A Sixth O.T. Katie Thread

[overbarrel49]

So far, you're the only one who has actually said it... but perhaps many more are thinking it , but don't want to seem critical. I am willing to accept criticism... especially when I believe it is accurate, and when the the critic is polite about it, as you always are. You're right. It is long. I had to include a lot of extra panels of expository dialogue to try to tell my story. I'm sure I could've made some of the dialog more concise and still told the story.

hi Boom,

since i suffer from being way too wordy in my toons and since i have a tendency to crowd the pic with too many words also, i have no complaints with the extra panels you have used. i too tell stories with my toons and i always have a certain amount i want to say so it often comes down to crowding the pic or adding extra panels or both. can all of this be done more concisely? i definitely think it can.........at least to a point but i personally spend a great deal of time considering the dialog and trying to be as brief as i can but i still crowd the pics and have to add extra ones. i do think that Dan probably has a point about all these words and to be honest, i have had Dave Wolfe make similar comments to me in an attempt to help me with this problem. still, i use only enough words to tell the story as i think it should be told, and I think this is exactly what you do with your Katie toons. for example, i might have one of my spankees saying something like, "he pulled my panties down and blistered my bare bottom". i could shorten that to, "he gave me a spanking". however, i don't think it would be nearly as effective or as descriptive. not only do i want depict the spanking in a certain way but i also want to evoke certain emotional reactions from the readers and it seems to me you have the same goal. in any case, i will probably continue to do what i am doing and just do the best i can to be more concise. phil

[web-ed]

I'll wade into this question as well, if I may. First of all, you're right, b00m, in that I think (and hope) all the work you (and your fellow RA's) do for CSR is greeted with a certain amount of polite restraint. When people are working long and hard (for no money, since I can't afford to pay anything) to share their artistic efforts with their fellow spankos here, a certain amount of simple gratitude is in order. Thus, I would hope readers would refrain from nit-picking about minor matters.

However, Dan's criticism is more substantive and deserves careful consideration. Yes, the speech balloons in Katie take up a lot of room (I'll explain the reason for the emphasis shortly), but the basic layout in this last adventure is good, and I personally am inclined to cut you some slack for the following reasons:

1. While cartoonists are often expected to both draw and write their cartoons, there's no reason to expect them to be masters of two very different crafts. Think of song-and-dance men like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly: both sang adequately, but they were primarily dancers, not singers. Gower Champion, the dancer/choreographer, was barely adequate vocally. Yes, guys like Will Eisner and Milton Caniff were artist/writers (I prefer the term to "writer/artist" because of where the emphasis is - in fact I'm sure this question came up on Phil's Gallery in the past), they were writers on the level of say Mickey Spillane or Earle Stanley Gardner, not William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald! Thus, I think the artist/writer should be granted some allowance here. Putting the shoe on the other foot, if I had to draw my own scripts as well as write them, people would probably start a collection to "help that poor retarded kid learn to draw like other eight-year-olds"!
2. Overwriting is difficult to avoid in the comics medium. When I wrote my first comic script, I was an experienced writer who carefully considered the problems of the form and realized the dangers of overwriting - yet I did it anyway! (Not too badly). The truth is that probably the greatest limitation of the comics form is that long speeches (even more so than long descriptive passages) cannot be sustained (a comparatively long description in a caption on a big panel works better than a long speech in a balloon). That's not an excuse for not paying attention to what we're doing, but again, it's something even a really good writer can be expected to butt up against now and then.
3. I mentioned that I overwrote my comic a little. My letterer helped me out by using a slightly smaller font, thus compressing more words into the same space. And that brings me back to the speech balloons, which I suppose I could have gotten into without all this introduction (see how easy it is to overwrite ):

Your fonts are rather on the large size, grateful as my aging eyes are for them . Look at some of the great letterers of the past, guys like John Costanza or Sammy Rosen, and you'll see that their fonts are generally much smaller than yours. Rosen occasionally used fonts about as big as yours, but only with exclamations of extremely powerful characters like Odin, Galactus, etc. Of course, these men lettered by hand since digital lettering was not possible in their day, but the principle is the same. Today's letterers also tend to use much smaller fonts than yours. So while watching how many sentences we're trying to force into a typically-sized panel is always a good idea, I think you could solve many of your difficulties just by cutting down the font sizes a little.

