Bonus comic + I drew a Curtailed!

First the links, then the backstory: Vote here to see a bonus Precocious scene, featuring everyone's favorite camp director. And click here to read a guest comic I drew for Curtailed!

It's a happy coincidence they both popped up at the same time, since they were born of the same idea.

One of the high-end tiers for the book 3 Kickstarter was to influence the design of a Precocious character. This tier was tied to the current camp story, and certain important character slots in the arc were kept open just in case. Once the campaign ended, I went forward with the characters *I* had ready to fill the roles - except for one.

The default story had the counselor (which became Cody) taking on most authority roles, with the camp director as a secondary, off-panel entity. BUT, I decided I'd go ahead and do the Kickstarter thing anyway, giving the character part of the reward to one of my comic buddies. And that's when I discovered my friends have a bunch of kid-hating, non-viable characters. Well, if it wasn't reasonable to bring THEM into MY story, what if I put MY characters into THEIR comic?

And that's why I drew a Curtailed - and why it has the theme it does!  Creating it was a comedy of errors - my favorite drawing pen isn't marker-safe, making Curtailed-style illustration a mess - but two 11x17" pages of mishaps later I ended up with a strip-sized comic!  Thanks to Mandy for tolerating my scribbles! (She was not aware of my plans until it arrived in her inbox, along with some manic, it-made-sense-at-3am rambling.)

The reason why the Kickstarter tier was so expensive is that, aside from the originals and extra art stuff, the character was far more than a cameo. The role was collaborative, and would become part of Precocious continuity, with a chance to recur. That's big for a control freak like me! With outright character-stealing off the table, I turned to stealing MY FRIENDS. I had just returned from Anthrocon, where Mat (of Badly Drawn Kitties fame) was, once again, my highly-excellent table assistant.  I asked him if it would be OK to work a Precocious version of him into the story, and he said yes.

The director's role was very open at this point, so we had a small discussion about it. I asked him how someone like Precocious Mat would end up as camp director, and he replied that something must have gone horribly wrong in his life. That was all the prompting I needed! Now, as the reward tier intended, Mat gets to play a solid role in the camp story, he's tied with Precocious history AND that also means the character lives in the area, so he may be called upon again! (If you like this reward, start saving now! There will be an opportunity to grab it next year!)

As for this specific bonus scene, I'm going ahead and calling NON-CANON on it. It's too over the top, but the idea of giving a polite Canadian a gun was too tempting to pass up! (That means that, unlike most deleted scenes, this one probably won't end up in a book.)