesn’t mean I’ve picked a set “theme” for the comic – that’ll never happen as long as I’m at the helm.  Which I will be until Slopes and Sam becomes a valuable intellectual property that I can sell for some exorbitant amount and retire to the Amalfi Coast.  But I have a particularly nasty fondness for the music industry that causes me to stalk it like, well, a stalker.  So I’m afraid you will have to expect the odd obscure musical reference in future.

The real problem with Chris Cornell, though, is that he’s not obscure enough. Now, I loved Soundgarden as much as the next guy – which was not that much – but they had the added advantage of not having been an awesome band before Chris Cornell started singing for them. Audioslave aren’t so lucky.

Back when they went by a different name, their lyricist belted out such gems as this:

Yes, I be the flame in the cellar beware
Where nameless cold millions gaspin’ for air
The naked and wageless
Scream within cages
What, They make you pull your shit
Just to get your share?

Scathing.  Sarcastic.  Outraged.

Chills.

And now:

Someone falls to pieces
Sleeping all alone, someone kills the pain
Spinning in the silence
She finally drifts away
Someone gets excited in a chapel yard
And catches a boquet
Another lays a dozen
White roses on a grave

Ooh.  Existential.  Wait.  No...just shit.

Of course, Chris then injects some real meaning into those words with the following chorus:

And to be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do

Oh thank fuck. I can finally go out in public again.

I think I've said enough.

Right now I’d like to take the opportunity to point out that if you go back to the last strip and scroll down, you can see where James finally sacked up and wrote some text for you, because he loves you.  Or me.  Or maybe just himself.  But that’s healthy.  Not enough people love themselves these days. At least, they don’t do it enough.

Lastly, it must be noted that today’s comic was the first to be written almost entirely by Slopes. Including the poem. The heart melts, doesn’t it?

-Sam

25-05-05 by Sam

Looking back today, it's painfully obvious that I've become far too lazy in the art department.  Both characters appear to be holding their paper with some form of dog's paw, we're both wearing what would appear to be smocks, rather than T-shirts, and Slopes seems to have contracted some kind of head-inflating virus.

Here's to proportionality, and to more of it in the future.