Just a "small" suggestion - in the end, you have to letter your comics the way you think is right. I and your other fans are not going anywhere, even if you choose to give Bullmoose a font big enough for the Great Galactus himself !



A character who demands a large lettering font: Odin, the King of the Norse Gods! From The Mighty Thor #190 (July, 1971). Script by Stan Lee, art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, lettering by Sam Rosen! Copyright Marvel Characters Inc.

[hugob00m]

Here's a new O.T. Katie story about an old problem of hers: She's still worried that her butt is too fat!

[hugob00m]

Bullmoose not only seeks to reassure her about her butt not being too fat... He also has a possible solution, just in case she might be worrying about cellulite too! "Percussive massage"... Is that anything like...

[hugob00m]

Hmmm... Maybe.

[hugob00m]

Yup! "Percussive massage" (at least the way Bullmoose does it) is A WHOLE LOT like a spanking! Katie noticed the similiarity right away!

[hugob00m]

...And of course, Katie would know... as familiar as she is with spankings!

[hugob00m]

Bullmoose admits to Katie what we;ve known all along!

[hugob00m]

Wow! I actually did a short one this time!

And...Hmmmm! I wonder if "percussive massage" ACTUALLY DOES help to prevent cellulite? If so, where can I get a job as a "percussive massage" therapist? Come to think of it... has anyone ever seen a spanking model with cellulite? Maybe it works!

Well... scientific considerations aside... Mostly I just wanted to do a story with Katie wearing a leotard. She looks good in one, doesn't she?

[overbarrel49]

hi Boom,

Katie does indeed look good in a leotard . i personally thought, if Katie had really been paying attention to her man, she would have known he was up to no good in panel 2 because of the shit eatin' grin on his face . i like her apprehensive expression in panel 3. i have to wonder if she suspected something or if she always looks that way when Bullmoose has his hand on her bottom in that manner . i got a big chuckle from panel 4............first because Katie really does have a look of suspicion on her face and second because the aforementioned grin on his face seems to have escalated . very nice shot of Katie's burning bottom in panel 5.....i can almost see it wiggling back and forth ...........and Katie's expression as she looks back is hilarious . in panel 6, i love Katie's skip step as always but the expressions are again the stars. Katie looks like she's really listening to Bullmoose and still trying to figure out if she just got a spanking or not . i still think if she's just look at HIS face, things would come into focus for her . i'm not going to directly address your question in panel 7 but i will say that a smooth hiney like that certainly is a good reason for a girl to get turned over and spanked . thanks for sharing this with us. it was a nice surprise. phil

[hugob00m]

Thanks, Phil! You're the first one to comment on my latest O.T. Katie story, and first of all:

Katie does indeed look good in a leotard.

I'm glad you think so.

i personally thought, if Katie had really been paying attention to her man, she would have known he was up to no good in panel 2 because of the shit eatin' grin on his face.

Yeah, Katie just has a bind spot in that regard.

i like her apprehensive expression in panel 3. i have to wonder if she suspected something or if she always looks that way when Bullmoose has his hand on her bottom in that manner.

I think maybe, by the time he started to pull her across his lap, she might've been beginning to suspect that he was up to something. Bullmoose, on the other hand, just likes to put his hand on Katie's butt! He can't even wait untill he has her in position!

i got a big chuckle from panel 4............first because Katie really does have a look of suspicion on her face and second because the aforementioned grin on his face seems to have escalated.

After the first smack, I think her suspicion is on high alert!

very nice shot of Katie's burning bottom in panel 5.....i can almost see it wiggling back and forth ...........and Katie's expression as she looks back is hilarious.

I am REALLY glad you can see the motion there. I tried to make her position look as kinetic as I could, and I used some motion lines, but it's hard to show movement in a stationary pidture (as you well know!) and it's nice to know when someone thinks I've succeeded!

i love Katie's skip step as always but the expressions are again the stars. Katie looks like she's really listening to Bullmoose and still trying to figure out if she just got a spanking or not. i still think if she's just look at HIS face, things would come into focus for her.

Even when Bullmoose comesright out and admits it, Katie still has trouble believing that a man... especially HER man, would make up reasons to spank her!

i'm not going to directly address your question in panel 7 but i will say that a smooth hiney like that certainly is a good reason for a girl to get turned over and spanked.

