Unwinder's Tall Comics

Dr. Minivan is testing athletes foot medication for some extra cash

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:37:40 -0700

Hey, I've got to go to work, but this is finished now, so you can read it.

You can read it! Uploaded at 11:32 on 25 April

Guest Comic by Matt Smith

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:38:29 -0700

This is a comic that a reader sent me to motivate me to update faster. I don't think that he intended for me to upload it, but I decided to do it anyway, without asking permission, or seeing if he wanted me to link a website or anything. His name seems to be Matt Smith, and he is not star of Doctor Who, and for all I know, that's not his real name, because I know him through another guy who uses a lot of aliases.

I owe you guys a comic big time, after you all pitched in to pay my hosting bill! I'm visiting family for the weekend, but I really want to get a new comic up at a reasonable time, so I think I'm going to try to come up with some sort of comic concept that doesn't involve having my computer and scanner and everything around. I'll see what I can do. Uploaded at 19:16 on 28 March

Barbecue Sauce and Unwinder Discuss Party Guests

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:01:42 -0700

Hey guys, here's the new comic!

I've always just sort of had it in my head that Barbecue Sauce's birthday and the strip's anniversary are on the same day. I don't know why him, but I've been wanting to do a strip with this premise for two or three years now, but I always forget to do it for Barbecue Sauce's birthday, and for some reason, I felt like I couldn't just declare his birthday at some other time of year.

I was an idiot today, and I forgot to move my car when they were plowing the snow out of my parking lot, and I got towed, expensively. I forgot that they were going to plow, because the snow they were plowing was from like two days ago, and pretty much all of it was already gone.

Anyway, I had to pay a bunch of money to get my car back, and the hosting bill is due this month, so I'd totally welcome some sweet donation money. I feel like I just already tried to drum up donations, but that was more of a personal thing relating to my birthday, so I feel like I'm not making too huge of a faux-pas here. If you're one of my real-life friends and you sent me money for my birthday, then don't feel obligated to send money now, I guess.

I've also got kind of a guest comic that I might as well post, which is pretty good, though it could be taller. Maybe I'll use that as some kind of donation incentive or something. Probably not though. I'll probably just post it in a couple of days or whatever. Uploaded at 22:37 on 20 March

Horse-Man has a successful podiatrist whose marriage is good

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:06:11 -0800

Here is a link to the first chapter of The Cup of Tea at the Solar System

I don't know if I really won anybody over with the first chapter of The Cup of Tea at the Solar System. Making a straight parody of something that is already comedic doesn't really work, but I try not to do straight parodies of things. I hoped that filtering it through Sonty Mick's lazy, meandering writing style would produce something worthwhile, and I think that this second chapter does a better job.

The joke from the actual comic segment was originally scripted for Dr. Minivan and Unwinder (Dr. Minivan accidentally[?] quotes Forrest Gump, and Unwinder is weirded out because it seems to have been accidental). I feel like it might have worked better for those characters, or at least as an unexpected tangent in an unrelated conversation. Turning it into a foreshadowed "man hands" moment may have resulted in too much buildup. I don't know.

I was going to complain about how lazy I got with the art in this one too, but gosh, this blurb is getting really negative!

Thank you various donors! I was going to finish this on Sunday night, but then I dislocated both of my knees and hurt my elbow, and so I called it a night early.

Uploaded at 01:32 on 22 Febuary

The gang is in a gun groove

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 06:38:06 -0800

Barbecue Sauce pretty clearly used up all of his good ones before we got to this point in the conversation. He's really banking hard on that "trade me more guns" one. You can catch more of this conversation on Twitter or Facebook The links are on the right somewhere.

Unwinder hesitates there in panel 7, because Painburger is the only person he can think of who has guns.

My approach to writing this one was that I tried to think of something that everyone has been talking about lately, because I figured that doing something topical might bring in some readers. I screwed up my chances of attracting a larger audience, as usual, by making something that doesn't really express a point of view, or make sense. I'm cool with this.

I'm sure you're all asking yourselves. "Wilson Parker, what's the best piece of Unwinder's Tall Comics fan work so far this year?"

Well, I'll tell you the answer.

It's this. This is it. This is incredible.

It's quality enough that I totally would have posted it as an actual update. Like, as a guest comic. But I've linked it here, and on Facebook, and I'd look pretty stupid now if I tried to make you all read it again. Definitely read it though.

