Two Monocles (Archive)

TWO MONOCLES [archive]

October 1st, 2009

Two Monocles started out as a fun little project between 3 people in April of 2007: Chris, Jon and Jinnifer. It was a remote sort of thing in the sense that Chris and Jon lived in Florida and Jinnifer in Arizona, when we began it we never really thought about whether or not it would ever become a serious venture, we were just making goofy comics for the sake of making goofy comics. Our original intention at the time was to use it as a vehicle to illustrate the lives of video game shop employees (as we all were) and all the fictional and non-fictional trappings of such an evironment. As you may have noticed, there was an 'artisitic' shift around #13 when Chris decided he no longer wanted to continue drawing the comic (admittedly, 2 a week was a lot to do, well, for us). Since we had just started, I was too excited about being a part of this that I refused to let it die so early in its infancy and debated over what to do. Basically it came down to: take over drawing the comic or let it die. Having zero experience in the world of creating webcomics, I had a lot of learning to do but decided that I could handle it. And fortunately, or unfortunately I did all of that learning as I went, as you'll notice the styles change over the course of the rest of the comic. At first I was just on board doing digital coloring, lettering and maintaining our website/presence (poorly at times, I admit), while Jon wrote them and Chris drew them by hand. So now, it was just Jon and I and the rest, as they say, is history. Or is it? Probably.

By now, it's probably become clear to you all that we have more or less died (or at least I hope it has). Last December, Jon called me up and informed me that he no longer was interested in writing the comic. Obviously, at this point we had been doing it for about a year and half and because it cost a great deal of time and sometimes even money, it was difficult to juggle with the trappings of everyday stresses; working full-time, maintaining relationships with significant others and the attempt at having something of a social life (I know, QQ!). Needless to say, these things tend to take priority over a larky artistic endeavor that was both unpaid and went largely thankless and unnoticed, also he was working on another comic at the time as well which I think he was more committed to. Don't get me wrong, we had loads of fun doing it, we had a BLAST at the Orlando Megacon '08 and there were a number of people who really enjoyed our work (and a number who didn't!). But it became difficult to maintain.
When Jon told me about dropping the writing of Two Monocles, again I was faced with the debate of do I let the comic die? Or do I pick up the slack? Well, at that point, the comic, had I chosen to take over writing would have been 100% mine and no longer a fun project among friends. Much to my shame, I had no interest in continuing to write it, if I were going to have a comic that was now all my own, I would rather be doing something a little bit different. Also, I'm a pretty shitty comedy writer. So. It atrophied, we stopped updating and never really told anyone. People asked us what was going on and never got a reply. Eventually our domain/hosting expired and was on the market until it was recently purchased by a beer/IT/porn(?) blog. I hope they do us justice!

Even though we'll no longer be updating or creating any new Two Monocles strips, I've decided for the sake of posterity and nostalgia to at least bering the old ones back in an archive format so that at least they may be enjoyed again by the people who once loved them, hopefully enjoyed for the first time by others and to stroke my own hellish ego. Nothing really dies on the internet. Anyhow, I've been rambling for long enough. I don't have to drive or time to really create an elegant or user-friendly archive, so I'm just going to dump all the comics onto one page, but don't worry, I'll at least put them in order (all 49 of them!). To access: click the "archive" at the top of this page.
Enjoy!

-Jinnifer Barrentine

Oh man. Going through these made me laugh. Two Monocles was my first web-comic and basically the only stuff that's been put into some sort of media from my fucked up brain, other than my other defunct web-comic Charles & Darwin, which was WAY more tame and WAY more classy. Like really, for a person who doesn't do any sort of drug, I'm pretty fucked up. I would only write things that I think I would personally laugh at. I never wrote things for other people (except for than damn Liam Lynch arc.) I would write it and if I didn't laugh, I wouldn't send it.

It was some good times. It kind of just ended which is sad to me. Although, it did end on something I could totally see myself saying before I died or something in that manner. I do love me some sammiches.

It's funny how it started out. Jinn, Chris and myself had basically the same job. We worked with videogames. And much like Clerks, the only reason how it could turn out funny is because of those stupid fucking customers. Then Chris decided to stop and it was just the two of us, so I killed Chris off. I remember Lee wasn't very happy with that. He said it was too soon, I thought it was a good timing. So I did and then things just got really weird. It strayed outside of the videogame shoppe setting and I think that's where I fucked myself. The world was my oyster. I could do anything. And I basically did. I did so many things that were just too...weird. I couldn't really write myself out of certain situations, so I just went with something that would be even more insane just to end the arc.

Want to know what was going to happen after the last strip? Okay.

Chris was going to land on some alien planet and he was going to be resurrected by some Scientology alien shaman. The aliens would then teach Chris of their supernatural, yet Scientologist, ways and basically Chris would turn into World War Hulk (see, I totally rip everybody off, Marvel comics, Kevin Smith, etc etc.) Chris would then land on earth creating Scientology mayhem. So, I Jinn and I had to figure out a way to stop Chris and she would come up with the idea of resurrecting Phil and have some weird celebrity (I don't know who) train him in some sort of fighting style and the two would fight, basically destroying half of the worlds population.

AFTER all of that mess, the world leaders would find out Scientology was the reason of the crap that just happened so they basically go on a witch hunt and kill stuff and then send all the Scientologists in a rocket and fire them into the sun.

That was fun, yeah?

Who knows, maybe it will still happen. Maybe if you bastards would show a little more interest in this crap!

-Jon Lewis