Ed Head (Patreon)

Not a particularly inspired image, but we haven't seen him in a while & I can draw Ed nearly with my eyes closed so I can do it even when I'm not at top form.  Ages ago I told the story of how Edward is a character that I've been drawing since I was at least twelve.  Back then he was very different 7 was called Weird Ed.  This was many years before Maniac Mansion came out, but I had dropped the weird part by then, so I didn't feel like I had been slighted by the universe when it did.  He used to have a cohort character named Cool Fred, who you might call an evolution of Wes in some ways.  I had a clay sculpture of Ed at one point that I kept for years.  It way oil based clay so it was constantly melting and/or falling apart.  It was green & about a foot and a half tall.  If you've ever seen the clay they use for flower arranging it was a brand of that, which comes in a specific shade of green.  That clay model is part of what started the evolution of Edward from a joke character to  what he is now.  I found a pair of wire glasses that were, by happenstance, in scale with the clay head.  So I put them on it.  That act altered my concept of the character & opened up the idea of telling more complex stories with him.  

In the 90s, when manga was just starting to get to America in a bigger way, I was inspired to write Ed into a battle High school style story.  In some ways that is his backstory.  In Between Failures it's more like he was the somewhat troubled son of the school principle where he attended.  In the older version it was more like a crazy Ranma 1/2 style story.  I only ever actually drew one page of that story that I can remember.  The girl who passively inspired Between Failures broke up with me around that time & I took art out of my life for several years.  If things had worked out differently who knows what I might have done with that idea.  Seeing as I'm ridiculously stubborn I might well be drawing it in some alternate reality where I married that girl & moved to Texas.  Of course it's equally likely that I'd be working some shitty job and not doing art at all while trying to provide for a family.  If my knowledge of what happened to her is any indication that's probably more likely.  I would be surprised if we were still together honestly.  Things might have been different, but I would still be me at the core & me isn't someone anyone can love for very long.  In any case, those weren't the choices I made.  You're here, reading these words, because my original plans fell apart along with me.  

I picked Edward back up essentially out of nowhere when I needed an original face to fill a hole in the story I was going to tell.  I decided not to continue the joke a day gamer comic I was doing & instead tell a fictionalized version of my life in retail.  It's a long strange journey from there to here for both of us.  He might have been the star of a manga inspired combat comic.  I might have been one of the first people to post a webcomic of that style in the world...  But we weren't.  We were the failed versions of ourselves.   Still, we've gotten by alright in spite of not being exceptional.  The world isn't run by the exceptional.  The average take care of the day to day & I try to do my part by giving you a haven in a world that's just a little better than the one we actually live in.  Someplace between failures. 

Roll credits.