Sorry to the donor who donated money like two and a half weeks ago! I started on this right away, but gosh, it's so hard to do comics when you're out of practice! I'll try and get another one up within a week, because I want you to get your money's worth! Uploaded at 01:24 on 07 Febuary

Mr. Rawturkey believes that his allergy makes him strong.

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:18:03 -0800

OK, so tomorrow is my day off, and then after that I'm working for seven days straight! I hope to get a comic done for the weekend, but I'm not really sure if I will do a very good job of working around work. We shall see!

I was doing such a good job of producing comics that were newcomer-friendly, and then I had to go and do this. I apologize to any newcomers who showed up and saw this.

You may be wondering. "You've got a job, and a car, and an apartment and stuff. What is your tip money going toward? Something useless probably?"

The answer is that my apartment is currently completely bare, and I am hoping to furnish it with some extremely inexpensive used furniture from the internet, but with the various expenses associated with moving in, and then the financial expectations of the Christmas season, I can basically just afford to eat food and pay rent for the next couple of months. If you leave a tip, you're contributing to me having things like chairs to sit on, a bed to sleep on, and various kitchen stuff for food preparation.

I haven't stayed up this late in ages, and the result is that I can't say anything that isn't very dull. Thank you for reading my blurb. Uploaded at 00:52 on 14 November

"Time to vote." You know how people are always saying that.

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:12:04 -0800

The "make a donation, and there will be a comic every week" guarantee is back on. I got a donation, and so I made this.

I encourage all of you Americans out there, whether you agree with my politics or not, whether you're informed or uninformed, whether you're sane, or completely deranged. Whether you have a strong opinion, or whether you're just voting for the candidate your parents would want you to vote for. Whether you hate the main candidates, whether you hate the third-party candidates, whether you're a crazy racist, whether you hate women, whether you believe that gay marriage is the most important issue in history, or you believe that it's completely irrelevant. Whether you're a religious zealot, or a very angry atheist. Whether you're a democrat, a republican, a libertarian, a fascist, a communist, an anarchist, whatever the green party is, a feudalist, an aspiring barbarian warlord, or if you just have a crush on one of the candidates, your opinion matters, and your vote counts. Get out there tomorrow, and make sure that the government knows about all your crazy ideas. Representative democracy was never intended to put the most qualified candidate in office. Just the most popular one. Now go and participate.

Other news: A reader who you may remember from a guest comic a while back was inspired by last week's comic to create a new saved-fic every day for the month of November! Take a look!

Uploaded at 10:06 on 05 November

Tesla scares away some dinosaurs by building an earthquake machine to simulate T-rex footsteps

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 01:09:03 -0700

OK, so I'd imagine that after my last update's blurb, and my prolonged absence, you'll want to know what's going on!

That job I got before was a scam, so I didn't actually end up working there.

However, your donations gave me gas money, which allowed me to stay with some friends and go around looking for a legitimate job, which, after another false-start (which is a great story by the way) I now have one! I work in a gas station. A gas station attached to a store that sells stuff for midwesterners. It doesn't sound glamorous, but it pays better than you'd expect, and the benefits are pretty good.

As for the other stuff in my previous post (the stuff about the girl), I don't really feel like that's really something that's really appropriate to just put up in public at this point. If you are really interested in getting the latest information on that front, then I'd be happy to discuss it in private.

As for the other stuff (the stuff about the YGIAGAM comics), I will definitely get on that!

I'm reading some books about goals, and time management and stuff, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to learn how to successfully make comics while also having a full-time job, instead of my usual M.O., which is to get all stressed about the difficulty of working Tall Comics around my plans for doing something else for one hour of one day out of the entire week. Uploaded at 20:39 on 29 October

One of these characters is a brony

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 14:52:53 -0700

When I set out conceptualizing this comic, basically all I knew was that I wanted to do one about bronies, because I figured that bronies would get a lot of clicks on Reddit or whatever. Then I ended up turning it into a deconstruction of my characters. That's how Tall Comics works. I noticed that a lot of the time, when I use Barbecue Sauce, I have him like something that Unwinder doesn't respect. I thought, "Hmm, there is a danger that over time, these characters are going to be 'flanderized' in such a way that Barbecue Sauce is the geeky one, and Unwinder is the judgmental one." So anyway, I wanted the finished comic to illustrate that Unwinder and Barbecue Sauce are both very geeky, but they express it in very different ways (with Barbecue Sauce being devoted, and a bit sentimental, and Unwinder being shallow and overzealous).