If it ever turns out that spankings CAN be used as a treatment to prevent cellulite... I WANT THAT JOB!

[web-ed]

Panel 4 is the highlight here - Phil commented on it too. Katie notes the suspicious resemblance between Bullmoose's "percussive massage" and a spanking - but not until she's getting a very good tanning ! As usual, the humor revolves around the fact that Katie is the last to know she's getting spanked. But there's also fun in seeing her basically conned into accepting a spanking - and I for one certainly doubt the efficacy of "percussive massage" in preventing cellulite .

Getting a basically vanilla woman to accept a spanking is a great fantasy, and to make it better it does sometimes happen in real life. Score one for ol' Bullmoose !

Interesting short strip, b00m - it appears that the basic O. T. Katie concept is adaptable to most any length. Thanks for taking the time to do this for us!

[hugob00m]

Panel 4 is the highlight here - Phil commented on it too. Katie notes the suspicious resemblance between Bullmoose's "percussive massage" and a spanking - but not until she's getting a very good tanning ! As usual, the humor revolves around the fact that Katie is the last to know she's getting spanked. But there's also fun in seeing her basically conned into accepting a spanking -

I'm glad you liked this one, and yes, even though Katie seems a bit gullible at times... it only took the first couple of swats to arouse her suspicions!

and I for one certainly doubt the efficacy of "percussive massage" in preventing cellulite .

Getting a basically vanilla woman to accept a spanking is a great fantasy, and to make it better it does sometimes happen in real life. Score one for ol' Bullmoose !

I've never tired to convince a woman that "perdussive massage" would help to prevent cellulite, but it would sure be fun to give it a try!

Interesting short strip, b00m - it appears that the basic O. T. Katie concept is adaptable to most any length. Thanks for taking the time to do this for us!

When I first started drawing O.T. Katie strips, they were all short... most of them even shorter than this one... but I quickly ran out of ideas for stories that could be told in three or four panels. I really admire Charles Schultz!

[hugob00m]

[overbarrel49]

well, i don't know what the problem is but you're certainly wrong, Miss katie . you deserve to have your bare bottom blistered really good for making a comment like that, young lady, and i hope Bullmoose turns you over to take care of that immediately and then stands you in the corner with your freshly spanked bottom on display for all the viewers to see . in the mean time, perhaps some other CSR members would like to comment on this toon. phil

[willjohn]

Who does she think has lost interest in seeing her spanked? I would be happy to see her spanked three times a day and twice as often on Sunday!

[web-ed]

I don't know what to say, b00m - I'm really sorry that more interest is not being expressed in so fine a spanking series as O.T. Katie. This subject has come up before: allow me to point out again that more people are interested than will leave comments (in March, 45 people searched on "otk" and wound up somewhere in CSR, some of whom must have been looking for Katie). Then some readers like JimC. do not even have routine access to a computer. Yet another difficulty might be in the way the major search engines work, although because I have one of Katie's early adventures posted on the main site (where I can more easily control the metadata these engines are supposedly reading) the engines should at least find that page.

And finally, there remains the perennial problem of the spambots who have made it necessary for me to restrict membership on this board. Perhaps there are a lot of people who have simply decided it's too much trouble to have to send me a separate email after registering in order to become active members. These folks of course can see Katie but not comment on it.

[bobj7188]

Speaking for myself, I never grow tired of seeing Katie getting what she deserves. (Or in this case of her cellulite, even when she doesn't really deserve it.) And I'll have to say, that such immature behavior as taunting definitely needs to be addressed!

I enjoy your style. Thanks.

bob

[hugob00m]

Who does she think has lost interest in seeing her spanked? I would be happy to see her spanked three times a day and twice as often on Sunday!

Three times a day and twice as often on Sunday! I like that idea, and I think Bullmoose would too... if I had that much time to draw her in the OTK position!

But seriously... after my last story, I was almost beginning to think I was playing to an empty house.

[hugob00m]

Speaking for myself, I never grow tired of seeing Katie getting what she deserves. (Or in this case of her cellulite, even when she doesn't really deserve it.) And I'll have to say, that such immature behavior as taunting definitely needs to be addressed!

I enjoy your style. Thanks.

bob

Thanks. I have a couple of other things almost ready to post, but perhaps she DOES need to be spanked for standing there in her cute little leotard, making fun of me!