Corporate creative departments have always been a target market for the company I work for. They tend to have more money to spend on a regular basis than home studios so one corporate client can provide the income that would otherwise require multiple small clients. Corporate clients usually already had an IT department but that department usually had PC/Windows expertise and rarely felt comfortable supporting the Apple computers that the creative departments used. Often the IT departments were glad to have us take the Mac support off their plate.

This strip was the second of three comic strip ideas that my boss had me pull out of the larger, abandoned comic book. I don’t remember what our hero here is upset about but we can assume that it’s computer related. It probably has to do with server issues. Back in 2002 it was usually only our large clients that even had servers.

“Oh no! It’s the blinking question mark!”

If you’ve never seen this you’re a lucky Mac user. The blinking question mark was a sign that your hard drive and your operating system weren’t talking to each other. These days that problem is indicated by what we call the rainbow ball of doom. Either way it’s time for this kid to call tech support.

The boy calls his mother. She’s unresponsive.

Our boy is really starting to worry now.

Once it became apparent that having me draw an eight page comic was going to take longer than he wanted to wait the boss started thinking of ways that we could repurpose some of the ideas in the story. Our primary means of marketing in 2002 was postcards. Every month or two we would send out a postcard to clients and potential clients. It was a pretty effective way of keeping us in people’s minds. I got quite few calls that started with “I’ve had one of your postcards sitting on my desk for years …”

Anyway. Our client base broke down into three main categories – one or two person home studios, independent creative studios and the creative departments of large corporations. The boss asked me to come up with three strip ideas (one for each of our client categories) that could be used on postcards. This is the first panel of our home studio strip – a young boy comes home to find the house dark and foreboding.

And thus the day is saved. No punching, no flashing bolts of energy, just mysterious technical expertise.

Deus Ex Machina!

The tension mounts ….

The blinking question mark is mostly a thing of the past. These days people call us about the spinning rainbow wheel of doom.

Things go from bad to worse.