There is a lot of stuff going on in my life. That's why this update has been so long in coming. If you didn't read my Facebook post, you probably just think I got lazy again, but no. Big things are happening. My fiancee, the real Mildred, who I love dearly, recently broke off our engagement for justifiable reasons (I've been kind of a deadbeat for kind of a long time). I decided it was time to get my life in order. The day after she broke up with me, I landed an interview for a really decent-paying job in her town. The following day, I aced it. I start Wednesday. I'm getting independent, growing up, becoming a real man, etc... My hope is that I'll be able to prove myself, and get a second chance, but even if I don't, it's time for me to whip my life into shape.

I'm hoping to keep Tall Comics running smoothly, but it will still probably be irregular while I'm getting my crap in order, even if I receive tips.

Anyway, where I'm going with this is, I could really use some money. I don't have any. I'm starting on Wednesday, and the job is pretty far away from where I currently live. It will be a couple of weeks before I actually get a paycheck, and until then, I need to buy gas and food and stuff, and also I have no clue where I'm going to stay.

If you can spare a couple of bucks, it would save me a huge number of headaches. There is an incentive: For every dollar Tall Comics makes in tips within the next two weeks, I will make a Your Guess is as Good as Mine strip, to be released more-or-less daily for as long as supplies last.

(By the way, I'd like to note that I still haven't missed an update after having been tipped, aside from that one time where I substituted a bunch of updates to side-projects instead of Tall Comics Proper.) Uploaded at 02:33 on 31 July

Unwinder hates Spawn

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 03:24:53 -0700

It's been really hot and humid here for the last couple of days, and so I dug out this script that I wrote last summer when it was humid, and never produced, because when it became not-humid, it seemed like less of a good idea. See, that's what humidity does to you. It puts you in a state of mind where ideas seem good that would otherwise seem bad.

I know next to nothing about Ghost Rider, John Constantine, Hellboy, or Spawn, but I know that they are all associated strongly with hell, and that I hate Spawn quite a lot.

It has been a while since the last update. I freely admit this. I've had two multi-day houseguests, and worked a bunch selling mini-donuts since then. It has kind of sucked. I'm selling mini-donuts again this weekend, and so I guess I will try to make another new comic before then, if I can get motivated. I also intend to do a few more guest comics, so keep your eyes peeled for those.

~No further news~ Uploaded at 02:54 on 03 July

Mildred doesn't get gambling

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 22:57:50 -0700

OK, so this one was kind of made with not doing a whole lot of art in mind, since I didn't have a huge amount of time. Hopefully the huge amount of text will placate you!

Remember my old comic, Too Far? The sci-fi comedy thing? Or maybe you don't remember it, because the archive hasn't really been available online since maybe a month or two after Unwinder's Tall Comics started?

I've finally re-uploaded it, and you can view it again (or for the first time) here. It's kind of fun, especially near the end when it kind of turns into proto-Tall-Comics, and the art style constantly changes for no reason. I would never claim that it is as good as Tall Comics, but maybe if you're like "a fan" or whatever, you'll want to check it out.

You can also check out the crappier college spinoff/prequel here.

Another thing I've recently done is that I've tried my hand at making comedic Youtube videos. You can check them out here! Those Doctor Who ones are, uh, more for my amusement than anyone elses, but the other ones are all like, your basic funny stuff.

Also, Powerup Comics has updated again since last time.

I've been beating myself up for like a month now about an update that I missed and can't seem to catch up on. If it's all the same to you guys, I'm just going to count the Powerup Comics, the three comic archives I've uploaded, the videos, and the numerous guest comics as that update. I really doubt if anyone is going to have a problem with this. Uploaded at 14:48 on 16 June

Unwinder is pushing the green angle pretty hard

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 04:01:34 -0700

Alternate alt-text: "Wait, why does Unwinder assume that Horse-Man won't want a cut of the money?"

Alternate alternate alt-text: "Whoever buys alittlebirdtoldme.biz is going to be getting like three hits worth of free traffic."

OK, so I'm sure you remember me promising an on-time comic er... last week. Because somebody gave me a bunch of money.

I did not technically do that (note that I still won't skip this week's actual update), but I did do a whole bunch of stuff that's basically the same as making a comic. Because it is making a comic. Several comics.

