The Count declares:
Wow. Episode 2. If you’d told me back on January 16, 2007 that I’d be sitting here today, writing the chatter for the SECOND episode of Frederick the Great, I’d have boxed your ears with Bibles for telling dirty lies and thinking impure thoughts about kin.
And yet, here we are. This episode has a twisted, film-noir-like past. It was originally authored and drawn by the estimable and enigmatic Holland Smith as a two-part episode to act as episodes 1 and 2. However, before the drawings for the second episode could be finished, Holland was claimed by the siren song of Lady Eigenfunction. The idea was just too beautiful to be lost to the world, but we didn’t want to switch art styles halfway through the story. So, we recast it as a single episode and hired a preternaturally gifted chimp to do the new drawings.
That chimp is I. Do I miss the jungle? Yes. Of course. But I think that, if I had to go back, I’d miss Mozart more. No, don’t cry for me. Just look away. I’ll be fine. Given time, I’ll be fine.
-DvL
http://www.ftg-comic.com/2007/01/16/index.php
The comic kicks off with a mysterious narration about the nature of time!
The Count Speaks:
Welcome to the inaugural salvo of Frederick the Great: A Most Lamentable Comedy Breaching Time and Space. In the months leading up to the launch of This Fine Ship, I’ve been asked many times, “Why Frederick? Why not Gustavus Adolphus, or James Madison, or perhaps some hopelessly inbred Hapsburg?”
The answer is both simple and not simple. Frederick is an irresistible mass of paradoxes. Looked at from one angle, he is the Poster Child of Effete Foppishness. Regarded from another, he’s the stone cold killer that fought All Of Europe to a standstill, twice. His father ordered his best friend’s execution, then forced him to watch it. He played the flute. In later life, he never changed out of his dingy, snuff-stained military uniform, yet he adored the friffy, frolicking-cherub paintings of Watteau. We here at FtG-Comic saw that, with all this background, Frederick offered unparalleled possibilities of nuanced characterization and episodic emotional growth.
Then we saw that it would be way funnier to just write him as a tittering school girl.
It is that tittering school girl we humbly offer you now.
– Count Dolby von Luckner
My favorite things from this first episode:
– A conquistador riding a dinosaur
– The octocube of time
– Frederick losing at cards to pigs
– Finally getting this thing started up
We are planning on an update schedule of Tuesdays and Thursdays, so check back on those days for more foppery.
-Geoff