Since the last update:

Your Guess is as Good as Mine (Felicity's comic) has a new home. Not only does it have a new home, but I've finally posted my entire backlog of Your Guess is as Good as Mine strips, and I've gone through the entire archive and composed a whole bunch of comments by various Tall Comics characters (canonically, this all takes place not long after Unwinder and Barbecue Sauce meet Felicity). Also, if anyone wants to leave some comments on there themselves, there's nothing to stop you from doing so. The fictional characters in there might even acknowledge you!

And over here, Powerup Comics has updated, now with art by Amy Sauce! I'm hoping to put up another update or two in the next couple of days as well. When I got that big donation the other week, I decided that bringing Powerup Comics up to date was the best way to reward that kind of behavior. Then I was going to post it at the same time as this new comic, and the Your Guess is as Good as Mine thing, and say something like, "Hey, this is what happens when you make big donations!" But seeing as this comic is pretty late, I feel like that's lost a lot of its impact.

Of course, that's a lot easier to swallow when the fun DOESN'T END THERE. There's a new guest comic by me up at Cereals for Lunch! Well, I mean, really it went up last Friday, and if you're following me on Facebook then you've known about it for a long time. But that is another thing for this week. I won't lie. It's a pretty good guest comic.

Wait wait...

What?

THERE'S MORE???

Oh yeah, I also put up ANOTHER guest comic over at The Obscure Gentlemen. And that one's also pretty good!

Special thanks to James from The Obscure Gentlemen, and Joao from Cereals for Lunch for promoting the crap out of these guest comics. I saw those guys on Twitter, and they seriously must have posted links to these guest comics a cumulative fifteen times, and then when I posted about them, they retweeted my tweets as well. I don't really "get" Twitter. I was going to say some more stuff about me not getting Twitter, but I feel like that sentence sums it up pretty well. Uploaded at 05:18 on 08 June

Dr. Minivan becomes a base, predatory animal.

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:51:25 -0700

Here's a new comic! I wanted to revisit Golden Elvis as soon as possible. This is the result.

Somebody tipped me a whole bunch of money today. Like, a really notable amount of money, so I've planned something really special for this weekend. Something I've been promising for a long time. It's going to be really good.

A new guest comic went up yesterday. This one was for Adrastus by Liz Staley. It's comic about a girl who finds out that her family secretly has a giant robot. Check it out here! There will be at least one more guest comic going up this week, so keep your eyes peeled.

The Facebook group currently has 299 members. Will you be the 300th? The next person to join does [not] get a reward!

Uploaded at 02:58 on 30 May

Unwinder's Terror and Recreation

Fri, 25 May 2012 03:40:34 -0700

OK, so the story behind this comic is that I couldn't come up with any good comedy that didn't resemble Parks and Recreation, so I enlisted Ben Heaton and Lewis Powell to help me with it. You may remember them from Terror Island. I asked them to write a scene for me that was "exactly like Terror Island" and this was the result. Ben Heaton also does Request Comics. But you know that, because I link him every five seconds.

In my opinion, the kind of dry humor that Terror Island relied on benefits greatly from faceless characters, which is why everyone in the Parks and Recreation department is a faceless monstrosity. I think the one in the 8th panel there is Brian Rawturkey's wife Stephanie. Or maybe his sister, since it would be weird for him to find another nose-person like that to marry. Unless all the weird looking characters are actually separate species, and it's actually necessary for them to seek out similar-looking mates. That might be the case. I usually think of them all as human, though.

Since I received a tip, and this one was late anyway, I will be definitely making sure that the next comic actually comes out sometime this weekend. I was late because I had some really vital work to do, but I will not let your tip money go to waste! That will not happen! Uploaded at 23:08 on 24 May

Minnesota Siding is Occupied

Sun, 13 May 2012 12:00:47 -0700

Credit to Josiah Parker and Micah Orsatti for the "Moths and Lamp" and "Mushrooms On Drugs" paintings, respectively. I made up those titles. I don't know what those guys would have wanted me to title those paintings.

I bought the canvases to make these paintings with my tips from this week! Your contributions in action! Then we spent a whole evening painting, and it was pretty fun.

What more do I have to say? Surprisingly little. I've done a few more guest comics since last week, but none of them are up yet, so I can't link you to them.

Wait, here's something I can link you to: About a zillion years ago, a guy I've collaborated with in the past made a pretty prominent reference to Tall Comics (in fact, referencing Tall Comics is essentially the punchline). I only just found it this week when it showed up on my analytics. Ha. Here it is.

Oh hey, have I told you guys to like the Facebook page lately? We're almost at 300 likers! Which matters to you all for some reason! Uploaded at 23:28 on 12 May